Reorganizing Ribbon....

I love ribbon. A lot.

I love the colors, I love the textures, and I love the variety. Collecting ribbon is like capturing my own little bits of rainbows and makes me very happy. Looking at and buying ribbon takes me back to those childhood days when I'd spend hours at the local fabric stores with my Mom, looking at patterns, searching for the fabric & notions and finding the perfect ribbon to pull the entire ensemble together. Happy times.

Then I discovered scrapbooking & time for my sewing kind of went away, but then I saw other scrapbookers do really cool stuff with ribbon, on their scrapbook pages. And I fell in love with ribbon all over again. Whenever I'd visit Recollections, Hobby Lobby, or Michael's I had to browse the ribbon aisle and usually brought some home. The CKU-Album class I went to, I even took part in my first ever swap, for ribbon of course.

So first my collection outgrew the pages in my scraprack. Then eventually, my collection outgrew the basket it was living in and I was stumped. I knew I had way too much for a simple ribbon box like this, pretty though it is. I was almost convinced that the way to go for storage was to roll all the ribbon up and store it in a box like this. But when I started counting and I realized A) that I had more than 100 types of ribbon. And B), I realized that I'd need at least two of these boxes and that was going to be 1. very expensive and 2. was going to take up more space than I was willing to make room for. So I tried to slow down the ribbon buying; just one spool here & there. But it was becoming obvious that I might have too much of a good thing. (I have since come to realize that while I have a lot - I don't have as much as some people....)

Then week #17 came along in my Donna Downey class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking and problem solved. The simplicity was stunning and the fact that I had everything I needed at home and didn't need to go buy anything was simply fabulous. So it took about 3 weeks of Tab & I watching Mr. Rogers or Clifford at night to get everything done. (She'd watch TV and I'd wrap.) It was time well spent & I love the results! It was a great project in that now I know what I have at a glance. I've dicovered that I'm lacking in the purple category and I need more plain grograin in all colors.

P.S. If you've got a Hobby Lobby by you, American Crafts Boxed Ribbons are on sale this week for $3.99 instead of $7. WaHoo!

P.P.S. Thanks to Jeanette for inspiring me to write about something I love. Between this blog and some photos, I think I feel a layout coming on!

Nana with her 80th Birthday Book....

Nana's 80th Birthday Scrapbook is finally done and shipped. My cousin Erin did a great job of getting the book to Nana on July 8th. and Erin's husband, Mark, did a fantastic job of getting pictures while Nana saw her gift for the first time. I was very disappointed to not be there to give it to her and to see her reaction as she got to look though my work, but it was time to get it there and I'm not sure when next I'd be free to travel that far.

Now that Nana has her book, I'll be getting the scans cleaned up and organized into a photo album and I'll post a link so that those who are interested can see what I did. The album turned out very well and I'm pleased.

Tab's Bathtub Toys

Such a feeling of accomplishment!

It only took about 14 months but I finally finished my track album from the CKU-Album course I went to in March 2005. It was taught by Becky Higgins and was a blast! Can't believe that I finished!! Wahoo!! Now I just want to keep going....

Not a lot of scrapping going on....

Mostly because of work & all my (precious little) bits of free time being spent on painting in Tabitha's room. I am currently working on an alphabet book for her, but I could use some suggestions for a few of the letters. I'm mostly using nouns so that I can have pictures of things to go with the letters. Think of words that a seven year old would know.... (I googled first grade vocabuary list and didn't get very much that was useful so I'm very open to ideas!)

B
H
I
J
K
L
M
Q
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Gosh, that seems like at least 1/2 the alphabet.... I've got the album, the color scheme, the cardstock, etc. Just need some more words to get photos of & then assemble the thing. I'm hoping to do that at my scrapbook club meeting on Wednesday night. Hope I can make it since I'm the primary doc at the "big hospital" that day....

Scrapping update

Unfortunately, this weekend has found me less than energetic, so I haven’t gotten much done. Still need to pull together my photos & stuff for my “homework” assignment for last week. Last week as I was wandering around Recollections & stressing out looking for 5x6 inch cardboard squares for making a covered book, I had a sudden revelation; I could actually use one of my little 6x6 albums at home that I already have & save myself the work of making the book itself. This was followed by, it doesn’t matter what I use for that project, because there’s no right way to do things! Completely rocked my world. It's one thing to think the concept, but a huge step for me to actually believe the concept.

I’m getting behind in Donna’s class, but I’m not stressing about it. I’m still just trying to get stuff written on to the calendar & planner from week #1. That’s what I should have been doing today while I was flopped on the couch & later flopped in front of the computer. Instead I spent a few hours surfing though a list of scrapbooking clubs just looking at stuff. I’m not sure that I can convince Michael that a *box* of scrapping stuff arriving at the front door monthly would really be *a good thing*. I think it’d be a FABULOUS thing, but he might take some convincing....

So instead of subscribing to anything, I’m going to post the pics I promised of my version of the trial class project. I finished the last couple of photos this weekend, but the photos of the book I did last week to show my Mom.

I found the tin at Recollections, after I had bought an Altoids tin & made Michael consume the contents. {The things I make him do in the name of scrapbooking....} I discovered that the Altoids tin would need really narrow photos and I wanted more space than that. I really enjoyed the colors and I really liked having a project done in about 5 hours. Which is a record for me, I’m a fairly slow scrapbooker. It was also a lot of fun to go through my photos to find ones that I loved that described me. And then to go on a photo scavenger hunt to get the missing shots. One of the last pictures taken was of the cokes, because *Horrors* I had run out & needed to buy more.

The book is an accordion book that I made to fit the tin and each photo is an answer to the following set of questions (The hot pink phrases are my answers):

What is your favorite indulgence? Godiva Chocolate

If you had one free afternoon to do anything you wanted, what would it be? Be at Hawk’s Nest Bay Beach in St. John

What is something you use everyday that you could live without – but wouldn’t really want to? Music on my Nano

What is something you buy in bulk, just to make sure you don’t run out? Cokes

Where in your home do you love to be? My study, scrapbooking

What in nature most inspires you? Beautiful sunsets (Later included a photo of the lake at Mount Cobble, MA)

What stores would you not want to live without? Target, Tom Thumb, Recollections & Barnes & Nobles

What is a little thing you do to spread cheer to those you love? Lots of phone calls

What is your happiest color? Pink & green

What book has given you a new perspective on life? The Big Picture

What is your favorite season? Autumn

Do you have a collection? Lots of cardstock & paper

What is a symbol, character, motif or design that you love? Cats

List 3 words that describe you? See envelope

What is something you’re really good at? See envelope; Picture for photography & picture for writing

Big Picture Scrapbooking

One of the scrapbooking gurus whom I love is Stacy Julian. I heard her speak at the CKU-Album Course in Dallas March 2005. She just recently wrote another book called Big Picture Scrapbooking & I LOVE it! There's now a website to go along with the book which offers scrapbooking classes at reasonable prices, at - get this - on whatever time schedule I want. Remarkable idea isn't it?! For someone like me who's never been on time to anything ever, who works some pretty awful hours, and frankly likes to hang out at home in sweats & fuzzy slippers, this is the perfect format to take classes.

So when registration opened I signed up for two. Hers and another gal's named Donna Downey. I was a little chicken about Donna's since she's got a reputation of being the "Altering Queen" and altering stuff has been a bit beyond my comfort window. Yeah, paint, ink, really just good ways for me to make a huge mess. So I signed up for just 4 weeks instead of for the quarter or the year. Thought I'd just "try it out" and not renew if it turned out to be too "out there." Turns out, I'm loving her class too. I'm about a week or so behind because well I have a rather all-consuming type job. But I'm OK with that. And I'm having fun. And guess what -- I altered something & it came out cool & I didn't make any kind of permanent non-fixable mess.

I also downloaded the trial class, and spent about 5 hours on New Year's Day doing the project. It's about 95% done and I just got the last couple of photos taken today. So I'll post that in a while.

In the mean time here's what I started with and below that is what I made! It needs more ribbon on the spirals, and I discovered that I really like hot pink & orange together -- they make me happy!