Show and tell :)

Hi again :) I seem to have lots of stuff to blog about lately... and this post has a little bit of everything.

First of all.... LOTS of people have been asking if they can 'look' at my scrap room.... so.... I took a few photos on Wednesday to show some of it! I want to start off with this:
I know, I know... that's NOT my scraproom LOL But it does live in my scrap room now :) I've been looking for a printers tray for AGES... and seen a few on TM but they were always either... too expensive, too big or small, or they were they wrong type, colour etc. Then I was in Tauranga on Tuesday and I walked past the Hospice shop and something caught my eye... I went in and it was this shelf... I saw the price tag and grabbed it... $10!!!
Now it has some of my wooden stamps housed in it... and it also matches the wood on my craft room walls perfectly... was definitely a wonderful find!

Here is a 'bigger' picture showing it on the wall with my cricut & cuttlebug stuff underneath. I wanted something to house all my stuff so that I could actually 'see' it because I'm definitely a girl where if I can see it I'll use it!On the right are my 'bits & pieces' hangers (which are actually towel rails from Bunnings). The things in the bags are all sorts of things that I use for ATC's and scrapbooking projects. Since I've had them 'visible' like this I've actually been using quite a bit of it which is great!Now you can see all the cricut & cuttlebug stuff better. The stand is an old CD stand my sister didn't need any more. I made 'shelves' by sliding in an empty CD case at the right height and now all my stuff is easy to see (and YES I've been using it a LOT!). I've also got my tripod there because then I can find it when I need it. The drawers are still waiting for labels because I'm not quite finished organising all my stuff how I want it yet.

Some of you might remember this big shelf from just after I moved into my house... I'm happy to say that I still LOVE it because it can house LOTS of stuff... and it's nice to know that something I made is still working well for me :)All the white drawers inside the wooden stand house my acrylic stamp collection which just seems to keep growing. The good part is that now I've got them organised much better and I'm using it all again! The drawers to the left still need to be organised properly... but I'm making progress with that too :)

I just found these cool containers in a sale at Payless Plastics. They're great for keeping all my buttons sorted out! PLUS each of those little yellow compartments comes out of the case seperately so if I want pink buttons I can just take the pink buttons out and put them on my table!! Cool eh :)

And here's how I've got my cottons sorted... another Payless Plastics sale item!

The best part about this container is that it's DOUBLE SIDED!!! Very cool indeed!Right... back to the cricut again. I've got all my die cutting stuff together now :) The desk was in a Warehouse sale last year and it's great for holding all this stuff!And because I don't actually sit down to use any of this stuff I can store LOTS of things underneath the desk and it's easy to get at while still being out of the way!

Now for some Scrapbook Dreams storage. This first photo is all the Distress Inks (top row) followed by all the Green Tara flowers.Underneath is a small shelf, that is probably... almost definitely... going to be leaving the scraproom! But for now I've got some papers in it as well as my chipboard (in the shelf underneath that missed out on the photo). The big wheelie bin is where I've got all my finished projects because I've pretty much run out of wall space now :( BUT I have got an idea that might just work! I'll let you know how that goes :)

Meanwhile I have actually been doing some scrapping!!! It's been lovely to have a bit of extra time with the school holidays to get creative :) This first layout was made using Bella papers that I got from Spotlight. I've been wanting to do a layout using the photos of me and Reece and I finally got it done! The journaling reads: 'Auntie Time' is one of my favourite things in the whole world! This is the first time that Reece came to ME for cuddles. It will always be a special moment in my memory! Love you lots babe!

While I was on a roll I did this layout of my niece and nephews doing their Easter Egg hunt at home. My sister wrote clues and hid them all over the place and my nephew had a lot of fun finding them and reading them (isn't school great!) Once my niece got her bunny she really didn't care about the rest of the egg hunt so that became the focus of my layout. The photos are both 5 x 7 and to do my niece in colour I know that I COULD have just used a photo editing programme but I wanted a more 3D effect so I printed off the photo in colour, cut around her, inked the edges and popped her up on foam dots. The 'egg hunt' letter are little self-adhesive photo stickers and the stars around her bunny and the dots on the i's and j's!

And now we're up to the last part... ATC's! Poor Mum has been waiting for this part for the whole post LOL Mum's been doing ATC swaps with the Scrapfest group since January (and loving it!) Just recently Auntie Daphne decided that she would quite like to do a few ATC's too so we're doing swaps with just the three of us... quite nice to do a smaller group sometimes :)

For our first swap Mum choses the theme 'vintage/antique'... it depends on who you ask because I'm SURE she said vintage... but she said she chose antique!!! Either way the ATC's look great!

Here's Auntie Daphne's ATC:
Love those soft colours and lacey paper!!! Excellent work for a first timer don't you think???
Here's Mum's antique ATC: The sewing machine actually belonged to my great grandmother and now lives at one of my sisters house... so neat to see it on an ATC.
And here's my vintage one:If you saw the online tutorial on Scrapbook Dreams about shellac then you might notice that I used it over/around the cameo!

Sorry for waiting you wait until the end Mum... Yeah right!! LOL

Auntie Daphne is now addicted to ATC's and we've just finished our second swap... The Birds and the Bees... I'll show you how they turn out as soon as we get them all back :)