Summer Smashing

Hey everybody. It's been a long time since I posted any new Smashbook pages, but I am going to remedy that today! Here are some pages from this summer.

This particular Smashbook is all school related imagery, which is kinda my thing, so I pretty much love it intensely. However, not every school-y page fits with what I've got going on, so they are getting covered up an awful lot. Sad face. Thankfully a lot of them are notebook paper, which is what I like best.

This particular page is very different for me- there isn't a single picture! I really like how this one turned out, though. It's feminine and pretty and a bit romantic- those big rose stickers go a long way towards creating a feeling. I guess I've been feeling a bit artsy lately; lots of these pages have little drawings and doodles.

Library cards and paint chips. My favorite things!

My mom recently bought me a vintage label maker that has a cursive-y font. I LURVE IT SO SO MUCH! Watch for it creeping up a lot in my pages from here on out.

This is one of my favorite pages from the last couple of months. I love the collection of pretty little things all bunched together. Joann started carrying Basic Grey's line of stickers and die cuts and little doo-dads, and I cant get enough of them. I think I've bought about half the display at this point. It would have been the whole display, but the hubby was with me.

I like this page a lot too. I had cut the wood grain arrow for something else, but it fit in pretty well here. Plus, a little bit of glitter just makes a page that much better.

I've been trying to experiment a little bit more with white space and texture. It's hard for me not to fill up every inch; in fact, my earliest Smashbook pages are completely full. I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but I punched the same white paper with several different punches and layered them at the to of the page. It adds just a little bit of extra oomph.

I love paper piecing. I've always liked layering different patterned paper and creating little vignettes. I don't do it as much now that I have a Cricut, but every once in a while it makes an appearance, like with this little house. It's such a great way to use up scraps. I really like this page because I think it's so important to focus on being as incredibly blessed as I am, and how everything I have is due entirely to God's extraordinary love. It's good to express that creatively, and often.

I loved the artwork in the Smashbook here, I couldn't bear to cover it up. The last time I went to the book fair, I bought an old science book just because it had pictures like this one in it! So it stayed, and I tried to use similar colors on the page following. I just bought some new watercolor washi tape, and it has been making a lot of appearances in my Smashbook, along with the woodgrain tape. I'm using a bunch of old rolodex cards recently as well. I love the vintage office feel these pages are ending up with. Happy happy happy.

That's it for today, since that's all the pages I've made recently that are fit for sharing. I hope you enjoyed taking a look, and I hope even more that you'll leave me a comment encouraging me to make more. I've had a bad bit of Smashbook block lately, and I could definitely use some support to get me through this uncreative roadblock. If you like my stuff, please let me know! We all know how a few kind words can work wonders. Thanks friends!

Kindergarten Kickoff

Hey everybody! I can't believe it is already the second week of August! Even more than that, I can't believe that my little mister is starting Kindergarten! 

Back to school season has always been one of my favorite times of year; with my office supply fetish and love of all things organizational, I've always relished the chance to get everything JUST SO for the start of a new year. Plus, sales! I think I'll always be a student at heart, so it's really thrilling to see my little boy start off his academic career this year, even if it means I've officially become the Mom of a school-age kid! How on Earth did the last 5 years slip by so fast?

So, Ben starting kindergarten was a HUGE DEAL for our family. I'm prone to celebrate and make a fuss over things anyway, but I really wanted it to feel special and exciting for Ben, since he was a bit nervous. I love to surprise my kids by decorating the living room while they're sleeping, so it feels a bit magical when they wake up to a party. This is what I came up with:

Cute right? And the best part is, this whole thing cost very little. Everything was from the dollar store and what I had around the house. I started with a paper table runner, made by taping sheets of regular old notebook paper together. I thought yellow, red and black seemed like the best colors to encapsulate school- red apples, yellow pencils, black chalkboards. I used Sharpies to decorate the white balloon so it was custom for our Kindergarten kickoff, and made a quickie banner with chalk and black construction paper. Then I hung yellow streamers, tied a couple of balloons to a vase filled with pencils and crayons, and voila! Instant party.

Of course, the real star of the party was the giant pencils filled with treats! I got the idea from German "Schultütes," which are paper cones filled with toys and candy that parents give to their children to celebrate the first day of school. I actually intended to make cones, but craft inspiration struck, and I'm glad it did, because my kids loved them.

Since I'm a nice lady and want all the kids of the internet to have special giant pencils for their first day of school, I thought I'd offer a tutorial on how to make these beauties! Here's what you'll need:

• 1 sheet of poster board (makes two pencils)
• construction paper in pink and yellow
• tape (I used clear packing tape, regular scotch tape, and silver washi tape)
• a black permanent marker
• scizzors
• a ruler
• a pencil
• a bone folder (a credit card will work if you don't have a bone folder)

 

Cut the poster board in half width-wise, so you have two tall and skinny-ish pieces.  Mark at the top, middle, and bottom of the poster board every two inches. You should end up with 6 marks, 7 sections. The last section may be smaller or crooked, but it doesn't matter because you won't see it anyway.

Fold along each line with your fingers, then go back and make smooth creases with your bone folder. The poster board doesn't like to fold neatly, so you really have to make sure you use a bone folder or a credit card to get a nice smooth line.Your sections will probably become uneven when you fold them, but it doesn't really matter.

Once all your lines are creased, tape the poster board into a tube. The last (often uneven) section will fold underneath so that you have a six-sided tube. I used packing tape to tape this part, but you could use regular tape if you don't have packing tape. Just make sure to tape it securely so it doesn't come apart.

Take your scizzors and make angled cuts from the fold mark to the center of each section, removing a triangle of poster board from each section.

Set your tube upright on the pink construction paper and trace the bottom hexagon shape. It doesn't have to be perfect, you just want a rough outline of the shape.

 

Draw straight lines coming out from each side of the hexagon. These don't have to be exact, but it's better to err on the side of wider blocks that you can trim down if you need to.Cut along the lines. You'll have a rough star shape.

Measure and mark each side of the star to the same length. I did two inches, but you could do longer if you want a taller eraser. Cut along your new lines.

Place the tube on top of the pink star. You may have to adjust and rotate a little to get the sides to line up right. Then tape each section up. It's okay for there to be gaps or overlap, you can tape those down once you've taped each section up. It's easier if you tape one side, then the opposite side before the one next to it. Tape along the gaps until the eraser is secure and looks smooth.

With silver tape, tape along the line where the pink and green meet. I used silver washi tape, but you could use duct tape or electrical tape, whatever you have on hand. I went around a couple of times to give it a fatter band.

Make a cone shape out of the yellow construction paper. Be warned: this part is kind of a pain in the ass. You may have to adjust this a few times to get it the right size for your pencil. The base of the cone should be just wide enough to sit inside the tube without falling it. Too small and it wont stay up, too fat and it wont fit in, or it'll crease when it's in. Tape it along the tip so it doesn't come unraveled. Trim it up along the bottom so that it could sit up, then tape where the edges meet. Use a black permanent marker to color the tip so that it looks like a pencil.

Now fill it up with the treats. I put classic school-y stuff in mine: jacks, jump ropes, character pencils, color your own stickers, crayons, Smarties, fruit-roll ups, and ring-pops. Then shove the cone in the top. You could tape it or glue it, but if you let it rest in the top, the kids can get the treats out without ruining the pencil. 

Finish them up by writing your kids name on the side in your best kindergarten handwriting. I couldn't resist adding the No.5 on the side with their ages on it, even if they didn't really get the joke.

My kids loved these pencils! I didn't let them open them until after school, and I think that anticipation helped get Ben through his first day. Even after they took the treats out, the two of them kept playing with the pencils all afternon. They filled them up with other toys, dumped them out, sword fought with them. I finally had to take them away so they didn't completely destroy them. Ben had a great first day of kindergarten. Surprisingly enough, neither of us cried! We concluded the day with a pizza party with his grandparents and aunties and uncles. I'm so glad we could make the day really special for my little man. Here's hoping your first days of school are awesome, too!

Spring Smashbook Pages

Hiya. I thought I'd take a brief interlude from my book bonanza and share some Smashbook pages in hopes that it will get me inspired to tackle some of the three week backlog I've got happening in my Smashbook. These are some of my March pages, cause those are already on my computer and with my stupid summer cold, I've got very little motivation to go take pictures of my current pages. I keep thinking that I want to go Smashbook and get caught up, but I can't get creatively motivated right now. All I wanna do is read teenager apocalypse books, watch Jane Austen movies, and nap. Ugh. So, please comment and help me get my butt in gear before I forget all the cute stuff that is happening right now!

This particular Smashbook was one of the ones that came in a kit, so it has those nifty photo insert pages. It's a fun little break from the regular pages, but I won't buy another book with them in it, because I don't like how they break up the continuity of my pages. I love those adorable Basic Grey letter stickers here, and my cute little hedgehog that my sister made me on her Cricut. Sometimes you gotta put something in there just because it's cute.

This is the flip side of the photo insert pages. Isn't that pocket so stinking adorable? It's one from the new line of Smashbook products for this spring.

I laid a background of pink washi tape strips for this picture of my new niece. Isn't she gorgeous?

Since I always have so many pictures of Easter and I was almost out of room in this Smashbook, I decided to make flaps for each part of the day. I also had to get a couple of the super adorable watercolor eggs we made in there, too!

 

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully I'll make some new pages in the next day or two and I can post some that are seasonally appropriate, lol. Until next time, thanks for taking a look!

 

The Imperfectionists

Well folks, it's one down and twenty-nine to go. I started my Epic Quest of 30 Books Before 30 this week with Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists.

I picked this particular book because I had read about it several times and I love to read books about writers and/or lovers of books. I started with it because I happened to know where my second-hand copy of it was located on the bookshelf. It ended up being a perfect beginning to this exercise for a couple of reasons: first, it was modern and therefore an easy read; second, it was only a couple of hundred pages and I got through it fast, which has encouraged me that I will actually be able to do this within my timeline; third, it was really different from things I normally read but I still really loved it; and finally, it was gorgeously well written. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I haven't really read that much in the last couple of years that qualifies as well written. There are moments in The Imperfectionists where the prose is so lovely, or the turns of phrase so elegantly crafted that I actually had to close my eyes and savor them for a moment. I love words, and I really love words expertly strung together, and Tom Rachman certainly is good at words. For example: 

"What is the value in remonstrating with such a feckless triumvirate?" (77)

So good, right? That sentence was so lovely and memorable to me that I was able to pick it out of the book right now without any effort!

The Imperfectionists is a series of intertwining narratives from different characters who are affected by, and for the most part work at, an English-language newspaper based out of Rome. Each chapter effortlessly drops into the mind and life of a clearly defined  and distinct character. I am typically not a fan of books that switch narrators, as I think it detracts from reader immersion and can make novels drag when you're stuck in a plot line less interesting than others. However, The Imperfectionists could be considered a study in how multiple narrators can enhance and really, even make a novel into something extraordinary. This book could easily have fallen into a mere series of intertwining short stories, but Rachman uses the multiple narrators to weave a complete tale that illustrates the many facets of a life in journalism; the book is a love letter to the newspaper business, but still unromantic about it's realities. The sad-sack forcibly retired Lloyd Burko, and the terrified newbie Winston Cheung, illustrate both ends of a journalist's career. Never feeling like his achievements are enough, Corrections Editor Herman Cohen still finds himself inexplicably happy, and serves as a foil to bitter and lonely Ruby Zaga, who uses her job as a security blanket that she both loathes and loves. Reporter Hardy Benjamin finds herself knowingly taken advantage of and mocked in order to have a semblance of a relationship, whereas Editor Kathleen seeks out an affair with an old ex she disdains as a means to punish an unfaithful spouse even though her marriage still functions much as it ever did. Each chapter stands alone, but they perfectly blend to offer a snapshot of life at the paper. It's a beautifully crafted book, and a loving character study of less than reputable people.

In the back of the book, there is an interesting interview between the author and writer Malcolm Gladwell (whose book The Tipping Point is also on my list!). This quote <----- is taken from that interview. I did a paper once on almost this very subject; how reading can enhance our ability to empathize and relate to one another. He goes on to add:

"What I wonder is whether any of this sympathy for fictional characters translates into greater sympathy for people in life." (277)

In my opinion, reading anything helps makes us better people. In books we can live a thousand lives, experience a thousand perspectives, which hopefully helps us "replace our snap judgements about people with the actual empirical evidence about themselves that they offer us"(Malcolm Gladwell says it so nicely). The Imperfectionists takes us through eleven different ideas about what it means to be a journalist, and it allowed me a chance to rethink my notions of writers, and to explore some mores I might not have otherwise been comfortable with. Good books always have a way of correlating to your life, to something going on with you, and this one was no exception for me. I often struggle with being a stay-at-home mom, with sacrificing a career, something that I typically equate with success, to nurture and raise my kids. I found myself contemplating, or maybe re-evaluating, my definition of a successful life with this book. All the characters have what I would consider a successful life, a job writing or working for a paper and living abroad, but very few of them are happy. And the ones who are, are generally happy because of family or close relationships. Living life through all these heads made me think that maybe being successful means living a life full of love, regardless of what you do for a living. So yeah, that was encouraging.

I have the quote on the left up on my Pinterest "Book Nerd" board, and I though it was applicable to this discussion. There were a few moments in this book that resonated with me, thoughts I believed were particular to me. This one:

"She is a wonderful nerd, and he hopes this won't change. He'd be distressed if she were cool- it'd be as if his flesh and blood had grown up to be purple." (31)

I often think similar things about my own children. I want them to be happy, always happy, but never cool. Then there is this:

"He and Jimmy are not, as Herman has always believed, gradations of the same man-he the middling version, and Jimmy the superlative one." (94)

I think it's awfully easy to think of yourself as the "middling version" of the person you're meant to be. How often do we wish we were living up to our potential, wish we were living the bigger, grander version of the life we had?

"All this has been the most extraordinary surprise; he had expected an unhappy life, yet ended up with the opposite. It's barely credible." (94)

This is my favorite quote from the book. I think it's so beautiful, and so very sad. Herman is chugging along his whole life thinking he is unhappy, when the very opposite is true. How much time did he waste wishing for happiness when he already had it? How many of my blessings am I missing wishing for others?

"Technology was not merely luring readers; it was changing them." (245)

This is something I worry about- how my life is changed by technology, how different my children will be because of it. I worry that they will become so inundated by technology that they will forget how to communicate with one another. I worry that they will lose the tactile joy of a paper and ink book. I worry that we will all forget what it means to empathize and connect and seek in the ease of getting what we want on the internet.

"What I really fear is time. That's the devil: whipping us one when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp, and all is suddenly past, a past that won't hold still, that slides into these inauthentic tales. My past-it doesn't feel real in the slightest. The person who inhabited it is not me. It's as if the present me is constantly dissolving. [ ] The personality is constantly dying and it feels like continuity." (37)

Okay, so this one is not something I've ever really thought before, but I thought it was terribly interesting and clever, and it made me think.  And one last quote:

"Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition." (38)

Gorgeous! It was such a gorgeous book, and despite finishing it at 1:15 in the morning, I lied awake for a long time with my brain buzzing with all these new ideas and thoughts. That's the mark of a great book, one that keeps your brain going long after you should be asleep. And while I do think it's a bit pretentious to include discussion questions in the back of your book, I did have little diatribes to myself about each and every one of them, which in turn, inspired this mammoth post about The Imperfectionists, which may or may not have gotten away from me a bit. Clearly, I miss going to school. I can't believe I even cited my quotes! But hey, once an English major, always an English major.

 

Harper Lee- another on my list!

Well, if you've stuck with me through this whole post, kudos and I hope it inspires you to go get a copy of The Imperfectionists for yourself. I'm so glad I read it, and so glad I'm on my way through 30 Books Before 30. I'm not certain every book will get it's own paper-sized review like this one did, since it might actually take as long as reading the books themselves, but we'll see how inspired I am. This book really filled me up, and it's so wonderful to read something like that again. I've been toiling in vampire books for far too long! Hopefully most of the books on my list will serve to remind me why I studied literature in the first place. 

Next up: Tess of the D'Ubervilles (cause I know where that one is too).

The Epic Quest of 30 Books Before 30

Some time ago, back before my 29th birthday, I stumbled upon a list of 30 Books Before 30. The idea resonated with me; I do love to read and I would like to have something concrete accomplished before my thirtieth birthday since my "career goals" include teaching Ben to pee before he does a number two so he doesn't pee all over the bathroom floor every damn day. Of course, I didn't like the books on that particular list, so I decided that I would make my own list of 30 Books Before 30. And then I was too lazy to bother with that, and my birthday came and went without any goal setting whatsoever, except maybe stop getting drunk and humiliating my ownself. 

So fast-forward to today, when in a Day-Quil coma I happened to read Entertainment Weekly's list of the 100 Greatest Books of All Time, and I finally decided to challenge myself to a literary adventure and do 30 Books Before 30. This led me to look for best books lists from slightly more reputable sources; I love EW, but they aren't exactly literary experts. I looked at the NY Times list, the Modern Library, and Time's Greates Books of All Time. I do have a degree in English Literature, so I've read a fair chunk of the great classics, but I still have lots of incredible authors to experience for the first time. I didn't want my list to be all books I'd read for classm though. I decided to research some of the great modern novels, since I find myself sadly delinquent when in comes to contemporary fiction, with the exception of those that touch on the magical (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell!). And, since I do really want to expand my reading parameters, I threw in spme classic science fiction, some mysteries and noir, and even a little non-fiction (I never do non-fiction!).

I have 281 days until I turn 30, so that's roughly one book every ten days. That's not terrible, especially for me, except that I have no intention of forgoing my usual reading of things that look interesting at the library and my endless reread of the Wheel of Time books. So going to be an actual challenge, a difficult challenge. I can't wait to get started.


Here's my list:

• To Kill A Mockingbird  -Harper Lee
• Middlesex  -Geoffrey Eugenedis
• Freedom  -Jonathan Franzen
• The Imperfectionists  -Tom Rachman
• Tess of the D'Ubervilles  -Thomas Hardy
• David Copperfield  -Charles Dickens
• The Secret History  -Donna Tartt
• On The Road  -Jack Kerouac
• To The Lighthouse  -Virginia Woolf
• A Portrait of a Lady  -Henry James
• Ulysses  -James Joyce
• American Gods  -Neil Gaiman
• A Room With a View  -E.M. Forster
• The Tipping Point  -Malcolm Gladwell
• Lolita  -Vladmir Nabokov
• One Hundred Years of Solitude  -Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Road  -Cormac McCarthy
• The Sun Also Rises  -Ernest Hemingway
• The Age of Innocence  -Edith Wharton
• Ender's Game  -Orson Scott Card
• Dune  -Frank Herbert
• The Big Sleep  -Raymond Chandler
• Infinite Jest  -David Foster Wallace
• Rebecca  -Daphne Du Maurier
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  -Mark Twain
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes  -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Murder On The Orient Express  -Agatha Christie
• Treasure Island  -Robert Lewis Stephenson
• A Clockwork Orange  -Anthony Burgess
• The Devil in the White City  -Erik Larson
• 
  

and a few alternates, in case I find one of the others intolerable:

• Bonfire of the Vanities  -Tom Wolfe
• Rainbow  -D.H. Lawrence
• House of Leaves  -Mark Z. Danielewski
• The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao  -Junot Diaz
• 
  

The list isn't in any particular order. I think I will start with The Imperfectionists, since I know I have a copy waiting to be read. I'm going to attempt to write a new post every week when I finish each new book. I hope you'll stick with me! You can help keep me accountable and on track, dear reader. Please leave a comment, to let me know what you think or even suggest your favorite book. Off I go to put my nose in a book! I'm gonna make 29 count!

More of May

Hello people of the world. I am back again with some more Smashbook pages. I'm going to endeavor to keep it short and simple, since I'm fairly certain I do way too much blathering. There is no theme today, these are just more of my May pages that I never got around to posting. I just finished up my June ones this afternoon, so there will be some fresh pages up soon. Hopefully. I seem to be rather terrible at updating on a regular basis. Oh well.

   

My favorite part of this page (aside from the lovely picture of my handsome young man) is that WTF card! I ran across these on the internet one day and cheated and printed a couple. This was my last one, so I will soon be scouring the interwebs for it once again. (If you know where I can find them, please comment with the link!) I also heart the little "we've got class" tag; it's cut out from a sheet of paper with all kinds of adorable vintage-y school images. Old school stuff is pretty much my favorite. Not like "old school," but like classroom things from the 50's. You know what I mean.

 Yeah, so I doodled a picture of a creepy old guy and put it in my Smashbook, what? He looks like Vernon Dursley and I like him. I think Molly's picture is probably better than mine, but whatever. My Smashbook is a record of my life, weird subpar doodles and all.

I got some new stamps, so that's pretty fun.

I finished another Smashbook! They seem to be lasting less and less time the more I get into it. It always feels like such an accomplishment to finish a whole Smashbook, so I can never resist adorning the last page with a few pretty things and a little note.

I had a lot of Mother's day goodies, so I added a pocket and stuck them in there. I loved the gorgeous card from my hubby and wanted to put pictures of me with the kids on there, so there wasn't much room for the thousands of things I had to say about Mother's Day. I did my journaling on some pretty paper and put it in the pocket with the cards my munchkins made me and a picture I liked but wouldn't fit. And those adorable little flag clippies, which found themselves on the first page I made after buying them. Aren't those silhouettes of the kids precious? Now that they're made, I have the feeling they're going to be showing up in lots of places around the house!

 I showed this Sookie page in my last post, but here is it's mate.

 

My kids draw cute things and I made a page about it. That red polka dot washi tape looks pretty good on the blue paper, don't you think? I couldn't resist drawing a few art supplies to add to the page, but I think they turned out pretty cute. We're such a crafty family, lol.

 And, just to show that not every page is a masterpiece, here's one that just got cobbled together with all the rest of the junk from May.

Well, I hope you enjoyed taking a peek inside my Smashbook. It's been so miserable and yucky here lately that I haven't been taking as many pictures or feeling as inspired lately. Plus, I checked out The Forsyte Saga from the library, so that's like 12+ hours of loveliness taking my attention. It's nice to share pages, since it always makes me want to go create more! Comments would be lovely, and might even encourage me to post more often. Just sayin'.

My Craft Room

Hey friends! I'm amazingly adding another post and it didn't even take me four weeks! Woo-hoo! Today I thought I'd show you a few quick pictures of my craft room. 

Now, you may be asking yourself, 'Why on Earth would she want to share that chaotic, messy space she calls a craft room with the internet?' Well, you're in luck because I'm going to tell you! I've seen lots of pictures on the internet of perfectly organized and color-coordinated craft rooms with custom tables in the center and extensive cubbies with wicker and cloth baskets where everything is put away and looks beautiful. But you rarely see pictures of realistic craft spaces where real people do the real dirty work of making things. Hence, me sharing mine. While my craft room may be chaotic, it's an organized chaos. I know exactly where every little thing belongs and where it can be found when I need it. Besides, I am a firm believer that creative spaces need to be a little messy.

This is my main workspace. I have a corner with two desks and a bookshelf where I do almost all of my creating. It took a while to get this configuration right, but now it works pretty well for me.

I use a cheapy folding table that I hope to replace one day soon with one that doesn't rock insanely every time I use my sewing machine. Hopefully with a thrift store bargain, since it with invariably get covered in paint. The wall behind my desk has cork board squares on it, but as you can see, they covered nowhere near enough space, so I just started pinning things straight to the wall. Eventually, the cork board ended up being where I keep things I love to look at- pictures of my favorite people (including John Krasinski and the Doctor), my kids' drawings, an old fork I found at my Grandpa's house, and always pretty paper. That and a place where my old earrings go when I lose their mates. I like to have my sheets of stickers and doo-dads right in front of me so I remember what I've got. The black box next to the Cricut is also filled with that kind of stuff- paint chips, journaling squares, library cards, all the accoutrement I use in my Smashbook. 

I keep a blotter handy for when I stamp or need to practice writing or doodling something. My desk also holds a container of my favorite pens, markers and glue, as well as a vintage mason jar of washi tapes. The wooden desk serves as a spill over area, where I keep my materials when I'm working, and where my husband dumps all the random detritus he collects from around the house that he knows I'll want to keep. The baskets on top hold more Smashbook products- pockets, tabs, tags and more of the ephemera that I so love to collect. The bookshelf in between the desks holds my paper cutter and other supplies I need close at hand, as well as my Cricut mats and paper.




 The wall on this side works even harder than the other one! I have always dreamed of owning a ribbon holder since the days of shopping at Jutenhoops when I was a tween, and last year my aunt gave me this one for Christmas. I was so delighted that I cried! The first thing I did was to sort all of the ribbon by color and size, and now it proudly sits, beautifying my space and ready to offer a bit of ribbon or rick rack whenever I need it. I also have a shelf full of paints, which also used to be color organized before my paint buying got out of hand. And of course, there is my peg board wall, which may be smallish, but goes a long way towards organizing and keeping in sight all of my goodies.

I bought the peg-board from Michaels, so they're smaller squares instead of one large piece. I did that mostly because at the time, I hadn't discovered Pinterest, and didn't know you could paint the wood ones from the hardware store. The best part about the smaller pieces is that I can add more when I need more storage. The baskets are thrifted, and the paint one is actually for a shower. I love my pegboard for storing and showcasing my washi tape collection. I also used baby food jars and tiny wedding favor buckets from the dollar store to hold brads and buttons and gems, as well as paper flowers and extra bits of trim. My bakers twine resides on an extra dowel from my ribbon holder that I just rested on two hooks. The bar and basket on the bottom were bargains from Ikea. The whole peg board system here cost me less than $40.

So that's my crafting space! If you noticed that I didn't include two of the walls in the room, it's because those go from lived in messy to disastrous messy. It's mostly all bookshelves anyway, except for my little old lady green recliner in the corner for reading and my kids' craft table. My craft room is my favorite room in the house; it's the room I escape to when I just want to be me for a while and let my hands work and my mind turn off. Thanks for taking a little tour with me. Feel free to comment on how messy it is, or how awesome. I'd love to hear from you!