When I heard that Rycrafty needed guest bloggers while she is away on her amazing honeymoon, my first thought was that I’d never been to Costa Rica and am amazing jealous, and my second thought was that I could totally do that! I mean, I’m crafty, and you can sometimes see said craftiness on my blog.

My somewhat infrequently updated blog is called Sweet Townhome, because my newly-wedded husband, Tris, and I just moved into our own Townhome about 8.5 months ago. With demanding jobs and long commutes, not too much house decorating has been done, but at least I have my scrapbook room set up (or my craft book room, as the hubs calls it).

I feel like most crafty people need a space of their own; possibly so that we can just buy more crafty stuffs or so we can spread out all the crafty stuff we all ready have. I mean seriously, there have been some amazing, drool worthy craft rooms on Pinterest lately.

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As far as hobbies go, I can’t knit (but would love to learn!), but scrapbooking is my favorite, and I had to make a space in our place for the most fun hobby of all time .

One day, I’d like to have a room like one of the above photos, but for now the goal was using things we all ready read had, like shelves and bins. In fact, the only purchase we made was the black table from IKEA.

The most recent issue of Scrapbooks, Etc. has some good advice about setting up your crafting space, and I totally agree with them. On page 44, the magazine advises to, “Use what you have. . .  Getting organized doesn’t mean your room has to be picture-perfect. Before running out to purchase coordinating baskets, bins, and containers, look at what you may already have and think of clever ways to repurpose them.”

This statement is totally true in my space! I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so those black wire cubes you see in the corner? They were in storage, left over from my college dorm days. Also left over from college? The white shelf you see on the right. It’s actually like a 6 foot tall shelf, but rather than screw the legs together to use it at full height, I created two shelves out of it.

I set up my craftbook room in the basement, and I work at the table in the center, that way, it’s easy to walk around and get to anything I need. (Don’t judge the messiness of the table here – I’m in the middle of a page!)

Although it looks kind of messy, every thing really is in a place of it’s own, and that makes it really easy to find anything I need, be it 4”x6” paper, stamp pads, or paper cutters!

All the plastic bins you see below? They’re actually just plastic shoe bins (you can find them at Target or anywhere) that my mom, a school teacher, had left over from one of her classes. I used chipboard coasters I all ready had, wrote the names on them, and just taped ‘em on to the bins. It’s also obvious that the too large boxes on the bottom shelf (one for stickers and the other for alphabet stickers) are just large actual shoe boxes. Hey, whatever gets the job done!

I wish more things in my life felt as put together as my craft space . I really set it up with organization in mind so my scatterbrained self could be productive.

Honestly, though, I love it, and it’s really made a difference in my scrapbooking. I feel like I used to spend a loooong time looking for a certain punch or something, and know I finally know where they are . . . now, all I have to do is finish scrapbooking our Vegas trip from 2008, and maybe I can finally get caught up!

Anybody else setting up a craft room? How’s it going?

XOXO
Maddie @ Sweet Townhome

Original content posted @ Guest Post – Craft Room.

So all those baby booties I’ve been making needed cute packaging before they were sent off to their chubby little recipients. I’d previously used this tutorial to make a box out of a 12×12 piece of paper, but I wanted to adapt it for an 8×8 piece of paper. Because dudes, these booties are tiny. And tiny things need to go in tiny packages, because that is just cuter.

The little boxes turned out cute enough that I thought I’d do a tutorial. I also want to get this box pattern out there in a way that will make it easy to re-size. I used an 8″x8″ piece of paper for this, and while I have put exact measurements into the tutorial, I’ve also noted the percentages, so if you want a bigger one, and happen to have a 10″x10″ piece of paper, it won’t be too hard.

Step 1

A scoring board is helpful to get nice straight lines when you fold. I love my Scor-Pal, although Martha makes one that has more grooves. But in just looking at Scor-Pal’s website, I see they’ve introduced a model with more grooves than mine…. Christmas present?

Step 2

Score at 2″ and 6″. You want to fold the edges so they meet in the middle, so score at 25% and 75% of the length of your paper.

Step 3

Turn paper, score at 3.5″ and 4.5″. This one takes some testing, as that rectangle in the middle of the piece of paper (bordered by two green lines and two blue lines) is the base of the box. You want to find your middle point (50%) and score lines on either side of that that are equally far away. I tried 3″ and 5″ on my first go, and that gave me a box that was much too stubby, so I decided to try 1/2″ either side of 4″, which ended up being just right.

Step 4

Make the lid. For my box I used a 4″x2″ piece of kraft cardstock. It needs to be as wide as 50% of your big piece of paper (4″ in the case of an 8″ square) and twice as long as what you want to see on each side of the box (I wanted to see 1″ on each side). Score it down the middle.

Step 5

Fold your 4 scored lines.

Step 6

This one is hard to display in images, but I think the arrow helps. You want to bring the two pink lines (lines you’ve scored) to meet. This creates a little angle fold like this:

Do this 4 times, all around your box.

Step 7

Stick them down! I like to put double-sided tape along the whole short piece, to make sure it is as well-stuck as it can be.

Do that four times. In a box this tiny, only 1″ wide, I find the folded bits stick out too much into the box, so I tape those bits down too.

Step 8

Mark on your lid where you want the holes to go. This prevents cross-eyed boxes. Most of the time… as you can see it took me a couple tries to get my marks level. (Now I’m working on the mat that you can buy to fit into your Scor-Pal. I seriously do all my crafting and gluing on this little mat since I bought it.)

Then double-sided tape the back of your lid (the side without dots) to what will be the back of your box.

Close it, hold it tight, and use your hole-punch to punch two holes through all those layers. I love my Crop-a-dile for this, and the next step.

Step 9

Put eyelets in, if that’s your bag, baby.

Step 10

String some string through! Or a snippet of the yarn used to make the booties, if you’re me. I cut a length of about 30″ and used it doubled. It is easiest to thread the box (a) once the gift is inside it, and (b) if you pinch the top of the box closed, so you only have to poke the yarn through two holes.

Step 11

Admire your wee 4″x1″-based boxes!

I’ve made a Flickr set with all the photos from this tutorial, plus a few more. You can find it at the Cutest Bootie Box Tutorial.

Original content posted @ Cutest Bootie Boxes

The other night, I decided I needed to colour a bit, so I made a few cards with the kit.

I just have to say that Robin Hood is one of my very favourite historical and/or fictional characters, and probably the first book character I ever had a crush on, so this stamp made me extremely happy.

Just some simple cards to get back in to the swing of things. This doesn’t mean I’m not still working crazily on the shawl… there is a deadline that I’ve set myself for that to be finished, and that’ll come up quickly.

Original content posted @ Spring Magnolia Stamps

I wanted to “pear” this stamp with this great Basic Grey pear paper, so I coloured most of her dress with colours taken from the pears, then I decided I wanted to do a purple dot background. The background is: BV04, BV02, BV17, V12, V15, V17, RV10, RV93.

I chose a deep purple to use for mats, and also some pale doily-print paper from the same Basic Grey collection. The ribbon was white, but I coloured it with my V17 Copic so it would match. The sentiment is from Flourishes’ strawberry stamp set.

This stamp is going to get a good workout in my cookbook-scrapbook, I can tell. First task: Mum’s scone recipe.

Original content posted @ Purple and Pears

These are the cornmeal muffins my mum always made when I was a kid. Nice and simple, great for showcasing homemade jams. Here’s an online link to the recipe too. We obviously made them without the jammy centres. The recipe is from an old Canadian Living book mum said.

I made a dotty background again, and loved it! Again, I used some of my newest Copics. Skin: E00, E02 / Apron: RV93, RV95 / Dress: R27, R29, R59 / Hair: E59, E15, E17 / Background: YG03, G25, BG75, G28, Y26, YG95. I’m happy because I think I managed to have the red dress and green background, and not make it look like Christmas.

This stamp (from Kraftin’ Kimmie) usually has a teapot in her hand, and she did up until this morning. That’s when I remembered my stash of kitchen stickers, and pulled out this one and stuck it over the pot.

Original content posted @ Recipe Book – Cornmeal Muffins

That background was inspired by Crissy Armstrong’s tutorial video on how she does her fabulous backgrounds (you can find  it here). I was made aware of the video by Happy Thoughts & Inkspots.

A rather large order from Paper Garden Projects arrived yesterday, 15 minutes before I had to head to work, so I was itching all day just to get back here and play with my new markers! I used BV04 &BV02 for the dress, and YR16, YR02, YR04, YR07, & YR09 for the dots. The thank you stamp is also from PGP. I love it, but the only purple ink I had was a dew drop-sized one, and inking that stamp felt more tedious than the dots! I loved doing the dots, I think I’ll use that technique a lot!

I really like orange and purple together!

Original content posted @ Dotty Backgrounds

I thought this pregnancy set was adorable, and once again all the sentiments make me smile. I know a bunch of people having babies, so I thought it would be a handy set to have. Last night I stamped the main image a few times on white, and then went through my scrap bin for good shirt patterns. Once I had all the panels coloured up, I made them in to cards. It was nice to do it production-line style like that. I’m experimenting with E Copic markers for skin, I had been using Rs. When they’re that pale though, it’s hard to tell.

Original content posted @ It’s in the water

I just had to buy this yoga set (called ‘Serenity Now’) from My Favourite Things when I saw it. I love it when I go to yoga, I just sometimes have trouble motivating myself to actually go to yoga.

I think MFT stamps are perfect for paper-piecing. I paper-pieced the girl’s top using a very large flower print from the same package as the background paper. As you can see, the flower was so big, it just shows up as an abstract design on her shirt.

I usually shy away from pre-packaged ‘ephemera’ because really, isn’t part of being ‘ephemera’ being found stuff, thrift-store stuff, vintage stuff? I tend to think so. That still didn’t stop me buying an ephemera pack from K&Co. As you can see from how well the flowers match, it is in the same line as the background paper I used (the strip with the text is MME).

I made three yoga cards in one night, all using various bits from the ephemera pack, and one of my other loves of paper crafting: mixing and matching paper collections! I’m not generally one for the matchy-matchy (no matter how nice the first card in this post looks!). This card uses K&Co for her shirt, K&Co ‘ephemera’, DCWV ‘Old World’ (pink paper), and KaiserCraft ‘Devonshire’ (text paper).

To keep everything neat on the image, I stamped it twice on white paper, once on the patterned. I coloured just her chest on one layer, then cut shirt and arms as one piece from the patterned and glued that to the piece with just her chest coloured. Then I coloured her arms on the second piece of white, cut those out and glued down.

This one is my favourite – I spiced up the green dot paper by stamping the little ‘Ohm’ dot from the stamp set in a similar-coloured ink in a pattern guided by the dots (it’s not quite a subtle as it seems in these photos). Again, I paper-pieced her shirt and coloured the rest with Copic markers. I coloured my ribbon (it was white) with a Copic marker so it matches, and wove it through a paisley.

Original content posted @ Deep breath in…

So I made a card that used my Cuttlebug, and an embossing folder, a technique known as ‘dry embossing’. I used the dotty folder to pick up the dots in the the papers, and sanded the embossed paper a little, to pick up the texture.

There is no end to the love I have for these pirate stamps by Kraftin’ Kimmie, and the text stamps always crack me up too!

I decided not to fussy-cut (cut around the very edge of the stamp) this image. Instead, I trimmed the top of her hat and sword, then got out my Nestabilities Labels 7, slipped that on to the image with the hat and sword out of the way of the blade, and cut it that way. She’s too tall for any of the cutting dies I have.

Original content posted @ How do YOU emboss?

Another one of my new Greeting Farm stamps – I love this punky little girl with her skull shirt and her leggings! I’ve been having great fun colouring her, and making her hair exciting colours.

The green paper behind her is from a K&Co mat stack- the twist with this one is that the papers all already have adhesive on the back. I thought it would great, take a step out of the card-making process! Turns out, the adhesive isn’t all that great, I’ve already had to pull it off and put real glue on the back and stick it back down.

The jewel clusters are also K&Co, I used them and black stickles to give the card a bit of bling, for the Anya Ink blog this week. I also used a sketch from the Club Anya Saturday Sketch blog.

Original content posted @ Skull Shirt