Bag Lady

I am officially a Bag Lady.  I have been making lots of bags lately and am back doing craft shows.  I did a craft show at Walmart and was surprised at how well I did.  I was scheduled to do another one at our other local Walmart, but had a death in the family and was unable to do it.  I was blessed to have one of my sons home who came out and helped me set up and helped with sales.  Here are some pictures.




Below are pictures of some of the bags I made.  I have been making a lot of my bags from a specific designer, Sara Lawson at www.sewsweetness.com .  I love her patterns because they are so easy to follow and she also has videos for a lot of them.  I have been hugely into her 2017 Minikins.  It is a set of 12 patterns and most of the patterns can be made using a fat quarter for the exterior and a fat quarter for the lining.  I do follow other designers and am also looking to creating some of my own patterns after the craft show season is over for me for this year. 

I snuck a picture of my son who was out there helping me.  I realize looking at these pictures that I need to find a better way of displaying my bags on the table,  It is hard to see what I really have.  I guess a trip to Walmart to find a way to make it so they are better seen. 

 

Below are the bookcases I used to display my Jet Set Cinched Toiletry Bags and other similar bags.  These bags are made specifically to store toiletries when traveling.  There is mesh inside to keep bottles standing up. It is a cool bag and I loved making them as you can see.

More Bags

Here are some better pictures of the bags from the previous post. .  I am loving bag making.

I am Back

I have been away from blogging for a long time.  My life has been busy and crazy since my children have graduated from High School.  I have one who is about to graduate from college and one that is right behind him.  I have been scrapbooking, sewing, and doing other crafts and am looking forward to sharing here on this page.  I hope you will follow me. 

Embellishment Storage

I am still in storage mode.  I am hoping to move my craftroom from upstairs to downstairs and take over the guest room.  With that in mind, I currently use 5 clip it ups.  Two official clip it ups and the other 3 are the Hobby Lobby brand and only have one level.  They really take up a lot of space and want to minimize some of the space but still have easy access to the embellishments.  I saw a wooden drawer unit that gave me inspiration to create this unit.  Although it is made of paper it is really sturdy.  It is made from matboard that I purchased in a pack of 25.  They were 12x12 inches and I got them at Hobby Lobby for $3.60 with a coupon. It only took two pack to make this unit only because I doubled up the pieces everywhere.   I did use a regular piece of chipboard for the fronts that I ended up painting. 

Below is a side view of the drawers.  There are 7 large drawers and 2 half drawers.   I figured I will use the half drawers for small things like the rings to go on charms and such. 

 

I divided out the drawers.  I did leave two of the drawers undivided until I determine how small they need to be divided.

 

The unit is 12x12x12 inches.  That made for less cutting initially. :)   Of course I covered it in zebra print.  I am still contemplating putting legs on it so it does not rest on the table.  I did add extra layers of chipboard on the bottom.

 

The box is a basic construction box with out a front.  I then doubled up strips of chipboard in order to  have a ledge for the drawer shelves to sit on  I glued these two pieces together.  And put  one pair on each side to create a ledge for the shelf to sit on.

 

 The above photo shows a piece of chipboard sitting on the ledge created by gluing the two pieces together.  Once that was done I added an extra layer of support by putting a construction strip on top of it.  This helped to secure the shelf because I continued to build layers.  When I added the next set of chipboard strips it held the construction strip in place.  Please note that I doubled up on the chipboard for the ledge pieces.  Trying to give it as much extra strength as I could.

 For some reason the pictures are coming our really yellow.  I hope you can see the construction strip on top of the chipboard.   I then added more chipboard strips,  This provided more stability.

This is what the inside of the unit looked like when I was finished.  I did wrap construction strips around the edge to ensure they stayed together.

 

The doubling up on the chipboard allowed for extra stability for the  shelves which will hold the drawers.    The drawers were made a little smaller than 12x12 so they would fit in.  I believe I cut them about 11 5/8 x 11 3/8.  The width was a little narrower because of the doubled chipboard pieces used as support for the ledges. 

I used strips of chipboard pieces to divide the drawers out.  I simply glued them on three sides  with Scotch quick dry glue.  And on some of them I used extra construction strips for added stability.  Especially where the drawer was divided out in larger units.  The smaller units had a lot of glue on them and they are really sturdy.

Here are some more views

 

The drawers are not closed fully as I painted the fronts.

 

A top view

 

A view of the smaller drawers.

 

 

If anyone decides to take on this project and runs into any problems, please feel free to contact me.  Thanks for looking.

 

MATERIALS USED:

Matboards,

Black paper for construction strips

Scotch Quick Dry glue

Scrappy Tape/Scor Tape/Miracle Tape

Black Paint

Decorative Zebra Print Paper

 

 

 

 

GLUE STATION

I am still in storage or display mode.  I was at a crop a few weekends ago and one of the other crafters had this cool glue station. 

So of course I had to try my hand at making one for my craft table.  I kept it simple, because the sample was simple but oh so useful.  The box is 8x3x4.  It is basically just a box with the front lower than the back so the glue stays closer to the tip and a couple of grooves so the glue has a place to rest without rolling off.

 

I love how it came out.  I used the scotch glues for display purpose.  I will have three different liquid adhesives on the stand. and I like that when transporting the adhesives store in the box.  Thanks for looking.

 

Adhesive Station

I am so bad at keeping up with my blog, but I had someone on a facebook page ask about a project I did to store my adhesive while scrapbooking.  This was a huge experiment for me, but I love how it came out.  My first thougtht was that I had these three varying size containers that I stored my extra adhesive in.  I wanted to be able to sit my adhesive station on top of it at crops. 

 

This is the plastic container that I was basing my project on.  The lid is recessed, so I made the base of my stand to sit on of it.  I cut a piece of foam core board the size of the largest container as shown in the picture and then cut out the shape.  I then added another foam core board on top to create a flat surface for the adhesive station.

 

Here is a side view of the station.  The black boxes were made using basic construction. You can look at my tissue box for basic construction guide.  Keep in mind, I created this as I went.  There was no original rhyme or reason.  I knew what adhesive guns I wanted to put on it.  The tall box, of course holds glue sticks and the other two hold the refills for the other guns.  I made lids for the purpose of transport.  I also have a piece of nonmelt rubber that sits between the hot glue gun and the glue sticks.

Here is a picture of the boxes open.  The boxes hold enough spare adhesive for a weekend crop and beyond.

On this side view, you get a sense of how the guns are mounted.  I created an "H" with depth.  I had a friend use this as inspiration and she went and purchased paper mache boxes for the refills and the letter H in paper mache. 

Her is the support for the adhesives.  Once the H's were completed, I did not want the gun sliding around, So I added a resting spot.  The ATG gun has a piece of toilet tissue roll, and the other two just have some small boxes created to rest in.  The toilet tissue holder was still wrapped in chipboard for strenghth..  Please note that chipboard only forms a circle in one direction, so check the rolling ability before cutting.

I then added some more tissue holders for my Scotch quick dry and other bottle adhesive.  On these I only added chipboard to the top and bottom of the roll to add strength.

More views.

If you decide to tackle something like this, and run into any problems, please feel free to contact me, I will help in any way I can. (other than making it for you :) )

Material Used:

Foam Core Board - Base

Chipboard - Boxes, Lids, "H" stands

Tissue Rolls: round storage, and docking for gun.

Score Tape/Scrappy Tape, Scotch Quick Dry

Black paint,

Paper to Decorate:  I have since changed the paper to Zebra print

Basketball and Cheerleading Seniors

My children go to a fairly small school.  For those into sports, they are a 3A school.  I started taking quite a few pictures near the end of the basketball season with the hope of doing something special for the seniors.   The bad thing was I did not start working on the project until about a week before the basketball banquet. I had not printed any pictures nor had I sorted any of the pictures.  Well... crazy me, decided to jump in and see what I could get accomplished.  Because I know most of the seniors and a majority of them live in the same community that I lived in, I knew that if I did not get time to finish the project before the banquet, I woul be ok, because I could give it to them later.  Luckily, I was able to complete all of the books and even got a 12x12 album completed for the coach. 

 

For ease of assembly, I decided to use one of the projects from Kathy Orta's book, Interactive Scrapbooks.  I picked the flipped out project, mostly because I had already cut out many of the chipboard pieces needed to complete the projects.  We had 6 Varsity Boy players, 4 Varsity Girl players, and 2 Varsity Cheerleader.  I only had to do 11 books because one of the cheerleaders also played basketball.   I also did another book, based on Kathy's book, but done
in my own way, for a young man that headed the student cheer section.

Here is a picture of the 11 player books.

 

Here is the book for the Student Section Leader:

Here is a basic overview of the books for the young ladies.  I added a bit of glitter to theirs,  more on some than the others.  I tried to make each one a little unique. I purchased the paw print paper from Hobby Lobby, and I printed our school paper on  my wide format printer.  :

 

Here is a picture of one of my sons' book.  I tried not to make the young men's books too girly.  Inide is a cascade of photos.  So some got as many as 15 pictures in their books.  Most of the photos were of the individual player, but I also included some team photos from over the years.  Some of these guys have been playing basketball together since the 3rd grade.

 

I also made a book for the coach.  I made it a traditional 12x12 book. I forgot to take pictures of the pages before I put it them in the book, so I just snapped a few pictures of it at the event. here are first and last pages in the Coach's book.  Sorry for the glare: