Garage Sale Goodies

I happened across a garage sale today where a lady was selling her craft supplies. I could not resist buying. I know I just took three weeks to clean my craft room, but this stuff was cheap. Most items were 25 cents and nothing was more than 1 dollar. I got some great stuff!


See all the pretty ribbons, laces, buttons and trims! Try to resist that! My total purchase was $39.25. I don't think that was too bad.


These trims are pricey if you buy them at the fabric shop.


A beautiful array of ribbon.

Spools of lace.

Yards and yards of beautiful lace.

Bags of buttons.

I had to dump them out to see what I had. I just love buttons.

This was a smaller bag of buttons. Most of these were gold, pearly white, clear and some very interesting shapes.

Some very small ribbon trims.

More ribbon trims.

I probably should not have bought so much (by the way, the lady still had plenty of stuff left) but if I had to buy this at a fabric store, I am sure I would have paid in the 100's of dollars. Besides, since I cleaned my craft room, I do have about a half of a shelf in the closet that is empty, or should I say, was empty.

Have a great weekend!

Surprise!

I had a nice surprise this last weekend. A nice young college girl looking to earn some extra cash had time on Saturday to start painting my craft room.

I decided to try painting over the old wallpaper since it seemed to be fairly tight on the wall. I figured that the worse that could happen is the old wallpaper would fall off the wall and that would have been all right too. It worked out real well except in one corner where the wall was cracked and the wallpaper had separated from the wall. Hubbie thinks he can repair it without too much problem.








She, with the help of my #2 daughter, put a primer coat on Saturday. Then on Tuesday, they came back and put on the final coat. It is a soft golden yellow. The name of the color was called Apple Crunch. Doesn't that sound yummy! I just love it. I can't believe the difference it made!




I would like to make a Roman shade for the window. I found the perfect piece of fabric in a bag of stuff someone gave me (yeah...a freebie!) I am sure I can find instructions somewhere online to make one.

I think this room has really got my creative juices flowing. I can think of all sorts of decorating ideas for this space. This is going to be fun!

Mission Organization Complete

After several weeks of sorting, purging and cleaning, I have finally finished organizing my craft room to my satisfaction.


This is the corner where the treadmill used to be.

This is where the copy machine and my old stereo was located. Note the tribute to the King on the wall.

My new sewing table. I still have a shelving unit I will be putting either on this wall or the wall adjacent. This shelf will house things such as my paints, sewing notions, glues and other misc items I use on a daily basis.

This is the corner where my scroll saw was located. Since I don't use it daily, I moved it to a spare room upstairs. I will still be able to use it when needed, I will just have to go upstairs to do it. I need the exercise anyway.

I would have liked to have painted this room, but I am not able myself due to a respiratory problem I have. But there is a young college girl who is looking for some work and I might pay her to do it for me. I actually have a gallon of a pale yellow that was left over when I had my hallway painted a few weeks ago. I have a nice piece of fabric that will make an excellent curtain that would match the paint perfectly.

If you missed it, my clean and organized closet was pictured in a previous post.

Ahhh....I feel so much better. Now I just need to get motivated to get some crafting done! But first I think I will take a nap.

Have a great day everyone.

Bells, bells, bells, bells

I have always loved the poem The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe. This poem came to mind the other day as I cleaned and sorted the craft supplies I was hoarding in my dreaded craft room closet.

It seemed like every container, bag, basket and box I sorted through contained some sort of bells. Apparently every time I needed bells for some craft I was working on, I would buy some. Probably because I was unable to locate the stash I had hiding in amongst my other stuff.








Now they have found a nice home in their own container. I had enough to fill a shoebox sized container, which is a lot considering some of these bells are pretty tiny. So next time I need a bell, I can go to my neatly organized closet and pull out the container marked “Bells” and find one that is just right for the project!

I will now leave you with the first verse of this famous poem.

Hear the sledges with the bells -

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens, seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Have a great day!

Sneak Peak

Ahhhhh....order restored!






Now, I just have to do a little furniture rearranging and I will be ready to start crafting.



More to come...............

Angel Ornaments

I have been making some pretty good progress on organizing my craft room. Hopefully, I will have some progress pictures to post by this weekend. In the meantime, I come across some things I did at the beginning of the year I would like to share. I do some fall craft shows, so most of my crafting is geared toward Christmas.


Just after Christmas, I was doing a little after-holiday shopping when I happened upon some cute little ornaments at the local dollar store for 50 cents a box. They were very colorful and sparkly and I knew I could think of something clever to make with them. I bought several boxes knowing that if all else fails, they could still be used on the tree just as they were.





Of course, as I stated in an earlier post, I see angels everywhere. So, after I got home, I went to my infamous craft closet and starting to pull out some items I thought I could use for embellishments. He is a sample of the heavenly transformation.

I have to apologize for my pictures. The ornaments were so shiny they were a little difficult to photograph.

Have a nice day!

Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose!

I seem to be making a real effort to clean my craft room. Although I have threatened to do this before, I think since I actually published pictures of my mess, it has given me the incentive I need to really dig deep and get it done.

It is funny the things you find that you totally forgot you had even though they have been sitting there in plain sight for something like 20 years. One wall I didn’t picture in my previous post has my copy machine which rests on top of my old console stereo. It seemed like a good place to put it at the time because I no longer used that stereo, one of the speakers was out and I think the needle for the record player needed replaced.

After some rearranging, I found a new home for my copier and since I sold all my record albums at a garage sale last year, I found I no longer had a use for this stereo which was taking up precious space. I hate to send things to the landfill. Although it is of no use to me doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t be thrilled to have it. The am/fm radio still worked and the cabinet itself was in good shape. After all, they no longer make turntables to play old vinyl albums anymore. Maybe it could be restored to its original 1969 condition.

So now what? I thought about putting it on eBay, but I really didn’t want to hassle with trying to ship it. I really didn’t care about getting money for it. That is when I remembered a website my neighbor had told me about.

This is the Freecycle Network. It is a global network with the sole purpose of bringing owners of unwanted items together with people who have a use for these items. Here is an excerpt from their webpage:

Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,353 groups with 5,055,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!

I suggest you take the time and check out this website. Always remember to recycle, reuse and repurpose.

Have a great day!

Time To Get Organized!

For some reason, I cannot keep my craft room organized. It seems like every time I turn around, it is a mess. What usually happens is this, I wait until the last minute to start crafting for my shows in the fall. Then I work like a mad woman to get things done and somehow, nothing gets put away like it should. That and the fact that I am always at the craft store buying more supplies(I can’t turn down a sale item!), and I am running out of room to put things.

The craft closet(I am sure OSHA would declare this a hardhat area.)

I definitely need to get it organized. I can’t work in such a mess and there are some things I would like to do(like finding my sewing machine). I have been procrastinating since the first of the year. In the meantime, I learned to shop victoriously online adding to my ever growing pile of stuff(I always think of George Carlin’s bit about stuff.)

My craft table(my sewing machine is there somewhere)

I thought maybe if I published pictures of my messy craft room that would give me some incentive to get it cleaned. The plan is to try to do a little bit each day. That way, maybe it won’t seem like such a daunting task. Now my problem is, where do I start.

There is a scroll saw way back in that corner.....somewhere.

A closeup of a couple of shelves in the notorious closet.

I am going to try to post updates every so often to show my progress. Hopefully this is the push I need to get me going. Wish me luck!

Have a great day everyone!