A Tribute to Grampa

After several rounds of trips (armed with 40 and 50% off coupons) to Michael's, Hobby Lobby, JoAnn, and Archiver's, I finally have some sort of organization going on in my craft room.


Here's what it looks like now.  Sorry there's no "before" photo - just use your imagination and then multiply it by 10.

The walls are only 2 feet before they hit the ceiling, and those little storage units are expensive (!), so I'm sort of limited.  But I did manage to get a chair!  Now if I can just stop bonking my head on the ceiling, I'll be golden.


Inspired by my newly organized space, I decided to work on the pages for my maternal grandfather.  Here's what I came up with:

Now I only have 5 more pages to work on, and I can start refilling my planners once again! 

My Very First Page

My sister invited me to a scrapbooking party crop (sorry, still working on the terminology) this weekend.  What fun!  The night before, I did a mad scramble to put together something to work on so I could at least look like I knew what I was doing.  Trying to justify tie this new hobby into my genealogy passion, I printed out some old photos, newspaper articles, and other memorabilia of my grandfather from his time in the service during WWII stuffed in into one of the handy-dandy pocket thingies my sister recommended.  (I recommend them too ... makes it very easy to organize your "in progress" pages).


My sister lives 2 hours away, so packing was critical.  I wasn't sure what to bring - and my scrapbooking supplies are quite limited, it turns out - so I just threw a bunch of stuff I knew my sister didn't also have into a tote bag and threw it in the car.


So the crop was being held by one of my sister's neighbors who is a Creative Memories consultant.  I was proud of myself for browsing through the catalog and only spending $20 ... on this.  Purple.  I know, right?


When all was said and done, I managed to complete my very first scrapbook page:

After I got home on Saturday, I decided to work on the second page:

This one is still waiting for one more element,
but I  haven't finished it yet

I was on a roll, so I kept working on yet another page:

For the first two pages, I used a page map book that my sister had.  So thankful that we had that, or I would still be sitting there trying to figure out what to do.  The last page came completely out of my brain.  I really think I just needed to get some "girly" out after working on the Army pages for so long.


Wow.  Three pages in one 24-hour period.  I feel very creative now.  I've started putting my craft area together in the loft upstairs, but it's going to take some serious work.  Right now everything is just sort of crammed into a recycled TV stand and a folding table.  I don't even have a chair.  I think that might be first on my new list.

In The Beginning ...

My sister inherited all the creative DNA in our family.  I got none.  She is very crafty, and I am SO not.  Without explicit instructions, I am unable to create ... well, anything.  But I want to make cute things with my own two hands!  So I have dabbled in different kinds of crafts - crocheting, sewing, scrapbooking, cardmaking (I even tried knitting once.  I've been making the same scarf for about 6 years now and it's still 6 inches long) - and give up after nothing I make looks like it does in my head.


When my sister asked me a couple of weeks ago if I wanted to join her in a card workshop at Archiver's, I was excited, but hesitant.  What if I embarrassed myself by being a complete noob?  What if my stuff turned out like a 2nd grade noodle project?  I furiously scoured the internet for remedial crafting courses ... to no avail.


First, let me just say that the instructors at Archiver's have the patience of a saint.  Seriously.  Second, I was incredibly relieved when the class was from a pre-packaged kit (whew!).  No real creativity involved, per se; it was more about the techniques and tools, which was perfect for me!  I got to learn the "lingo" (pop dot versus glue dot, etc.) which I never knew before.  I also got to learn what all those fun tools were for (half of which I probably have stashed away in my storage room because I never knew what they did or why I bought them)!


We made Itty Bitty Valentine cards from a kit created by Archiver's.  The final product was this:

You can't really tell, but the cupcake top is puffy and blinged out.

My card with little quilled heart in the bottlecap isn't exactly cooperating

We also got to make a bag!  It looked a lot harder than it actually was, and I was quite pleased with my end result:

Even the envelopes got some lovin'!

In a little over 3 hours, I learned the basics of stamping, scoring, punching, quilling, layering, and all the vocabulary that goes with them (excluding the words of the four-letter variety - those were all mine).  Not a bad deal for $20.


So after this class (and another $80 or so on my way out of the store) this was my first official foray into the world of papercrafting.  Heroin has nothing on Archiver's.  Just sayin.