About me and my scrap space

This is my first entry in my new blog. I kept another blog for almost 2 years while I was going through secondary infertility and then severe post partum depression. Hopefully all that is behind me now and I am looking forward to focusing on my family and doing things that bring me fulfillment. One of those things has always been scrapbooking and card making. I've been doing what I think of as "modern" scrapbooking for almost 4 years now. I've recently really gotten into stamping and cardmaking. I've been soaking up other people's creative ideas on blogs and thought it was high time I give back to the community, so to speak.

I thought I'd start my blog off by showing you my creative space, since I love to see other peoples' creative spaces. It's small, by my design. Not too long ago, I finally gave into the temptation to purchase a Mimi rolling tote. I made a deal with myself that if I got it, I would have to make all my supplies fit in it. Or most of them at least! Here's the big picture view of where I create:


There's my Mimi tote with most of my stuff in it.


I use a long folding table. On one end of it is a holder for books and magazines and next to that are some of the albums I'm currently working on. In front of that is a basket with my stamps and in front of that is a basket of the supplies I use most often, like scissors and a paper cutter.


Next to all that is a box with my acrylic blocks. I made the decision to go completely with clear acrylic stamps to cut down on storage space. Next to that is a CD storage case to hold my ink pads. I saw this idea somewhere on Splitcoast and I would love to thank whoever came up with the idea. I am using empty CD jewel cases to separate the inks.


This is the smaller bag that goes with the Mimi tote. I don't use it as much as I thought I would but it is handy when I'm ready to go to a crop to just stuff everything on my desk into to carry. That little cardboard box in front of it - that's my mini-trash can! I use that for the small scraps of paper!


On the floor I have my punches. I go back and forth about these. Three of them are pretty large and they really don't fit in my tote. But I do like to use them occasionally. So for now they are sitting on the floor until I can find a basket for them.


My space wouldn't be complete without the computer. I print a lot of the pictures for my scrapbook pages and I also like to print out a lot of my journaling on the computer. I use a Dell laptop and Canon i960 printer. I also have a Canon CanoScan LDE70 scanner.


This is the overflow shelf! On the very top are some empty boxes. Below that is a cardboard box with extra supplies such as adhesives and such. Next to that are some of my empty mini-albums.
Below that on the left is a stack of 12x12 sheet protectors. That is the size of the majority of my scrapbook pages so one day I bought a ton of them (I think about 200) and got a really good price. It's nice to always have a sheet protector! Next to that is a box of more albums and next to that are even more albums. Seeing a trend here?!
Under all that is a shelf of paper, both loose papers and stacks of papers. I also keep some of my paper kits on this shelf.


I hope to post to this blog fairly regularly. One of my goals is to regularly make things and I will try to post things as I make them. Hopefully I can provide some small inspiration to some of you out there. Most of my crafting is done late at night, after my 3.5 year old and 4 month old are in bed. It's the only time of day when I have zero interruptions. Sometimes I will stay up until 2am making stuff! Which is tough when the 4 month old doesn't ever sleep more than a 4 hour stretch! And I had to get up early this morning on top of that. I can hardly keep my eyes open tonight; in fact, I actually typed part of this post with my eyes closed. That may explain if any of it is incomprehensible!