How do you store your Wood Mounted Stamps?

I'm hoping to entice you with some food, in exchange for your help :)
Looks good doesn't it...it was.
It was a Ruben melt from Applebees with mashed potatoes on the side :)

Now for your help part :)
I am working on my wooden stamp storage.
I completed "my clear and rubber storage" in March....but now I am working on the wood mount storage.
Don't you think it needs a bit of work?  Teehee.

I started with these containers I bought at the dollar store.
They are the same containers that I used for my clear stamp storage.
The middle container that is overflowing is just Christmas stamps.
I haven't labeled them, as I have not completed them yet.

Here are my Stampin' Up wood mounted stamp.
Also some letter stamps in clear containers.

Ohh but thats not all....
I have stacks of other stamps.
These don't show the Penny Black or House Mouse stamps I have.

Can you believe at one time my stamps fit on these two shelves???
Neither can I.
I am thinking of keeping my background stamps on the top of the shelf, and then change out the others seasonally.
Like now, I could put up Fall or Halloween stamps on here.

I have been checking YouTube, Pinterest and other sites for suggestions.
Most stampers are unmounting their stamps...I really don't want to do this.
I saw two suggestions I liked.
One lady put her wood mount stamps in Video Tape cases. They were clear so you could see the stamps, and she purchased them from the dollar store in a 5 or 10 set.
Another stamper made thin wood shelves around her room to display her stamps.
I like both ideas but not sure which one would work best for me.
I know I did a" post a few months back" about this as well.

So Please let me know, how do you store your Wood Mounted Stamps?

Went out for lunch today with Ashley, Heather and my SIL/friend Sharon.
We went to Michaels after lunch and can you believe I left there with 5 of their $1.50 wooden stamps, lol.
I hope you have a creative thursday :)

Tracy :)

I'm giddy with happiness.

And it doesn't take much to make me happy ;)

Remember this card I made a few months ago?
I was pretty happy to see that I made the top 3 on the "a Die for a Sketch Challenge" http://adieforasketch.blogspot.ca/2013/09/winner-and-top-3-challenge-no-15.html   :)

Another pleasant surprise was to see my mug on the "Tim Holtz blog".
I visit his blog once a month to check out his tags, but when I saw he had a post on Scrapfest 2013, I wanted to check it out.
When I saw my photo I kind of got a bit excited. It was later in the evening when I saw this and Wayne was sleeping, but Heather and Kristy were awake :)
So I shared my excitement with them.....for some reason they weren't as excited as I was...I think I heard them mention "mom's so cute", lol.

Oh, you can't see me....I'm the one on the far right, leaning in to get a better view of his work.
I know I'm pathetic aren't I, lol.
This photo was from his blog...I just cropped it, so you could see me better, lol.






















Onto My Day:
I spent most of my time at home, as I had a silly migraine today.
My friend came over for some tea and a visit.
The girls kept bugging me to go for a nap. But that is not fun, so I went to my scrapbook room and cleaned up a bit.
I also received a couple of awesome phone calls from two of my great friends :)
Migraine is now gone and I am so happy about that :)

I hope you all had a creative Wednesday :)

Tracy :)

Closet Re-do...or should I say Closet Create

As you all know, my daughter Ashley bought a home in August.
She has a bit of a dilemma, too many clothes and no closet space.
The few closets she does have, are more like a cubby then a closet.
So we have been trying to come up with the perfect way so store her clothes.

She wanted them in her dressing room.
She wanted it to look like a boutique.
But it also needed to be strong enough to carry all the weight of her mountain of clothes.
My Ashley is a great pinterest follower and pinner, and saw this idea Slanted ceiling closet
This small door leads to attic crawl space, perfect for storing seasonal decoration. So she still wanted access to it, but didn't need to see it.

Heather and I went and picked up the supplies we needed for this.
After Ashley was done work, we came back home to pick up the rest of her clothes.
Not only are they piled in the back of the jeep, but the back seats are full as well.
And these don't include the ones she has already moved, lol.

The hardest part of this was finding the studs in the ceiling.
I didn't have my stud finder, but by knocking on the walls and measuring between where the studs should be, we hit them every time ;)

Here it is, nice and sturdy.
This is also a better view of the slanted ceiling.
As you have probably guessed, her dressing room is in the attic of her home.

Do you think she has enough clothes, lol.
This isn't even all of them.
If you noticed, I put 2 supports in the middle to hold all this weight.

In the centre of her room she has two dressers that she purchased from Ikea and painted them white.
She then pushed them together and displays her jewellery, nail polish and other pretty girly things on it.
I will share more photos, once she has it perfected ;)

Her clothes are on display and easily accessible, and some of her shoes are displayed below...yes I said some of them ;)

I hope you all had a creative Tuesday :)
I am hoping to wear my lounge pants all day and create...or at least clean up my craft room ;)

Tracy :)

September Monthly Tag for Tim Holtz challenge

*Warning*

This post is going to be picture heavy ;)

I have completed my Tag for Tim Holtz monthly tag challenge for September.

Tim focused on his stencils and his distress paints for this month.

I found one of his stencils on our trip and I picked up some of his distress paints as well..but we will get to those in a minute.

I have enjoyed not only coming up with creative ways to make Tim's monthly tags, but also to come up with alternative ways to use the supplies I have.

As we all know, as much as we would love to, we can't all have all of his great supplies :)

I am also making my tags to go with a theme for that month.
So when I think of September I think of the start of school.

One of the supplies Tim used was embossing paste.
I have never heard of this, but it sure looked like drywall compound.
Can you tell I do home repairs as well ;)
My drywall compound was old and mostly dried up, as I have been working on my downstairs bathroom forever and by the looks of this container...took a real long break, lol.
But at the very bottom of the container I found some I could work with.

I have to say...this technique I loved!!!!
I like the dimension it gives and it came out so crisp and clean.

The next step was to use Picket Fence distress paint and dab it on over another of his stencils.
I have a lot of stencils from when I went to school, many moons ago, so I just used one of them. I save everything, lol.
I guess I didn't read Tim's instructions well, as he stated to use a clean sponge, lol.

Now to play with his distress paints.
I picked up 2 sets on our trip.
One with my darker colours and the other set more pastel colours.
I am on the fence about these.
The seemed to make my tag paper pill. But I am more sure it was from me adding to much water to the tag.
Also it looked like when Tim did it, they blended so much more nicely.
But then again this is my first time using them.

Tim used more stencils, so I pulled out some of mine and added distress inks...I think distress inks are my favourite of all Tim Holtz products.
I also added some distress ink (black soot) to the raised stencil area.
See how the distress paints seemed to resist the colour of the picket fence I used on the alphabet stencil...so cool.
This is the point where I had to get ready to go to the cottage for the weekend.
I swear this tag was calling my name all weekend, I even had a dream about it, lol.

Note to Self
Don't bring my phone in my craft area while creating...I will loose it in all the creative chaos.

I wanted to use this washi tape for the tags ribbon.
But it was a bit on the white side, so I used distress ink to give it that aged look to match the tag better.
I then went back and used a darker colour.
I then folded the washi tape and stuck it to itself and fed it through the tags hole.
I then added some twine and my charm.

Lets take a closer peek at the details, shall we ;)
I used a stamp set that came with one of my Pure Innocence girls for the saying.
A closer look at the ruler stencil :)
See the little map stamp of Canada? :)

See how I used the tissue/washi tape in place of the ribbon.
I used a fishing swivel to attach the "inspire" disk to the ribbon.
I have used this many times over the years, but these swivels were a pain to open. I told Wayne, a man would have not fought with them as I had, they would have thrown them over the boat first try, lol.
I used my Graphic 45 school papers for this tag. I really like that collection.
I also used a dotted banner stamp in burgundy at the top.

A few other embellishments I used is the pen nib....I really do love these.  I also do calligraphy, maybe that is why.
Also a clock charm. Not sure about you, but I always watched the clock in class ;)
A closer look at how the Picket Fence resisted the paints. Even though it was a little coloured up from my sponge ;)

And there you have it my September tag for Tim Holtz monthly challenge.
I really had fun with this one :)
It seems like forever since I have been in my craft room.

I hope you all had a creative Monday :)

Edited to add my planner page challenge photo. I was so excited that I got Tim's tag completed I totally forgot to post my planner photo and today is the last day :)
Day #30
"Wide Open"
Here is my pages from last week.
You can see on Sunday when I went to try those pens out at Staples ;)

Tracy :)

Closed for the Season

Of course it turned out to be a beautiful day as we closed up the cottage for the season.
It was like Mother Nature was teasing us for leaving.

We turned off the water, put away the fire pit supplies and out door chairs. I went for one last quad ride, before Wayne took out the quad batteries and ran them out of gas.
Look how pretty the changing leaves are.

I totally cleaned up the cottage.
I thought I would share with you a bit of our cottage.
This is in the kitchen area.  I wonder what the theme is in this room, teehee.
My husband Wayne took those photos of those bears on the wall.
I put pinecones in the table centre piece. Yep those are bears on either side of the log, teehee.

Here we are leaving the cottage :(
Locking up the gate on the way out.
The centre building is our cottage.
The one the right is our 26.5 ft trailer. We use it as a guest cottage or when I am working on a large project I use it as a craft room ;)
The buildings on the left are the garage, then the sauna and the tiny one behind the pole is the outhouse.

Every year at this time, on our way home from the cottage, I see this beautiful scene of the fall trees.
Every year I try to get the perfect photo.
And every year I fail, lol.
Here you can see the power line.
















And here you see the antenna of the truck.
Plus I can never capture the beautiful crisp colours.
Mind you these are taken from my cell phone.

When we got home from the cottage, Wayne wanted to run to Home Depot.
I didn't really want to go out..until I realized I wanted some new pens for my planner.
I know, I have so many pens, but I am trying to find some pens that don't bleed though my pages.
I love thick pen nibs, as I have big bold primary writing.
I really like my sparkly pens, but they really bled through.
So I will give these a try. I did try them a bit in the store and they didn't seem to bleed through.

Now that we are talking about planners....
Its day #29
"Loves"
Two of my loves in my planner, these photos of my family I keep in the business card holder. And of course my washi tape ;)

I hope you all had a great weekend and a creative Sunday :)
I actually got to create tonight :)
I finally finished my Tim Holtz tag for September :)   I will share with you that tomorrow. Don't want to overload this post more than it is ;)

Tracy :)

Closing up

Taking over the couch with my creative goodies.

After a long day of working at the cottage, I am relaxing by watching "The Rock", I love me some Sean Connery :) and decorating my planner pages for next month.

We did a lot today. 

Put up the storm windows, took down the solar lights, covered the patio furniture, put away the marshmallow sticks, put the umbrellas away and hooked up the snow plow. 

Yup we are bringing the plow home. Hopefully we won't need it any time soon

It was very windy today, but it was a warm wind.

It was raining pine needles and leaves, as the wind was so strong. 

Enjoyed our last sauna of the year. 

We will turn off the water and drain the pipes before we go home tomorrow. 

Day #28

"On The Shelf"

As we are at the cottage, I thought this was a fitting shelf to display my planner on for this challenge. 

At home my planner either sits on my living room or dining room table. It never sits on a shelf. I would forget to use it if it was, lol.  

I hope you all had a creative Saturday. 

Tracy 

Fall is in the air

Enjoying some hot chocolate in my Fall cup. 

We are at the cottage getting ready to close it up for the season.

We do still come out to the cottage during the winter. 

But with the cold temperatures we have here, we have to turn off the water or it will freeze.

If we do come out in the winter we need to bring up our water and use the outhouse.

As you can see fall is here.

The colours of fall are so beautiful. 

I started working on my "Tim's Tag". 

I wasn't happy with how it was going. I need to play with those distress paints more. 

But didn't have time to complete it. 

I hated leaving it this way. 

Day #27 

"Planner Charms"

I don't have any charms on my planner, but I got flair 😊

I wanted to cover up the embroidered symbol on my closure, plus I wanted to make it more personal.

I just added lots of snot dots, or sticky dots as most call them. This pretty flair is not going anywhere. 

I hope you all had a creative Friday and a wonderful weekend.

Tracy 😀