scraptastic.

i think it is safe to say that i am fanatical about organization. and i adore efficiency. when it comes to organization and efficiency, my art classroom is a work of art. it is also a work in progress. since day one, the scrap paper boxes have been one of the most vexing corners of my room. i try to save as much paper as possible, for use in future projects, but storing it is a constant struggle.

before. blech.

a lot of projects require semi-specific sizes of paper, so i thought it would be perfect to categorize the scraps by size. but then reality hit. do i put the smallish large scrap in the medium or large bin? what about the large small piece? oy yoy yoy.

glum. glum. glum.

and then i saw this.

ms. naples' scrap boxes. (picture from orange beautiful blog.)

oh my mama llama. after i picked myself up off the floor i got straight to work sorting. and sorting. and sorting. i scrounged up some extra boxes, made a label for each color, and dropped the paper into the new boxes. and then i fainted. 

gloriousness.

victory.

the corner still seemed a bit blah, so i figured i should follow the lead of my inspiration, ms. naples, and make a sign. i am not usually one to toot my own horn, but seriously people, this sign? it is awesomeness. for reals.

love. bring on the scraps.

can i get a hallelujah?

chicken love.

waste not, want not. when it comes to fabric, no scrap is too small to find its way into a project, so i never throw out cloth. thanks to my handy dandy storage boxes i have a place to keep all of my bits no matter how bitty they might be. i even have a box that holds what most would would consider to be garbage, namely bits of thread and fabric that are smaller than a pea. in general i do not consider myself to be a hoarder, but i figure that using every last fragment of fabric is environmentally friendly. speaking of saving the world...i am even incorporating reduce, reuse, recycle into my world of sewing. the mister does not yet know it (although plastering it on the internet is a surefire way for him to find out), but one of his holey undershirts was dismantled. the large chunks went into the closet as dust rags and everything else was tossed into storage box #12 to be REcycled into a shmancy sewing project.

hmm...what to do with the armholes of an undershirt? cut into teeny chunks and voila...stuffing. 

stuffing for what? a chicken. naturally. i found this blog mollychickens that has a header image of ten positively adorable chickens. although she doesn't include a tutorial for the chickens, i used her love bird tutorial to make a love chicken. cute, eh? pumpky, this one's for you!!

over the moon.

the storage bins are complete! i finished up my twelve boxes. decorated, decopaged, and already filled to the gills with all my doos and dads for sewing. and yes, they are numbered. i might be occasionally disorganized, but that does not make me any less neurotic. there is an entire box just to hold all the little bits of fabric that i can't bear to part with, but are too small to do anything, or are they? crumbs, we quilters call them. i've never made a crumb quilt, but now that i have my crumbs in such a gloriously accessible box, perhaps it is the time.

i spent twenty minutes explaining to the mister why these new creations should be admired. i am not sure that he fully appreciates their usefulnes, but he said they look 'nice'. mmmhhmm. i was going for 'stunning', 'out of this world', 'awe-inspiring', etc. but, i'll try not to be a whiner, and i will be satisfied with 'nice'. it's better than 'fine'. since i know you are dying to see them, here are the before and after pictures. you be the judge. are they nice? or are they stupendous?

before...

after...

ding ding ding.

ding ding ding ding ding. sharpie pens are on sale at target. what a joyous day. i am a bit obsessive over my pen selection and sharpie pens are my current writing utensil of choice. considering the number of pens already present in our house, it might be best if we don't tell the mister about the newest additions to our writing implement collection. i only got six. two black, two blue, and two red. they leave such juicy streaks across the paper, i am in heaaaaaaaven. i used them to brainstorm the stripes patterns for my storage bins, which, if i may say so, turned out swimmingly.

now in and of itself, the journey to target was not as blissful as typically are my target escapades. while i was waiting in line, some brainiac dropped a mondo bottle of lime green dish soap. apparently the employees have not been trained in cleaning up this type of goop, because they fervently wasted paper towels to no avail. seventeen pounds of sodden paper towels later, one of the managers had a moment of inspiration and remembered that they have a liquid absorber at their disposal. sprinkle, wait two seconds, sweep and voila, no more mess. i guess that's why the managers are paid the big bucks.

after watching this display of human intelligence i was ready to be home. not so fast tiger. first you have to meet up with one of the octogenarians who pop up everywhere in this neck of the woods. rather than worry so much about medicare, i think there should be federal funding for senior styling. someone needs to tell these people that when their clothing has faded in the sun, while FOLDED, it is time to get a new pair of pants. yeeeeshh!! this type of nonsense turns your backside into a visual magnet to which my eyes do not care to be drawn.

the agony of projects.

i am in pain. physical pain. my fingers hurt. my hands hurt. my arms hurt. my legs hurt. my bum hurts. my back hurts. my neck hurts. and my brain hurts. i feel like i have been run over by a mack truck. i am in agony in the name of painting boxes. twelve boxes. painstakingly (literally) painted inside and out. a luxurious display of torment. adding to my anguish is the nature of the paint. it is everywhere. it has obliterated the deliciously turquoise manicure i gave myself last week. it is in my hair. it is all over me. it is all over my painting clothes. it is all over the floor. and yikes!! i just remembered, the painting implements are all soaking in the bathtub. must finish cleaning up. must eat. must sleep. for two months my husband has tried to figure out how to restrain me from staying up all night. little did we know that painting a boatload of boxes would do the trick.

coffee and cardboard.

i arose to the scent of a coffee-free house. what a nightmare. it all started yesterday when my motivation to visit home depot erased all of my survival needs, including drinking coffee and eating breakfast. you see, every morning my husband makes himself coffee and leaves a half a pot for me. when i decide to rouse my sleepy self there is a half pot of cold coffee waiting to be transformed into an icy coffee delight. however yesterday, in my haste to visit home depot, i neglected to drink the cold coffee. now in my coffee-snob world, when the coffee doesn't make it down the gullet, it goes down the drain. drinking day-old coffee is a sign of sheer desperation.

this morning i was left in a coffee-free zone, when rather than make a fresh pot of coffee, my husband drank the day-old coffee. aaaaaack!

knowing that my husband isn't desperate, i can only conclude that he's apparently not a coffee connoisseur. i guess i should have figured this out when his recent visit to starbucks was a shambles. he doesn't generally visit this froofery coffee house without me, and i always perform the tongue-twister orders. poor guy couldn't remember the name of his favorite drink, so he went with what sounded properly confusing, and ordered a cappuccino. he wanted a frappuccino. umm...so close in name, but sooooo different in reality. needless to say he whined about it later.

speaking of whining...my fingers hurt. i spent the day doing a little bit of classwork and a whole lot of storage bin construction. six hours of slicing, scoring, folding, and gluing boxes. one blister and three cardboard cuts later, we have twelve boxes ready for decoration. my brain is happy, but my fingers hurt. but you know what they say...no pain, no gain.

here pretty pretty.

i love home depot. this love is not of the same caliber as the love i feel for my husband, but it is a deep love. why? they have paint chips. for free. lots and lots of paint chips. and the paint chips are pretty colors. lots and lots of pretty colors. and they can turn a gallon of paint into any color i want. i bought a gallon of "water mark" colored paint. it is a lovely shade of pale aqua blue. cynical folks would probably call it blah white, but i won't let them see it. i am going to slather this delectable hue all over the yet-to-be-constructed storage bins.

yes, the storage bin project. i am thrilled with how things are progressing. i came up with the official template today. i am starting to think the outcome might be even more splendid than i originally imagined. i have my fingers crossed that if i keep him well fed, the hubby won't go crazy when i make a big mess.

cardboard conundrum.

this is the last week of my summer courses for graduate school, so what better time to dilly dally? the fun factor of procrastination significantly increases as time runs out. since i have to read charlotte's web in its entirety tonight, i thought i might as well put down the book for two hours to ensure that i will have to stay up all night. i know what you're thinking...charlotte's web is for kids. yes, that's right. it is. i am working on a masters in children's literature, so i spend my time reading kids books. the difference between myself and the kids (yes there is occasionally a difference) is that after i finish reading the book i have to analyze it, research critiques of it, and then write a two-thousand word paper detailing the represented theories.

as i am sure is totally obvious by now, tonight it was important for me to endlessly dawdle to maximize the sheer terror i will experience in six days when the paper is due. i figured i might as well drag my husband around some stores looking for the perfect cardboard boxes for my storage bin project. i have to say, the mister is a total trooper. he traipsed through four different stores looking at cardboard boxes. he even stepped out of character and encouraged me to buy some lovely canvas covered metal baskets, which are about as close to exactly what i want as possible, because he figured it would save me time. i had to explain to him that the thrill is in making a giant mess of the house while eliminating the cluttered chaos on the shelves. not sure that he fully appreciates my need to be constantly submerged in a thousand craft projects, but we've only been married for two years. maybe in another few years this part of my existence will start to make more sense to him. probably not, but one can always hope.

our search ended in home depot where we finally found what i declared the perfect boxes, for the perfect price. sadly, the forklifts took over the paint aisle, so i will have to go back to buy the paint, but i did bring home some samples of "off-white." it's always a bit surprising to see how many different versions of "white" you can find in a paint store. i am leaning towards a creamy pale pale pale yellow. i think it will look lovely with the fabric i already purchased. tomorrow i will start putting together the boxes. after all, doing research for my paper is on tomorrow's schedule, so what better idea than to start a major project.

don't burst my bubble.

today marks two years of marriage to my husband. happy anniversary to us!! it's strange how time flies. it seems like just yesterday that we said our i dos. everyday i thank my lucky stars that such a darling man picked me. i must have been born under a lucky star.

speaking of luck...while running an errand this afternoon i found myself smack dab in the middle of the miami fabric district. luck be a lady who finds beeeee-U-tiful fabric. oh how i love fabric. the idea that i have somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred yards of unused fabric might lead you to believe that i have no business buying more. i beg to differ. i was only in the market for skirt lining material, but since i drove all the way to the fabric district, i might as well have a looksee. holy bananas!! i found genuine african wax print cloth, imported from various locations around the united kingdom (that's right..genuine african cloth is conveniently made in the UK). it's not like i need the cloth, but oh how gorgeous it is. when i showed it to the mister, he actually said "that's nice." i think that's a better reaction than the typical grunt that results when i show him my "necessary" fabric purchases.

continuing my lucky streak, i also found the perfect fabric for my next house project. the neat freak lurking inside my noodle can no longer stomach the clutter zone that exists amongst the shelves in my sewing area. considering the freakishly large stash of fabric that i have, which continues growing, and growing, and growing, i have decided that storage bins must become a part of our life. i found some darling bins at tjmaxx (my personal heaven on earth), but i need ten bins and these are $13 a pop. i refuse to shell out $130 for storage bins. project time!!! yeehaw! the perfect excuse to buy fabric and make a projecty mess of the house. fun times ahead for all (well probably only me, but lets not focus on that). there is not much likelihood that this project will get off the ground this week, but when my summer graduate courses finish in eight days (hallelujah!!), watch out!