Craft Room

We have a Casita (as they are called in St. George... means "little  house" in Spanish) attached to our house.  It's like a mother-in-law appt.  It is a bedroom with it's own bathroom and closet.  It shares a wall with the rest of the house, but has it's own outside entrance.  When we moved into this house, we couldn't quite decide what to do with it.  At first, we thought it could be a play room for the boys... they would have all of their toys, video games, etc. out there.  Then, we just decided to make it an office/craft room.  My husband is a full time student and he also works from home occasionally, so we figured he needed a somewhat quite place to work.

About 90% of the space is mine.... and 10% his... but he spends 9x as much time in there as I do.  My hobbies just take up way too much space.

This is the view when you walk in the room.  

The large printer belongs to my husband, but I use it a lot for posters for primary and other craft projects.  I love maps and found this fun colorful map at a garage sale to hang above it.

 This desk was a desk that we bought at Target years ago... at least 10 years ago.  I custom made the crates to go on the desk.  They all hold fabric.  This is the table that I use to cut out fabric and do my ironing and such.

 These bookshelves were purchased from Robert's crafts... back when they existed.

 Over the desk hangs a vintage umbrella that was my grandma's.  The original trim was white but very dirty, so I took it off and replaced it with a colored ruffly ribbon.  It just hangs there because I life it... no other reason.  It has a couple of tissue paper pompom clouds in it just because I have no where else to store them.

 I bought these lovely canisters at a yard sale... they are super cute!  I didn't want to ruin them by putting labels on them.  They hold things like zippers...

 I believe this small dresser is from Ikea but I bought it at a yard sale.  I painted it and modpodged paper on to it.  It holds staples, punches, etc.

 I love these tins that my dad salved from his work years ago.  My mom gave them to me several years ago to store craft stuff in.

 I love my cute tool box that I picked up at a yard sale.  The sewing box and thread holder were from Joann.

 And the vintage jars were from a yard sale.  Cute place to store extra thread and buttons.

 These cute bins are from pottery barn... but I bought them at a yard sale.  They old all of my felt.

 And these boxes I covered with fabric.

 This is the view of the other side of the room.  It is mostly my sewing table and my scrapbooking table.

 This cabinet holds my new Silhouette Cameo that I absolutely love.  Inside are just random craft supplies... love that I don't have to take up all the space in the cupboard to store cartridges.

 The desk was made with cubes that I bought from Robert's Crafts years ago.  We just painted a piece of wood and sat it on top.  The middle part as a shelf from a yard sale...

 ...and a cute vintage hamper from a yard sale that I use to store my wrapping paper.

 I love this shelf that I found at a yard sale.  The bins of buttons and such are spice jars from ikea.  The tin buckets are from Target's dollar spot as well as the cardboard boxes on the bottom shelf.

 I found these files at a yard sale and I love them for storing letters and die cut stickers.

 I love this lamp.  It provides a lot of light since I took the fabric off the shade!

 I made this ribbon/twine holder from an old drawer.  My husband drilled holes through the sides and I just put wooden dowels in to hold the ribbon.

 Here's the side view... I even left the handles on the drawer.

 On the desk are my pin cushions and dishes of buttons.

 On top of the ribbon holder is my most recent purchase from a yard sale.  I believe it was supposed to be a plate rack.  I had my hubby take it apart and put the two strips of wood closer together and I varied the length of the dowels to fit the color I needed.

 Last, but not least, is the hubby's side of the office.  It's black, more manly, and more messy...maybe I should clean it up and decorate it for him?

I hope this gave you some crafty inspiration.  I was just glad to finally get it cleaned up enough that I can now start scrapbooking!!!

Families are Forever {Primary Bulletin Board}

I thought I would share the bulletin board that I made for our primary.  

The theme this year is Families are Forever.  Our goal as a primary was to include the family in our primary more.  One of the things that we have done is to have a family spotlight every week. Each family in the ward brings their whole family into primary (YW/YM, parents, etc.)  They introduce themselves, tell something about their family and tell a spiritual experience they have had as a family.

To go along with this theme I made a bulletin board in the hallway that has pictures of the family.

I love taking a scrapbook layout and making it into a bulletin board.  I took my idea from this layout on American Crafts Studio.

The printable in the top corner is from All Things Bright and Beautiful. 

Gallery Wall

I love gallery walls.  I love being able to display new and old family photos.  I love finding unique frames at yard sales.  So, a gallery wall is a perfect fit for me. My husband calls it the "wall of weird."  I can't figure out if it's because the frame arrangement is weird or the people in the frames are weird.... or both... lol.

I'm not the kind of person that likes to plan these things out.  I don't want to take the time to lay them all out on the floor first... or put paper up on the wall first.  I just take a frame and get started.  I started with the oval mirror.  I wanted it to be at my height so I could use it.  We have a large window in our bedroom and this mirror gets great natural light.

Then I just started adding frames from there.  I tried to vary the colors and shapes.

I wanted the largest frame to have our most recent family photo... we need a new one:)

I'm just in love with this frame from a yard sale.  I painted the mat blue to match the decor of the room.

I also love these adorable frames I got from Pick Your Plum.  This frame I mod podged scrapbook paper onto.  I think the paper is SEI.

I'm not a designer but I did learn a few things in scrapbook classes over the years.  One of them was to create a Visual Triangle. Creating a visual triangle just means that you repeat and element 3 times sporadically throughout the page.  I tried to do that with my gallery wall.  I didn't want to use a lot of black, but since my furniture is black, I wanted to make sure I had black frames.  I created a visual triangle with the black.

I also created a visual triangle with the blue.

Some aspects of my gallery wall only come in pairs and some only come as one.  And that's ok.  I didn't want it to be all matchy matchy.

Look up! Stake Relief Society Women's Conference {hot air balloon theme}

This past weekend I had the opportunity to decorate for our Stake Women's Conference.  I was told that the theme was "Look Up" and that I needed to decorate for 28 tables. 

When people walked into the building, I had a display table in the doorway with clouds hanging above it, a hot air balloon on the table...

and this printable that I bought from Paper Canoe Printables on Etsy.  

I changed the colors of the printable to match the color scheme I had picked out for the conference and I changed the text on the picture.

When you walked into the gym and "looked up" you saw over 100 tissue paper pompom clouds hanging from the ceiling.... actually, they weren't hanging from the ceiling.  The ceilings in our church are really high.  In order to hang them, I had to string fishing line across the gym from the ledge.  Then, we hung the clouds from the fishing line.  The pompoms were made using a tutorial similar to this one.

In the center of each table was a hot air balloon.

To make these, I started with strawberry baskets from Orchard Valley Supply Co.  (no specific reason why I bought them from there... they were cheap and I didn't have to order more than 50.  However, the shipping cost more than the baskets and I wasn't thrilled with that.) I hot glued 18" wooden dowels in the corners of the basket.  Then I tied baker's twine from Pick Your Plum to the top of the wooden dowels.  The first row of twine was tight to hold the lantern in place.  The 2nd and 3rd rows were draping.  Then I embellished with ribbon, paper flowers, etc.  I also put some sort of trim around the basket.  My amazing mother in law made the flower arrangements in the baskets (all flowers were purchased from The Dollar Tree).  To top them off, we put 12" paper lanterns from the Paper Lantern Store.  I did not glue the lanterns on so that they would come apart easily for storage.

This is what the tables looked like all set.

Here are a couple of pictures of the overall look of the gym.

I couldn't not have a banner... I just have to have banners.  So, we put a corkboard behind the podium to attach the banner to.

And here is a close-up view of the simple banner I made using my Silhouette Cameo.

This was a big project... but a lot of fun.  I had some awesome friends that helped me.  My mother-in-law was the biggest help!  And she is super talented!!!

Pinewood Derby

I realized that I never posted the Pinewood Derby last year, so I thought I would post a little of both years.

We basically used a checkerboard theme for our derby.  We were able to find a few things at the dollar store and the rest of the stuff I made.

We hung a few flags on the doors coming into the gym.  These larger flags were found at the dollar store.

Around the track, we set up a barricade.  We didn't want the kids getting near the track.  We got small cones.  We actually taped them to the ground. Then, we taped the flags all along the track.  To make them, I just found a checkerboard clipart and made b/w copies on cardstock.

 For centerpieces, I made a few fans/pinwheels.  I had made the blue and gold ones for a blue/gold banquet a few years ago... they come in really handy for all cub scout functions.  For the pinewood derby, I added a checkerboard one.

We used a few of them on the food table along with the larger banner from the dollar store.

 I made these trophies last year.  I spray-painted a car gold, silver and bronze.  I painted a 2x4 block blue.  The plaque in the front I just made in photoshop.  I got it laminated and nailed it on there with small nails to make it look more like a real trophy plaque.

 I put our pack # and the year on the trophy.

 I had a good time making signs and awards.  These are all items I made last year.  I made a wide variety of awards so that every boy could get one.  (I am so sorry, but I can not find my list of awards... there were some really creative ones.)

 I did not get pictures of these, but we had a weigh-in table.  This table had a scale, graphite, tools to fix cars, etc.  The boys checked in their cars...

...Then the placed them on the checked-in table.  On this table, I had black paper plates to put their cars on.

I also had a name card for the boys to write the name of their car.

 We had all the boys and family members vote for "best of show" at this table.

Then, the races began....

I hope you find some of this stuff helpful.  Everything I made was in Photoshop Elements, please feel free to email me if you would like any of the files.  anisascholes at gmail dot com