My own room has always been chaos as far as i can remember. No matter how hard i try to keep things tidy, when i’m on a creative wave my desk grows supplies on it. (Oh and my shelves and floor too sssht). When in 2006 a Dutch magazine “Scrap!” had a competition to find Hollands Most Messy Scrapper, i won. I know. One could argue about how honorful that title is but people, The prize? Lots of cool supplies to organize supplies. My husband immediately regretted his words “Honey, when you enter this competiton and IF you win, we will turn your messy scrapcabinet into a scraproom upstairs”. Ha! I remembered that! So we cleared out a room, painted the wall orange and got going. To this day I am extremely happy and thankful for all the handy storagematerials i received! However, those handy instant storagesupplies are not what this post is really about, so they are not in the pictures below. Creating a home for supplies was also challenging. Because I needed to  adjust it to my personal way of creating and being able to find the supplies i am looking for. And that actually was so much fun to do. It challenged me to think up new ways of storage and i wanted to stick to a small budget. To feel creative i need to really see the supplies. Transparent storage. This goes beyond practical: Seeing all those colors makes me happy too!  And being such a fan of alphabets: stickers, cardboard or stamped ones, it sometimes took me ages when plunging through a full alphabetbox, only to find i had previously used up the letter “R” for instance Here’s a few of my homemade organisation systems, which cost very little!

Letterstamps, kept in metal containers, with paper wrapped around it and the letter stamped on it, they are the empty babymilkcontainers we had for our son, they are aprox. 15 cm tall.:

Chipboard letters, kept in little plastic containers, 30 cents each (Zeeman for the Dutchies)

Mini-eyelets kept in medicineboxes, Monique did a fun post about this once also!

Yes, cleaning your ears pays off. I am always happy when we finish the last one and re-use the plastic container haha

Ok, we prefferred fresh vegetables for our baby but after the occasional “oops, he’s hungry and we are not close to preparing dinner yet” the jars ended up in the dishwasher. For buttons…

Or those tiny bits of leftover-ribbons

Candyjars (Xenos for Dutchies)

Stickers and rubons find a home on Ikea bars with little clips to hold them.

Litlle metal buckets, also Ikea

Stamps, kept in A4 transparent envelopes (Hema for Dutchies)

 Well, hope you found this tip helpful. Maybe you are more into structuring supplies by color, which Liesbeth did an awesome post about once too!

Happy scrapping!

Mandy

I did the sketch for this month. I tried (again) to create a beautiful drawing in Photoshop but alas, that didn’t work out at all so I went back to paper and pen. Here ya go:

The sketch has a home for two landscape photos or one portrait photo, but is versatile enough to change! Look here what Mandy did:

Now that is that totally “summery” feeling I was talking about earlier, right?! I love how the kraft cardstock combines with the orange and the aqua. Sweet!

And what about Petra’s take? She rotated the sketch and used spray ink to alter her background (quite the hit right now!):

I love that photo - you can feel the movement!

And then last (but not least) my take. I used my trusty corner rounder after I wiped the dust off, and my photos needed some dusting as well as they’re from 2004 :).  And I did some embroidery around the circles:

Now it’s your turn! Upload your take to our gallery - we’d LOVE to see what  you create!

Have a gorgeous summer!

Liesbeth

 And some more

Here’s the sketch i made for this month and check out the beautiful layouts Monique and Petra have created with it!

Petra made a stunning layout about a young birdie that just left the nest along with it’s siblings.

And Monique made a fabulous layout about the never ending summerfeel, which i think we are all longing for again!

My layout is about a beautiful little redhead, our friends sweet sweet daughter which we love so much!

If this sketch inspired you, we’d love to see your creation in the gallery!

Happy scrappin’!

Mandy

Here’s some sneaks to get you in the mood

Catch ya later today with the July sketch and fresh layouts!

I’m writing this while the sun is shining, I hear birds everywhere and my garden looks so pretty! It’s really this time of the year that I love! And our June kit has that same “Spring” feeling! Gorgeous fresh colors from Bella Boulevard’s Familly Dynamic line, complemented with fun and colorful embellishments from Little Yellow Bicycle, Jillibean Soup and more! It was my turn to provide a sketch for this month, so here ya go:

It has room for 5 photos - I love multi photo layouts! Look here what Monique did with it: 

And when she had her Garden layout done, she thought she could do even better and created a second one: 

And this is Petra’s take on the sketch: 

I love how she used patterned paper to fill the spaces for the photos! And last but not least, my take: 

I hope that all of this is as inspirational to you as it was to us, so please join in! Upload your creations to the gallery for all of us to see!

Liesbeth

 IT’S ALMOST TIME AND I’M SURE YOU’LL LOVE IT!

As you might have noticed: I love making my own cards. In fact I can’t remember the last time I’ve bought one in a store.  So with all those fun elements I figured they would go perfect with some misting and masking. After all you don’t have to use products only as “prescribed” as besides using them as they are (already beautiful!), you can paint them or use them first, as I did, as a mask. It even makes your stash got further! 

So first I took the dark brown cardstock and folded the paper in half to get a different size of card as normal and placed the chipboard elements on top. Then the misting fun started. I used cream for a big contrast.

 This is what I got and I started putting the awesome embellies together into a sweet collection of things until I loved the look.

 I decided that the houses and trees needed some white lines to make them stand out more.  

 Also I used a alphabet stamp and some green ink to decorate the wooden butterflies.

So when you’re not sure what to do with the chipboard on a page; take a few moments to create your own handmade card. I’m sure the person that will receive it in his of her mailbox will be very pleased!

Enjoy! Petra 

And when you need some more inspiration feel free to use the May Sketch. Play along and show the result in the gallery.

Petra created this sweet one with wallet pics. Look at that cute smiley face

Mandy’s creation is also a boyish one. Her son probably behaves like a playful lamb in Spring and came home 4 times in one week with teared (new) trousers… poor Mandy

The Easter banner inspired me to use pics of a balloon party in the parc. I cherish the memories of our annual party and camp night with all the kids in our street.

Forget about your own household and have fun with this Crate Household kit!

groetjes, Monique