Friday, October 29, 2010

Carolyn’s New Scrapbook Room

Earlier, I wrote an article about my friend, Carolyn, who was moving her scrapbook room from a small bedroom to her huge bonus room upstairs.  Click here to see before photos.  Carolyn did a buy few things to prepare her space for the move, and she did it all on a budget!  She purchased a kitchen island from Big Lots for $300, she now uses as her cutting station.   She bought 4 small black bookshelves along the wall in the 1st photos for $15 each at Wal-Mart.  She also bought a couple of the stackable plastic Sterite 3 drawer storage units and apple green paint to paint the room.  The best part was she paid her grandson $10 a hour to carry it all upstairs!  She said he ran up and down stairs for a hour and a half like it was nothing.  She gave him $15 and some change she had left over from a garage sale, what a deal!  Next time I need a bunch of stuff I will hire him any day!  So she transformed her room for under $500!  Which is awesome! 

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As you enter her room, the long wall of the black bookshelves is the first thing you see.  She has tons of paper, embellishments, ribbons, and all kinds of goodies along the wall.  In the white paper trays to the left of the 1st photo is paper, that her friends can use when they come over to scrapbook!  On the to the left is a short wall and here she has metal paper racks that she has used to put all her idea books in cute little baskets. 

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In the picture above you can see the awesome island she got at Big Lots.  It has a butcher block top, with a small piece of granite that she can use for all her cutting needs.  Here she keeps her Cricut Expression, Cuttlebug and Sizzix with all the accessories here.  In the next photo is her daughter Debbie’s storage area and she has several of the Jet Max cubes that she got from Michaels.  They cost $29.99 each but you can find them for 40% off pretty often.  So for under $200, you could have all this great storage too!  Plus you don’t have to buy them all at once, you can buy a few at a time as your budget allows. 

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Above is her scrapping area.  She has 3-4x2 foot tables together to form a large work area. So she always has room for her friends to join her for the Friday Night Crop.  She has her most used items located along the right wall behind her piano bench she sits on the scrap.  Of course the piano bench is full of goodies too.  

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This is the far left wall close to the window, here she has a desk with her printer and more Sterile containers to store more supplies.  I missed getting photos of the rest of the wall, but she has a TV in a entertainment cabinet and her sewing machine.  I honestly am amazed she knows where everything is, but she does. 

Great job Carolyn, your room looks great!  Thank you for letting me share in this experience with you and allowing me to share it with my readers!  I look forward to scrapping with you in your new room!

Until Next Time,

Happy Scrappin and Stampin!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Where I Am Headed!

Hey Scrappers and Stampers!

Currently I am sold out of merchandise!  But don't fear I have another deal working!  I have decided to become a Stampin Up Demonstrator and only sell Stampin Up new and retired merchandise.  It will be the best of both worlds!  As you all know I love Stampin Up products and the quality is superb.  I will still scope out great bargains on Stampin Up products and pass them along to yo.  I will also continue to share great organizational tips because I am so passionate about them both.  For now I will still have my salesroom upstairs and stock it with great SU retired products.  I have to admit the SU products have been my best selling items.

It is an exciting move and I am looking forward to it, I have thought about this for a long time now and the only thing that was holding me back was all the merchandise I still had. But now that it is sold, I feel it is a sign to move into this new chapter of my life. I will officially get started in November as a Stampin Up Demonstrator and have Stampin Up (SU) Club at my home twice a month. It will be great fun and I look forward to sharing ideas and techniques at SU Club meetings. Don't worry I won't be bugging anyone to do parties at their homes, since all clubs will be here.  I will give opportunities to club members to earn free stamp sets and other Stampin Up merchandise.

But don't feel left out if you are out of town or can't come to club meetings because I am going to start doing videos to share the same techniques and Stampin Up products with you, it will be like SU Club online!  I will have offers for you to earn free SU merchandise as well.  I will have to work on a catchy name though. Maybe something like...Stampin Up With Sharon or Stampin At Sharon's or Stampin at Sharon's Scrappy Space, hmmm I will have to work on that. Hey I have an idea, share your ideas with me on what you think I should call the SU club and my online club featuring technique videos.  If I choose the name you submitted, I will send you a new Stampin Up basket of goodies.  
I have been very busy working out all the details to get started and getting everything lined up.  I have had a time trying to figure out how to upload videos to Youtube. First, I had to get a video camera, then I had to figure out how to work it. Believe doing a video isn't easy, even with about 100 takes.  I went through several video editing software trial versions to figure out which was best for me not to mention figuring how to use them.  (I should remind you that you should always save your files often!!!)  I lost a few of my edited video files when the software crashed on me!!  It still hasn't gotten to that point where "this will be funny one day" but hopefully it will be some day once I conquer the video upload thing! Then I had my Internet go down and kept getting thrown offline. Whew I am tired just thinking about it all!  It has been a real learning curve for me but I am pretty tenacious!  Well finally today I am trying to upload a video again and it is now processing it. I am anxiously waiting to see if it will finally work or not!  If it finally uploads, I will be thrilled beyond measure! If not you won't read this today! I am hoping to include the video link here. Still waiting, it can take hours I am told. It has never gotten to the point of processing the video before so I am further along than any of the other of my 100 attempts to upload a video.  Wait, wait....I can't believe it but I have success!  Yeah!!!!  Excuse me for a minute while I dance around the room!!!!.......  Ok check out my video tour of my scrapbook room.  I have some surprises....



What did you think about that?  Don't you just love my new ink pad shelf???  What a deal it was!!!  I absolutely love it!  Painting it wasn't so fun but well worth it.  My husband mounted it to the wall so I can easily pull out the table to have club or just enjoy scrapping and stamping with my grandkids or scrapbuddies.   What do you think about all the paper storage going vertical?  I love it I have so much more room now!  I love the way the horizontal storage looked before but it sure took up a lot of space and as you know all space in a scraproom is valuable.

I am also thinking of unmounting all my wood stamps!  What do you think about that?  I am making a purchase soon from a retired SU demonstrator and she has done just that.  I am waiting to see what my customers think about the stamps being unmounted, before I do.  But you will see most of my demonstrations online with unmounted stamps.  I am thinking about all the room I will have. 

Thanks for checking out my video and let me know if you can think of a great name for my SU clubs!

Until Next Time
Happy Scrapping and Stamping!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

My Thoughts....To Be Or Not To Be a Stampin Up Demonstrator

Hello Scrappers!

I have been incredibly busy lately!  I have truly enjoyed teaching scrapbooking classes at Birthright of Memphis!  It has its challenges for sure, with so few supplies, but I am still working on that.  Since Birthright has no tools to work with and class time is so short, a mere 50 minutes, I am putting together layout kits for them to assemble.   Birthright is such a worthy organization and it has shown me that I love to teach scrapbooking and stamping.  This week will be the ladies' first attempts at stamping, as we are using the white sheets of paper that came  in their scrapbook albums, and will stamp backgrounds for their layouts. I am having to be very resourceful!  LOL!   This 4-page layout is called "Baby's Firsts" and it will been done over the next two classes.  I am very excited to get them stamping!  When I get all the layouts planned and put together I will post them for all you to see.

Since I love teaching and Stampin Up so much I am seriously considering becoming a Stampin Up Demonstator.  There are very few demonstrators in my local area, with most of them in Memphis, TN.  I am in Horn Lake/Southaven, MS area, which is just south of Memphis across the state line.  Of course, I would still offer my bargain finds, but also include new items from the Stampin Up catalog.  With this in mind, I would also  branch out and start doing some instructional videos of techniques using Stampin Up supplies, and also sharing some organizational tips.  Since I have a second room in my home dedicated to scrapbooking, (my upstairs salesroom), I could have workshops and classes in my home.  Many of you who attended my sale have requested beginner classes to learn how to scrapbook and to learn different basic techniques, so I would also plan on doing those types of classes. Since I love mixing scrapbooking and stampin to make home decor items and cards, I would also have those types of techniques on video as well.  I think it would be great fun and I believe a wonderful opportunity to get to know you all better, whether by internet or locally.   It has been great to get to know you all better and share the same passion for stamping and scrapbooking as I do, and for me that is the best part of having this blog, since it connects me to all of you.

Let me know what you think of this idea that is bouncing around in my head.   Would you be interested in attending a local workshop or class, or seeing technique videos on my blog?   Would any of you be interested in buying Stampin Up products from me as a Stampin Up Demonstrator?   I would like to make an informed decision, and would love to hear what you think about this.  Send me an email at shargod@gmail.com.  I look forward to hearing from you all.

Until Next Time.
Happy Scrapping!!!