Saturday All Day Crop - Melrose Park, IL - January 28

Saturday Crop – Melrose Park IL - January 28 - 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM

Saturday Crop Melrose Park, IL -  $25 for dinner and Half of a 5-foot round table of your own for the day.

January 28 -  Contact at jean1106@att.net  or www.marvelouspaper.blogspot.com

Let's Organize - Pens Day Two

Happy Monday - For some of us this is another day off....what could be better than to spend a little time decluttering and organizing. Day one of Pens, we found out which pens belonged in the trash. We sang a song of remembrance as we ceremoniously dumped the dead into the trash.

Now that you can see what you really have, I've got a few suggestions for next steps...

 1. sort them....do you choose pens to work with by color? by tip? by type (alcohol, pigment, watercolor, etc.)
 2. label them....do you use pens in a electronic machine? label those with a piece of tape around the barrel (painters tape, washi tape, etc.)
 3. store them....do you use your pens mostly at home? if so,

Imagine a can covered with the color of the pens inside? Cardstock scraps will cover the can so that you can easily see all of you pens of one color together.

 do you sort your pens by what you use them for?

these are crystal light containers stacked together with epoxy....simple and inexpensive....one cubby for each of your sorting categories do you need your pens to travel with you?

consider a roll up made explicitly for travel. When packing for a weekend or day crafting, choose the pens you need, pack them, and go.

The nice thing about using free things to store pens, if you change your mind or find something better, you can always change the storage for something that will work better.  Don't feel that you are choosing the pen storage options that will be with you forever, you are just choosing a starting point.

Comment below on how you store your pens to be included in a monthly drawing for a $25 gift certificate for Close To My Heart product.  Come back every day to comment for another chance to win.

Feel like shopping?  itsalwaysfabulous.ctmh.com

Happy New Year - Let's Organize!

Happy New Year Welcome back to the blog. Starting off the new year with some organizational tips to get us all moving on a better year ahead. Let's start with something easy. If you are like me, you accumulate pens. A pen for every color of the rainbow in brush, gel, metalic, chisel tip, sharpie, chalk.....you get what I mean. Do you know that many of your pens are dead and no amount of storing them upside down or putting them in the freezer or scribbling with them will raise them from the dead. Get the dead ones out of your way. Today, take your pens and try them. If they don't write, throw them away. Sounds simple but so many of us have trouble doing just that. Take a few minutes and throw away those dead ones and tomorrow we'll talk about what to do with those that work.

Weekend Crop - Oregon IL - March 10,11,12

Weekend Crop Oregon, IL $120 for 5 meals, lodging, scrap space and goodie bag. March 10, 11, 12 Contact sue.stoughton@gmail.com More information and registration page www.itsalwaysfabulousevents.wordpress.com

Graphic45 Monthly Classes...The Fun Begins

The first Graphic45 Class instructions arrived today.  The class offers options for cards or a layout or both so here we go.

Make the three cards pictured below for $7.50

Make the Layout pictured below and a second not pictured for $10

Make the three cards and the two page layout for $15

Dates?

We will start in December and go into the first half of January.  The February class will be announced the end of December.

Wednesday Decmeber 5th - 6 to 9 p.m.

Sunday - December 9 - 1 to 4 p.m.

Let me know if you can't make these dates and I will schedule more or I can kit it up and send it to you...