Cool Recycled Bottle Cap Craft! {and a lot of rambling}

Hello friends! I spent the day cleaning the basement. Well, most of the basement, I didn’t bother with my craft area or my husbands workshop, they were OK but the rest of the cellar had gone to pot over the summer. Hmm, does anyone say “gone to pot” anymore? Maybe it’s a Maine thing, well anyway, it means trashed and neglected and if that did not sum up my basement perfectly I don’t know what would. Let me paint a picture for you (because I would be horrified to share an actual picture) Sidewalk chalk artwork on walls and floor, paper strips from a gum wrapper bracelet turned paper bead obsession, pearler beads which I think somehow multiply once spilled on the floor (there were spilled on the floor waiting to be ironed…the iron was lost in this mess!), totes of kids toys that are apparently way more interesting once you pack them up and put them in the basement, and then there was the kids craft area.  This was really bothering me. I’m not a neat freak but I work in my basement everyday, in addition to being the fabulous frugalcrafter I also do custom framing and I need a large clean area (AKA the pool table) to lay out frames on, it was out of control.

Warning, I’m gonna talk about cleaning ad organizing for at least another paragraph so if you want to skip to the video you can. Still here? Well, what do you know, cool! The basement went downhill when we moved our love seat downstairs after buying a new living room set last fall, then we put our old TV downstairs too. This was a kid magnet, so instead of the kids sitting at their craft table to create they dragged their stuff over to the love seat and created there. Craft sprawl is the worst! Yarn! I forgot to mention the yarn LOL! I put a small table behind the love seat thinking I might want to bead there and it was taken over by the kids, they did not use their craft table anymore and honestly it was too small for more than one to use at once. So I decided to change the kids craft area to kids art supply storage. I thought about buying a big industrial shelf and getting rid of the 6″ table they had but then I realized (read: too cheap to buy a shelf and too lazy to go to the store) that I already had a storage shelf under the table and two plastic carts I could put on top so I made my own shelf like storage solution. then it was a matter of tossing junk like dried up bottles of glue, paint and play doh, old coloring books and stuff they would never use then sorting the rest into drawers. I had a full drawer of sharpies AND a full drawer of water based markers when I was done. Insanity I tell you! I had a drawer for clay, basic craft supplies, watercolor, stickers, basic school supplies, crayons & colored pencils, fabric crafting and a couple more things. A milk crate for paper, homemade magazine boxes made from soymilk boxes for coloring books, notebooks and journals and a couple boxes for stamps. Under the table which was pretty well organized was jewelry making supplies, jumbo pads, pottery and a basket of ink pads. I was able to empty a fairly big storage unit by putting like items together and everything is accessible, will wonders ever cease? The I took masking tape and a sharpie and labeled every bin and drawer!  go me! OK now, on to the video of an unrelated recycled bottle cap craft!

If you are in need of bottle caps ask any single friend you have to save them for you, you will get them in spades! So as a reward to all of my cleaning today (or yesterday as you are reading this) I am rewarding myself by checking out the brand new Hobby Lobby in Bangor Maine (I’ve never been in one before!) The grand opening is tomorrow (or by now I guess it’s today) so if you are there say howdy! I’m meeting friends there first thing before the Buffalo Wild Wing crazies grab all of the parking spaces LOL! I actually thought they were open last week but it was just the wingers. Well that’s it for tonight, I am extremely tired from the cleaning but happy with the results. I hope the kids can keep it that way. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!