DIY Craft Desk & WOYWW

Howdy folks! It’s funny how after a few days away from home you can look at your surroundings with a fresh eye. When I went down to craft yesterday my desk was so uninspiring. My binders of unmounted stamps were hard to pull out and I didn’t feel that I had room to work, also I had left my craft area in a bit of chaos so that didn’t help either…so…I spent $5 at the lumber yard and transformed my workdesk from this:

 

To this:

 

Here is a video to show you how I revamped my workdesk. Now, don’t go expecting a “Bob Villa” quality project here, we are talking saw horses, cinder blocks, an old door and boards but I am thrilled with the results, have a look:

See, how easy, anyone can do it! I wonder if I can get a guest spot on This Old House? Nah, you probably have to at least break out a hammer 🙂 I will say that I did measure everything and sketch out a design before I underwent this re-do. It probably saved me an hour of moving stuff around because I had a good estimation of what would fit. So my tip is make sure to measure to stuff you want to contain on your desk shelves!  Here are so more after shots:

 

…and now for something completely different…

Now, I realize that my studio will never be featured in House Beautiful but it is a WORKING studio and I need to be able to make a mess, hose it down and make another one. It works for me! So head out to the lumber yard, pick up a few cinder blocks and let’s get this party started!

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Pssst…wanna see more crazy tables? Head on over to the Stamping Ground for What’s on your Workdesk Wednesday or as I affectionately call it  ‘my craft hoarding support group’ you will get an eyeful of creativity and it is so much fun!

New Stamp Storage and Mounting Idea!

I have been playing with the idea of separating my sentiment stamps from the sets they came with for a while now. I liked the idea of being able to see all of my greeting options at once instead of having to rifle through all of my stamp sets to find the saying I wanted. Here is what I came up with:

These generic jenga blocks were $5 for a set of 48...bargain!

I mounted my small unmounted sayings onto “Jenga” blocks. I put a thin coating of rubber cement on the block and on the back of the stamp and let it set for a couple of minutes then pressed the stamp on the block. But first I stamped the stamp on the block so I would know what stamp it was at a quick glance. Also note that I double and triple mounted the stamps (I put 2-3 happy birthday stamps on one block) to conserve space. Then I placed the newly mounted stamps in a printer’s tray I found at a yard sale last week:

I just love the cubbies! I can put most of my sentiments in here and it is so nice to grab the sentiment I need and go!

I love cubbies!

This is for my everyday stamps, all of my holiday sentiments are with that holiday’s stamps and any sentiments that only went with the set they came with I left with their sets. Also my clear stntiment stamps and my sentiments that were too large for the Jenga blocks went in CD cases based on theme, I only filled 5 cases, I thought I would have more but really, how many ‘thinking of you’ stamps does one need LOL? All in all I love this system, the first time I stamped a “thank you” on a card it was all worth it. Speaking of cards I want to share a card I made today. I used the layout challenge at Oriental Stamp Art to create this Z-fold card:

I love how a simple fold can make a card seem so much more fancy, it is easy though, you just cut a sheet of 4″x11″ card and score it at 2.5″ and 5.5″ but you can change the dimensions and where you score for a different result. I used a Stampin up border punch (I’m so lame, it is the only edging punch I own)  😉 on each end and on the ribbon and mat element. The fancy square is a Martha Stewart punch. The background peacock feather stamp and “friend” are from a Fiskars clear stamp set, the Ribbon is from Hero Arts and the detailed butterfly is from About Art Accents. I used a Kleidacolor inkpad (Berry I think) as my ink. I stamped the background 3 times to get it to stretch across and it was easy to line up. To make the dye based ink stick well I rubbed the clear stamp with a pink eraser and cleaned the stamp before inking. It really helps ink stick to the clear stamps!

This card qualifies for the following challenges: Aud Sentiments Challenge, The Rubber Cafe , All That Scrap Wednesday Challenge, Flutterby Wednesdays, Kelley Kid’s, My Mum’s Craft shop, Simon Says Stamp, The Paper Variety , 365 Cards, and of course the scetch challenge at Oriental Stamp Art.

Well, I did not intend to write a novel today! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!