2018 - 2019 School Year Calendar Is Up!!!!

Calling all my teacher friends!!!! 

I just finished the 2018-2019 school year calendar!! I have a free sample of it in my store as well as the full calendar available for purchase. Click on the link below to head right to the store!

FREE Sample Calendar

Full 2018-2019 Calendar

Make Your Masterpiece - TPT Challenge Week Three

This weeks challenge was to make something new in your store. I just finished up a 2 page layout calendar. I have always wanted to create one as I know there are many people who like the 2 page layout vs the 1 page layout. I have started this project many times but never finished. I am so happy to have this done and I hope it will help people organize their daily life. You can grab it in my store HERE!

TPT Challenge - Week One

I jumped on the bandwagon and joined the TPT Seller Challenge. I have a boat load on my TPT to do list and was feeling overwhelmed where I should start. Insert TPT Seller Challenge here and I have some focus! So week one was to revamp something in your store. I have already had requests about creating a 2015-2016 calendar like last years 2014-2015 calendar. So I started there, keeping in mind some of the feed back I received on it.

Here is the 2014-2015 Calendar: 

And here is the 2015-2016 Calendar:

I am happy with the way it came out. The best part is it is FREE!! So head on over and grab it HERE! 

#TPTSELLERCHALLENGE

2015-2016 Calendar Is Ready!!

I had so many request to re-do my calendar from 2014! I am so glad so many of you love it! The new calendar starts in August 2015 and runs through 2016 (for the teachers). You can grab it HERE. Enjoy!

It's Official - TPT

I am now a Teachers Pay Teachers seller. I have had so many request from teacher to create organizational forms, and have been inspired by my awesome girlfriend Laura over at Crafty Bee Creations, that I decided to give it a go. I just started with a cute colorful calendar for 2014-2015. What do you think??

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I have been asked to make cute newsletters, teacher planners, calendar sets, labels, classroom jobs and the list goes on. Please send me a suggestion as I would love to create something for you. I have a lot of work to do but I am having fun and learning the ropes as I go.

Head on over to my store and take a look.

Free printable 2014-2015 Calendar

I have had so many emails to make a new calendar for 2015. Some request were from teachers to start it with the school year, others asked for one that was colorful but didn't eat up to much ink, and others asked for a fun, colorful calendar. I am still working on the fun, colorful calendar, but thought I would share the more simple one with you today. It runs from September 2014 to December 2015.
Click on the link and you can download and use what you need. Please let me know if you love it in the comments, and any suggestion for future calendars/forms you would like to see me create. 

Grab the whole calendar HERE



Printable is for personal use only. You may not reproduce, sell, or market as your own. However, feel free to share with a link back to this post. Thanks!

New Calendar for 2015!

I have had a lot of request for a new calendar freebie for 2015. I was thinking about whipping one up but wanted to get some suggestion from my followers what you would like to see in terms of colors, layout, or themes. Leave me a comment and let me know what you would like to see in my next calendar!

If you didn't see last years you can find it here

Scrap Room Organized!!! The Reveal

I am in love with my space!! It was a lot of work but so worth it. You can see how my room was set up before HERE. The layout of the room is still the same but I organized the closet and re-organized what was in my cubes and bookshelf. I would love for you to come along on the tour with me. Hopefully you can uses some of my ideas to help organized your crafting space. Let's start with my closet storage.

I took everything out of it (which is why my previous post looked like this) and sorted all the items into 3 piles. Keep, donate/trash, or move to storage. I am trying to only keep scrapbook/DIY/school items in my room, so only those items were allowed in the keep pile. I also knew I was not using my space in my closet effectively. Since this is not a closet that will be holding clothes I have the ability to go vertical in my storage. A quick trip to Target and I picked up this 20.00 bookcase. I added some cute paper to the back to make it pop! Meijer had these pink bins on sale and I had no problem finding supplies to put in them. I then added my favorite Martha Stewart chalkboard labels, and wrote what was in the bins with my Bistro Chalk Marker. I added some colorful paper and washi tape to my magazine files to give them a fresh look. The polka dot box (also wrapped in new paper) is my mist/glitter/glue spray box - the inside is not as pretty as the out! The cheveron bin (also a sale find at Meijer) holds all my vinyl and shelf paper.

 I have a love/hate relationship with wire shelving. I hate when things fall through the wire or sit funny. My only shelf in my closet right now is a wire one. To avoid this I took some foam board and some pretty shelf liner to lay on the wire rack. I choose to put the foam board face down because who is really going to see that pretty shelf liner if it is under all my items??? I keep items that I use every so often up top like my sewing machine (I have never used it but I swear I am going to learn how to sew!), spray paints, photo albums, office supplies, and miscellaneous scrapbooking tools.

The biggest change I made was what lives in my big expedit. I thought about the last few times I worked at my desk what I used. I made a list, and then began moving those items into the expedit. I now have scrapbooking items that I use the most at my finger tips.

I of course had to label everything to satisfy my labeling obsession! 

Also in the lower cubes I have office supplies/tools that I use all the time, my planners/binders and files. This is a combo room and I do homework, planning, blogging, and more in this room.

 

In my bookcase I decided to only house my scrapbook albums that I am currently working on or know of pages that need to be added to them. My stickers still live in the zip up binders and my cricket cartridges fit perfect in my narrow shelf. I added my 8.5 x 11 cardstock papers as I use those a ton and need those with in reach. 

All my electrical cords live in the little drawer, and the big drawer is an open space to add items that need a space after living in this space awhile. The bottom shelf holds mostly my patterned paper in the carry cases.

The patterned paper was another disaster that you could see. I really needed to organize this as well. So here is what it looks like now! I love it.

I sorted out my papers by what the papers were - stripes, polka dot, holiday, etc. Again using my favorite way to label -Washi tape and my label maker - I labeled inserts.  I then cut a label on my Silhouette and laminated it to create a label of what was in the box, and stuck it on the outside of the box. I laminated the label first because I like change. In 6 months I might not like having my patterned paper in these boxes, or I might accumulate more paper and need to shift paper around. With the label laminated I can just remove the label tape and make a new label to stick on there!

Another big change was this baby in the corner. There was no organization to these drawers. I had all kinds of stuff in each drawer and most of it were things I hadn't used in years. I am a firm believer in using up my scraps! So after every project I sort my solid scraps by color, and I used to keep them in a 12 x12 box (like the ones that hold my pattern paper). This worked for awhile but due to the various sizes of the paper it was becoming a mess. I decided to give each color it's own drawer. So now all my color scraps live here! The top drawer is my pattern scraps drawer for now. I am starting to get quite a few scraps so I might have to come up with a new place for these soon.

Across the room my 12 x 12 solid paper still live in these drawers, organized by the rainbow!

I still use my Cricut, so this guy lives on top of my smaller expedit. Below are in the cubes are items that I use but not daily, and items that I don't need at my fingertips. It houses a lot of my binders, school stuff, and photo boxes. 

This is where the tour ends. I hope you enjoyed your tour and maybe even picked up and idea that you can use. I would love to hear any of your ideas that you have used in your scrap room/craft room. Leave me a comment below!

My Scrapbook Gallery

One of the "non-visible" projects in organizing my scraproom, was to take pictures of all the layouts I have done, and post them to my gallery. This is a big, over due project!! I first had to wait for a some what sunny day, which here in Chicago, in the middle of winter, is hard to come by. Once my lighting was good I snapped away. 

I then did a little brightening, cropping and a few other edits in Photoshop and was ready to upload. When I went into my account at Scrapbook.com I had to make some edits here too. First off I was still 34!! Nice!! The boys were a little bit younger too. I also need to shift around some of the previous layouts I had in there, and separate out my paper layouts from my digital layouts. 

It took awhile to complete this project but I am so glad I got it done. I have learned so much from others sharing their techniques and tips that I just want to do the same -  pay it forward. So hop on over to my gallery and let me know what you think. 

Laura's Gallery @ Scrapbook.com

Labeling - my favorite ways to label

I have been hard at work organizing my scrap room! Have I ever told you I LOVE to label things??? Well I do and my scrap room is my favorite place to do a labeling project. If you are a scraper you know how messy things get when your scrapping. I sometimes have to stop and clean up a bit before I can continue working on a page. 

I like to have a place for all my scrapbooking supplies and have them at my finger tips. I use several different types of storage bins to keep my supplies organized. But what good is a bin with scrapbooking supplies in them if there is no label on the outside of the bin telling me what goodies are inside. 

I have a few favorite ways to label. 

1. My favorite is Washi tape and my label maker. I use this type of labeling for file folders, but also used it in my re-organizing of my scrap room.

2. Making my own and laminating. Sometime I need a "tough" label, or a label that can get messy and would need to be wiped off. I love to make my labels in Photoshop and use all the neat fonts out there. However, for Christmas I got a Silhouette and something tells me that I will be playing with that the next time I need to make a label! 

3. My other favorite way to label is with chalkboard labels. I love to use these on containers that the contents in the container might change. I am constantly organizing. Sometimes my "OMG this is an awesome organizing idea" ends up flopping after living with the idea in action. Being able to wipe the label and write a new label makes those not so great ideas disappear!

What ways do you label? I would love for you to share your ideas. I am always looking for new ideas.