Craftyminx

Nail Polish Organization - Part 1

Apparently the end of 2011 has turned me into a "project" freak. Here's another project I started last night -- operation organize the nail polish. I have a nail polish situation to say the least...

I know to those of you who aren't nail polish lovers this seems like a lot and it is but I've seen way bigger collections, but let's just say that it's big enough to need some organization. So I found every single bottle I own, put them all on a fold out table in my living room, and got started. 

The first thing I did was sort the polishes by color:

Purples, greens, yellows, blues, and teals

Oranges, reds, pinks, and multi (glitters with more than one color)

And finally neutrals, metallic and clear coats

The drawers I keep my polish in are called melmers, they are those white scrapbooking paper storage drawers that you can get at Michael's They look like this. I lined my drawers with non-slip shelf liner to keep the bottles from sliding around. Right now, the whole collection fits in the three drawers and I have a little space to grow. If it gets any bigger I'm going to move them all to the container store shoe boxes, one color per box.

I also have these nail color wheels that I use to swatch every color I buy. These help me see all my colors at a glance without having to dig through drawers when I want to do a manicure. My manicures rarely involve only one color so its nice to be able to see things paired together in actual swatches of color. 

Then what did my geeky librarian self do? I created a google docs form and spreadsheet for entering in all my polishes. 

You all know how much I love utilizing google docs from my wedding (we used them for everything!). And now that I have an iPad I love it even more. I can take that or my iPhone to the store with me and look to see if I already have a color and even enter stuff in as I buy it. Since there is a time-stamp that shows when the new entry was added,  it will time-stamp when polishes were purchased if I add them close to the date of purchase. I can even share my spreadsheet with a friend so they can see what colors I have.  

I'm trying to add this to the google template gallery so you all can use it too but I'm having issues with it right now. For some reason the form isn't wanting to work on the template version but works fine on my version. So if you have a massive nail polish collection and want my template let me know and I'll share a copy of it with you. I'll add a link to the template once I get it working.

I'll let you know how it all turns out. I have to work fast because it is taking up valuable living room space (aka Dash running around space). 

I'm also getting the bug to minimize my wardrobe. This blog post has been something I continually think about. I think of Diana as being a fashionable person and if she can get by with a minimal wardrobe, so can I! I don't HAVE to have a new outfit for every occasion. Anyway that's another post for another day... If I can talk myself into it. As you can see from my nail polish issue, minimalism is not my forte.

Are you a generally organzied person or someone who goes through waves of organization? I'm totally a waves person. I'm great at organizing, but keeping everything in its place is really hard!!! I really WANT to be the type of person that doesn't care about things and has so little that organization is easy, but that's just not me (hello boarderline hoarder personality).

*sorry about the iPhone photos. I wasn't really planning on doing a blog post about this but it ended up being a much bigger deal than I planned -- story of my life!

Studio Tour!

I mentioned this in my answer vlog video #7 but today RobbieLee from Chickiedee featured my studio on her Studio Sunday feature. So pop in over there to get a glimpse into my brightly colored world.  You can also see all of my studio photos on this flickr photoset and see a little video tour at the end of Answer Vlog #7. 

Answer Vlogs - Part 3

These vlogs are answers to the questions asked in the Ask Anything post. Each vlog is based on a person's question/set of questions. Some are long, some are short and sweet. I'll post the question before the video so you can decide if you want to watch it or not. After the video I'll post any links I mentioned in the video.

Answer Vlogs - Part 1
Answer Vlogs - Part 2
Answer Vlogs - Part 4

Answer Vlog #6

Amanda Asked:
1. How long have you been crocheting?
2. You have a great eye for pairing colors in your granny squares- is this a natural talent or something you cultivated? (I ask because my own color sense is abysmal! Working with non-neutrals scares me!)
3. Does Sheldon have any crafty hobbies?
4. What's your favorite (and least favorite) thing about living in Oklahoma?

Creature Comforts color Inspiration posts
Style me Pretty Color Palettes
Emma Lamb's Color Palettes 
Pugly Pixel Colour Lover Posts

Answer Vlog #7

Melissa asked...

1. How did you and Sheldon meet?
2. What made you first start this blog?
3. How much time do you spend each day crafting?
4. Can you show us more pictures of your craft room, maybe at different angles?

 

The story of how Sheldon and I met and fell in love :)

My studio tour on Chickiedee

Prayer Candles from Sweetheartville

We have had my wonderful friend Staci and her husband staying with us this weekend so there was no time for posting on Friday. So you get these today. I think I have a full week of posts planned out too! I've just got to get busy tonight. Oh and Staci and I did a vlog together while she was here. I'm excited to share that with you guys! We might do one or two more today too. We've been thrifting this weekend too and yesterday I found my dream sewing machine. I can't wait to share that with you on Thursday. 

Motif Magazine

Do you read Motif? I've been reading it since the first issue. I was drawn in by their first cover. It's just soo pretty :) 

 
It's a pretty wonderful little on-line lifestyle magazine. It has fashion, recipes, book, music, and movie reviews, really great articles, and a craft column. 

Speaking of the craft column. You might find a little surprise if you head on over and see the new issue. Ok, you will find a surprise...

I'm the new craft editor/resident crafter!

 
In this issue, (the Journeys Issue), I'll teach you how to make an experience journal from supplies you probably already have laying around the house. I created a travel journal, but you can customize it to reflect any journey you want to keep mementos and notes from. It would be really great for keeping track of your year with 12 envelopes for mementos and lots of pages for goals and journaling.

 
This was a really fun journal to make because we had just returned from our Austin trip and I had a lot of fun pictures and stories to tell. I also took the time to add all of the trips that Sheldon and I have taken together over the last 3 years to it. It was exciting to comb through all the little mementos I kept from our first trip to Vegas, our first road trip to Louisiana, and our Honeymoon. There's also plenty of room for future journeys we take together. Here are some more photos:

 
 

 
Tips:
- Use what you have! Most of the pages in my journal are from printed commission packets from work that are one-sided. I use them for everything and I get a huge stack of them each month.
- Mix it up by adding in interesting papers from kids writing/drawing tablets and ledgers (both of which I always find at thrift stores but are available at Target and WalMart too).
- Envelopes and pockets add interest and allow you to add mementos you don't want to use glue on.

Studio Complete!!

Before and after

It is finished and I am sooo happy with how it turned out. The painting took 4 days and I spent the rest of the week putting shelves and chairs together. Sheldon, Levi, Shannon, and my mom helped out soo much and I owe them all big time.

There are still a few things left to do, but it is about 95% finished. I still need to add the peg board and possibly paint some of the door with chalkboard paint.

The paint is showing up a little lighter in these pictures. It is the same color as the pink chairs. 

The shelves aren't as industrial as I thought they would be and they fit sooo much stuff. I love all of the space!

I also love that the table fits in the middle of the room so I can have friends over to craft. 

YAY!

Wedding Wednesday

Today I'm going to share a few of online tools that we are using. There are so many useful tools out there and I can't review all of them, but these are the ones that I'm using because they are free, easy to use, and make wedding planning efficient.  Sorry this post is so wordy. I'll share some photos later.

Registry

I have found myregistry.com to be a godsend. You can link all of your registries to this one site, or you can choose to keep it as an "everything else we want" list, which is what we are using it for. We are registered at Target and Macy's for the sake of our family and friends that don't like to shop online. There are people in our families that don't even have the internet.  But with Myregistry.com, you can link to any item in any online store on the web and this includes places like etsy. I love it! The downfall is that things change so quickly on the internet and items sell out fast, especially on etsy. You have to check up on the items you list to make sure that they are still available. As someone that has shopped a lot of registry lists, it is very annoying when you find out what you want to buy is no longer available.

Planners

This is the part where I sing the praises of google docs! I have never really used google docs for the purpose of online collaboration, but a wedding in this day and age requires it. Style me Pretty has teamed up with google to make some pretty awesome and free tools. Before you get overwhelmed with the 20 different templates you can download, I would suggest looking at the wedding planner first. It has all of the templates in one workbook. We didn't need the whole planner so we are just using it for a guest list (we changed up some of the columns to match our preferences) and the address form. Let me tell you about the address form... If you know a lot of your wedding guests' emails, you can send a form to them and they can fill out the spreadsheet for you! I don't know a lot of the email addresses, but I have been able to use it by sending the form to my mom so she can add all the people that they want to invite to the wedding. Sheldon and I share the document, so any changes that either of us makes can be seen by the other person, that way we always have the most updated list.

A rep from myweddingworkbook.com recently tipped me off to a really great wedding organizational tool. My Wedding Workbook is a must for anyone planning a big traditional wedding with lots of vendors and many guests.  I could see someone with a smaller wedding being able to use it, but I think a lot of it's functionality wouldn't get used. I have too much information in other places to want to move it all over at this point, but this is a wonderful tool that is robust enough for any wedding. I might have to use it for our budget, since we haven't got a lot of that in writing yet. We'll see.

Websites

Oh wedding websites... what a headache you have caused me. I really didn't want to pay for a website that was only going to be live for a year. Wedding websites, through the actual wedding website vendors are expensive compared to a regular website's costs per year. A few of the more popular sites are ewedding.com mywedding.com theknot.com weddingtracker.com and weddingjojo.com.

We went with mywedding.com because their site is 100% free and has a lot of functionality. I also found that they had way more theme options than the others. However, wedding websites are kind of corny and if you're a DIY gal like me, you're not going to be 100% happy with the themes that they have and then throw the fiance into the mix who thinks that "all wedding websites are lame" and you'll have issues. It took Sheldon and me quite awhile to agree on the template and in the end the one we are using is kind of boring, but it works. I really had to get past the fact that the website was in no way going to match our Save the Dates or Invites and that it was only going to be an information tool for our guests.

I hope you all enjoy this little detour from my normal crafty exploits. I promise Wedding Wednesdays will have a lot of my DIY projects in the future, but right now it is all about the planning. In fact, next week I have an exciting thing to share with you all... our save the date cards! Handmade the lazy way by yours truly :)

The studio makeover

Well the craft room is now empty...a clean slate... ready for me to work my magic. Our garage is full of tubs of craft supplies. I had no idea I had that much stuff in this tiny room.

So here's the full plan... I want to work on it this weekend. There's no better way to say I love you than with physical labor right? I'm hoping Sheldon agrees :)

p.s. I'm loving these washi tape frames from kitschy digitals. I almost forgot I bought them.

I bought the paint last night. I'm hoping to get the pegboard and those ugly industrial shelves from home depot after the paint dries. About those ugly shelves, if you know of something better that I can get two of for $160 and will be 4 feet wide let me know. I like to buy those track system shelves from rubbermaid, but they really are expensive once you start to add up all the pieces and the shelves are only 12 inches deep. I like the idea of having shelves 24 inches deep to hold all of my crap. Since these are such a good deal, I'll probably just end up painting them, putting white sticky shelf liner on the mdf and adding some cute fabric scallops or something to the front. Eh, there are plenty of ways to make them look less garish.

I really wish I could redo the floor while I'm at it, but the brick and black tiles will just have to stay a little longer. Eventually, I plan to put laminate wood down in the dining room, studio, and the hallway of death so the back of the house will match the laminate in the kitchen and the rest of the natural wood floors in the front part of the house.

I am still trying to decide how the layout should be. Right now, I have the table on one wall and shelves on either side. the sewing station and fabric shelves are on the other side. I would like to have the table in the center of the room, so I have have people over to craft with me, but with the room being so narrow I don't see this as an option. I guess visitors will just have to craft in the dining room.

We're also painting the dining room the Sea Life color. We both agree that the aqua with the already red everything else will look good and have that retro flair we like so much.

My big question is lighting. I have to change out the overhead light but I have no clue what to put in. I have two windows that get pretty good daytime light, but since I have a day job, I do most of my crafting in the evenings. Any suggestions? What kind of lighting do you have in your studio or craft space?

Online Organization

 Since I've been in the process of cleaning the studio and thinking about organization a lot, I started to think about online organization, tagging, categorizing, etc. Do you do it? Are you an expert? Do you even care?

I always had the thought that I really didn't care about tagging things (yes, this is coming from a library school student), because I thought of my blog as something for myself. Something that I would write and then it would go into the online abyss and if someone saw it, good, if not, I really wouldn't think about it. And even if I still had that philosophy, tagging would still help me. If I wrote a post about something and couldn't remember when I wrote it, tagging would help a little to sort through the mess.

But what about now? Now that I see the value of creating an online community of readers, other bloggers and the wandering passerby I am beginning to see the real need for an online organization scheme and I'm kicking myself for not starting this sooner.  I have 443 blog posts on this blog and 3061 photos on flickr. Some of these have been tagged, but a big number (2318 on flickr) are untagged. I have some work to do.

Tags not only organize, but they help you be "found" if that's your bag. There are so many tools that read online tags I won't even go into it here, but there are tons! I would love to have more readers and online buddies so I'm willing to at least try and see what happens.

So I guess I have another goal this year... operation online organization.

My plan:

1. Find themes and categorize. This is something I have at least started here and on flickr with sets and typepad categories. I sometimes forget to use these, but at least I have a starting point.
2. Do some research. Probably the more "fun" aspect of this goal. I want to find which tags are more popular and what the commonalities are among expert taggers.
3. Make a list. After researching, I will need to make a list of tags that I will use most often and make room for additions.
4. Start tagging. Definintely not for the weak in spirit. I think I can do it. Especially if I just buckle down for a weekend and do it!
5. Reap the benefits! Hopefully becoming organized will help me find stuff that has been lost, help new friends find me, and make this the  blogging fun I want it to be.

So what do you think? Is this a silly idea? Are you a faithful online organizer? I would love any tips any of you have!!