Tuesday Tips: My To-Do Planner

Have you guys seen those amazing planners people are making?  Some people call them bullet journals, but they're essentially fancy planners.  They're all over Pinterest, and they really make me jealous most days.  They have stickers and cool little drawings and they use lots of colorful pens.  Go check them out!  I promise they'll make you jealous too.

Part of what makes me jealous about seeing those planners is that they make me feel like other people are clearly more organized than I am.  I mean, look, they have the right stickers on the right days and everything!  They not only had time to think out their week, but they also had time to draw a pretty picture to illustrate what they're going to be doing, too!  I could never do that in a million years.  Sigh.

Now that's not to say I don't have a planner.  Oh yes, I have a planner.  It's very simple, it's very to the point.  When you lay it out flat, the two pages make up a week and each day has a section to write things it.  It literally cost me less than $2 at Walmart.  I decided to go as cheap as I could because I knew in my heart I could never have one of those beautiful planners.  Nope.

You see, I realized something recently; the more time I spend on my planner, the less time I have to get my tasks done and the less likely I am to reach my goals.  Now this may not be true of everyone.  I'm sure there are actually people who can make beautiful planners and also get all the tasks done.  But personally, I would rather spend my creative energy on my creative projects, my designing, my sewing, my garden.  That's what really matters most to me.

So my tip today is a simple one: don't feel bad if your planner looks like this.

I use my planner as a glorified to-do list.  When I think of something I haven't written down, or that I don't know which day I can get it done, I write it on a post-it note and stick that in the planner too.  Then I use my trusty pink felt tip pen to write everything down and cross it off as I do it.  It's extremely low tech, and definitely not worth putting up on Pinterest, but it works really well for me.  If I have a free minute in my day and don't know what I should be doing, I just go check out my list and there it is in pink and white.  Simple as can be! And because it's notebook sized, it's a lot harden to lose than a loose piece of paper, which is what I used to write my to-do lists on.

So do you keep a pretty planner?  Do you have a special place to write your to-do list?  I'd love to hear what everyone else does!

Tuesday Tip: Scissors Revisited

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone!  It's so beautiful here today, with lots of bright sunshine and wide open blue skies.  I love the room my computer is in; it's the only room in the house with an actual view out the windows.  Most of the windows in the house face the side of the neighbors' houses, which isn't exactly fun to look at :P  But this room has trees and sky and yard!  Which also means it's bright and cheer on a sunny day like today, yay!

If you follow my blog at all, you may remember that I once talked about my favorite scissors to use with plastic canvas.  Back then, I used a pair of iris scissors which are technically surgical scissors and are really good with turning tight corners and snipping close to the edge of things. 

However, over time I have found that they're not perfect.  There are a lot of things I don't like about iris scissors, the first being that the finger holes are very small and can be uncomfortable.  They also have a smooth edge so if you're cutting something harder, like ultra stiff plastic canvas, they tend to slip a lot.  The biggest problem I had with them, though, is the fact that they will eventually lose their edge.  This is true of all scissors, of course, but the problem with iris scissors is that they have a very high angled edge compared to other scissors.  I think this is to make them sharper and more razor like, which you would want with surgical scissors of course, but what it means for a crafter is that you can't easily sharpen them once they lose their edge.  I tried using a scissor sharpener but that actually just made them a lot more dull.  I also tried sharpening them with a metal file, but it was very hard to get the right angle, so I eventually gave up and ended up throwing them away.

I could have gone out to buy another pair of iris scissors.  They're not expensive, after all; most pharmacies have them for under $10.  However, I don't like the idea of buying something designed to be thrown away.  I try to create as little waste as possible in my life because I care about the environment, so I decided to do a little research and see if I could find a really good pair of scissors that would continue working for me for a long time.

I ended up with a very cool set of scissors!  I liked the first pair I bought so much that I bought multiple sizes for all of my crafting projects.

They're titanium non-stick micro-serrated scissors and they come in several sizes.  They also come in several brands.  I've seen three or four brands that are essentially the same scissor with a different name slapped on them (for instance, the bottom green pair is a different brand as the top two pairs, but they're the same style).  I see these all the time in quilt magazines and quilt shops.  DO NOT BUY THEM THERE.  They are outrageously expensive if you buy them that way!  I paid $25 for the tiny pain on the bottom, and only $25 for the other two pairs combined! 

If you're interested, Amazon has the red Tonic Studios scissors for a very reasonable price.  You can get all three pairs for about $35 right now.  That's not an affiliate link, I don't make any money from this post.  I bought all the scissors with my own money and I love them.

What's really cool about them is that they have these tiny tiny serrations that grip anything you're cutting.  You know how sometimes you try to cut something with a traditional pair of scissors and it slips out as you cut?  I hate that!  But that never happens with these scissors.

It's hard to see, but if you click on that picture above, you can see the tiny serration.  Because they're serrated, it means you can't sharpen them; however, they're made of titanium which is very hard and will stay sharp for a very long time.  I've been using mine on yarn and plastic canvas and fabric for about a year and they're still as sharp as they were when they were new. 

The three sizes I have are 9.5", 7", and 5".  The 9.5" one is perfect for big fabric jobs, like cutting excess batting and backing off of a quilt before I add a binding.  Like I said, it grips the fabric so you can be sure your cuts will be straight.  The 7" one is great for small fabric jobs, like cutting half square triangles and trimming dog ears and such, but it's also the perfect size for cutting ultra stiff plastic canvas.  The blades are a little chunky, but the handles are big so you can put more force into the cut.

The little 5" scissors are perfect for tiny sewing jobs like cutting threads off your finished piece and snipping tiny corners, but I love them for working on plastic canvas.  They cut corners super well because their blades are so small and very very sharp.

They all come with a blade cover, but this is the only pair I kept the cover for because they're needle sharp.  I also bought a little connector chain so I don't lose the cover.  It was $5 at the quilt shop I  bought these scissors from, but you could just as easily make it if you have any jewelry making experience. 

Some serious words of warning here: these scissors can do some serious damage.  Because they grip so well, if you get your finger in there, it will cut you!  Normal smooth scissors will pinch you or maybe break the skin a little, but these things are like little saws and will seriously hurt you bad, so be super careful.  That also applies to any projects you're working on.  With normal scissors, if you get extra fabric into the blades, say a fold in the fabric that you didn't see and part of the project you don't want to cut, you'll probably get some resistance that will clue you into the fact that you're cutting the wrong thing.  Not with these.  Shoom!  It just cuts right through everything.  I very recently cut through too much fabric and ruined a perfectly good quilt back.  I had to do some clever patchwork to fix the piece :( 

The only other complaint I have about these scissors is that, for whatever reason, they don't cut soft floppy materials very well.  I have to have another pair of scissors handy when I'm stitching plastic canvas because they don't cut yarn very well?  It's very strange.  But that's life.  Nothing is every perfect in every way! 

That's all for today, everyone.  I hope you're having a lovely week so far! 

Tuesday Tip: Wrangling Sewing Machine Cords

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Boy, it's so pretty out today here.  A soft snow fell last night, covering up the yucky muddy yard, and the sun is shining so nicely.  The sky is blue and lovely with just a few puffy clouds floating in the sky.  If it wasn't also 15 degrees, I'd really love being outside!  This is why I swear I'm going to have a sun room in my next house.  I want to at least be able to pretend I'm outside in the winter.

Well, it's Tuesday again, and I'm here with another cool trick for you all!  Today's trick is a sewing trick, and I'll admit it's not going to be something everyone will need to know, but I hope it can help someone.

As you may already know, I have a very large sewing machine family. 

So from top left, clock-wise: 1953 Singer 301, 1949 Singer 15-91, 1954 Singer 301A, Pfaff Ambition Essential, Brother PQ1500S.  I love every single one of them! 

I can't exactly explain why I have such a big family.  I mean yes, I can give explanations but they're really just excuses.  The truth is that I love sewing machines!  I literally look at vintage sewing machines on Ebay for fun, no joke.  I'm actually considering buying a couple more for my collection.  I may have a problem. 

I don't just collect them for fun, though.  I actually use my sewing machines, believe it or not.  Well, the Singer 301 is living over at my mom's house, so actually she uses that one, but I use the other four.  I just love to sew!  Plastic canvas designing is something I love doing as a job, but sewing is a passion of my heart.  You can tell the state of my heart by asking how long it's been since I've last sewn anything.  If it's been a while, I'm probably in a good funk. 

So as the owner and user of so many sewing machines, and also the owner of a rather small crafting area, I have to think about my use of space wisely.  I dream about having a huge crafting room someday, that's bright and cheery, with big long counters and built in cabinets and shelves, where every sewing machine has its own designated space so I can just go and work at it whenever I feel like it.  But for now, I work with what I have.

And what I have is kind of small.  Now admittedly, it's probably more than most people have, but it's smaller than my ambitions (which, as I just said, is a huge crafting room with lots of shelves and counters and such).  What I have is a tiny 8x10 crafting room and a couple spare corners to put my sewing tables.  Here's what my more frequently used sewing table looks like.

Ok, so it's more of a wall than it is a corner.  Here it is without the chair blocking the view.

And here's another view.

The cool white cabinet is relatively new.  I bought it last winter to house my modern machines.  It's got a hydraulic lift in it, so I can lift the sewing machine all the way up to be sitting on top of the table, push it down a little so the bed of the machine is level with the table top (like it is in the pictures), or push it all the way inside the cabinet and fold the two side pieces in on top so it looks just like a desk.  The current set up is perfect for quilting, because the long table surface gives me lots of space to move pieces around. 

However, sometimes I need to change up my machines and use the Pfaff instead of the Brother.  The Brother is great, but it's a straight stitch machine, which means it only does straight stitches.  If I'm working on clothing or something that needs anything other than a straight stitch, I need to switch them out.  That's where my tip finally comes it!


I have a power outlet right behind my sewing machine cabinet, and it's fairly close to the wall so I can still open the closet doors on either side of it.  So reaching down to grab the cords every time I switch machines would be a horrible pain in my butt.  I used to do that, actually.  Or rather, I would try to hold onto the cords or put something heavy on them, but they would always fall down behind and I'd have to reach down.  Ugh!  I wanted to pull out my hair.  So when I did my yearly reorganizing, I decided to tackle this problem.

It turned out to be really cheap and easy to fix, too!  First of all, it helps to know that modern sewing machines have a standard power cord.  You should be able to use any cord with any machine, as long as they're both fairly new.  However, you will most likely need to use separate foot pedals.  I tried to use just one foot pedal for my two machines, and I thought it should be ok because they use the same plug and everything, but it just didn't work. 

So knowing these things, I set up a simple system.  I have one power cord plugged into the outlet, and I have both foot pedals under the cabinet.  When I switch machines, I move one foot pedal out of the way and replace it with the other one, and then I plug the same power cord into the new machine.  And here's the trick to making it all so much easier!

Stupidly simple.  I bought a large cup hook at Walmart for about $1 and screwed it into the wall right next to the machine.  Then I took three hair ties and attached them to each cord.  I'm not exactly sure what you'd call that, but the best I can think of is a slip knot.  It stays on the cord securely, but I can take it off whenever I want. 

When I need to switch machines, I unplug both cords and hang them on the hook so I don't lose them.  Then I move the machines around and plug everything back in!  Super easy and no reaching down the back of the sewing machine cabinet!  Yay!

So that's my tip for the week, and you got a good ramble about sewing machines as a bonus!  I guess I'm in a really sewing kind of mood lately, so you'll probably be hearing more about them in the future.  Do you guys have any good tips for organizing your sewing room or your sewing machines?  I'd love to hear them! 

Tuesday Tip: Yarn Storage Update

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Are you having a good week so far?  I'm trying to get back into a normal routine and a more sane schedule, which is really hard after the chaos of Christmas and then having both me and my hubby being sick! 

As part of getting back into a normal routine, I decided that I need to start posting more Tuesday tips, because I have a lot of them I want to share!  And hopefully they'll be useful to someone out there. 

In the week before Christmas, I had a burning desire to get my crafting space into better order.  I get that way every year, usually in the depth of winter, but I guess it came early for me this year.  I just want to sort through and pare down and make my space more efficient and pleasant to be in.  Since I spend a very large chunk of my time crafting every day, I need it to be easy to access and I also want it to look orderly and cheery.  For whatever reason, if my space is messy, I have a hard time actually working on my projects.  Is that just me or is that a woman thing? 

So one of the biggest things I did in my pre-Christmas organizing spree was to move my yarn stash out of my closet and into my crafting room so it's easier to access.  After all, I need to get to my yarn on a pretty frequent basis.  In case you're new to the blog, here's how my yarn stash looked before.

It was sorted by color and stored in milk crates, then stacked right inside a very large storage closet in my computer room.  It was out of the way there, but also kind of a pain to get to.  If I wanted a color that was in a lower crate, I had to take all the other crates off first.  And if I needed something from the back of the closet, I had to move a whole stack out of the way and squeeze my big butt through.  It was annoying, to say the least!

I'm not one of those people that dreads organizing.  In fact, I really love organizing.  It might be because I'm a Virgo and Virgos are supposed to be very well organized and tidy.  It might also be because I'm mildly OCD!  But whatever the case, I love sorting and ordering and thinking about how things could be more efficient.  I have two problems with organizing, though.  The first is finding the time to actually get around to doing it, because it usually takes several days at the very least, and I'm the type that dumps everything in the middle of the floor in the beginning of the project, so I have to do it at a time when I'll be ok living with a huge mess for three plus days. 

My second problem is that I have a tendency to want to buy my way to better order.  I grew up poor, so I don't know where this comes from, but for some reason I feel like I need fancy organizing apparatuses in order to be truly put together.  For this project, I spent probably a week looking at possible things I could buy to organizing my yarn.  I went back and forth between buying a new book shelf and buying a cube shelf and baskets.  However, I really want to cut down on my consumerism and the false belief that new things will solve my problems, so I decided to challenge myself to use what I already had on hand and buying as little as possible for this project. 

It ended up being a fun challenge, actually.  What I discovered was that I already have a bookshelf that's the perfect size to hold all of my milk crates!  The book shelf is in my studio already, so it would be easy to access it.  I could pull out a crate, grab the yarn I want, and stick it back.  Easy!

I'm sorry to say I didn't get many pictures of the process, but it was basically a big pile of crap in the middle of my tiny studio floor.  I decided to reorder all of my shelves in my studio, get rid of as much as I could, so that I could clear off my old bookshelf.  Here's what it looked like before.

It used to hold my crafting books, my scrap fabric, my journals and notebooks, and on top is my collection of 90s cooking and crafting magazines.  I took everything off and sorted through it.  I ended up getting rid of about half the books in the process, but I kept everything else.  It got new homes in spots where I purged other things I don't need (like lots of scrapbooking supplies I don't use anymore).  Here's what the bookcase looks like now.

Now I'm going to be the first to admit that this is pretty ugly.  The bookcase is old and the shelves are sagging, and the crates are not very aesthetically pleasing in the least.  However, it's way more useful and that's a huge bonus!  I plan on covering the crates in the near future to make it look nicer and to also protect the yarn from dust and sunlight. 

There's a cool tutorial over at Sew Many Ways that I plan on using to help me cover my crates when I get that far.  I'll be sure to take lots of pictures! 

For anyone interested, this bookshelf is a super cheap Walmart creation.  It was gifted to us as a housewarming present 11 (!) years ago, but I looked, you can still find them for between $25 and $50.  The top two crates are cheapy Sterilite crates I got for $3 a piece, but the rest are authentic milk crates which I like a lot better because they're a lot sturdier and also they're a standard size.  You can buy those in Home Depot right now for about $7 a piece.

Well, that's all for today, everyone.  I hope you're all having a great Tuesday!  Happy crafting!

Tuesday Tips: Curtain Rod Organizer

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  It's been a long time since I've done a tip Tuesday, and not because I haven't had anything to share!  I have lots to share, I've just been super lazy about it.  But I'm feeling really good today, so I'm going to share with you a fun little tip that makes my craft room a little nicer to work with.

If you're an extreme crafter like me, you probably have a ton of tools.  Scissors, rulers, rotary cutters, odds and ends that are useful but hard to store.  You don't want to have them just sitting around because that's a lot of clutter, and I don't know about you but I don't have much room as it is.  You also don't want to put them in a box or a drawer because you'd be pulling them out every day, and that's a pain.  So let me show you a cool trip I saw on the internet that works for me.

Tada!  The curtain rod organizer.  Now I can hang my tools right above my craft table and everything is there right within reach.  What I used was a very cheap curtain rod from Walmart, which was less than $5 and came with all the hardware needed to hang it.  It took less than 10 minutes to hang this up! 

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to use as hooks to hang everything, and what I ended up deciding was 12 gauge craft wire.  It's very soft and easy to work with, but thick enough and strong enough to hold everything.  I just wrap it around the rod a couple of times, and leave a hook at the end to hang things on.

Now I do have one special hook on my curtain rod for a pair of old fashioned all steel scissors.  They're pretty loose scissors, and they fall open if I put then on a normal hook.  So what I did for them is I made a loop with the wire and rest the scissors in the loop.

Cheap, fast, an easy!  That's my favorite kind of organizing tip :)  So how do you guys store your scissors and other crafting tools?  Have any good tips you want to share?  I'd love to hear!

Tip Tuesday: Cleaning Plastic Canvas

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Did you all have a good weekend?  Mine was ok, though it got cold again on Saturday so I didn't get to go outside.  I'm starting to get some cabin fever, and even though I know this early warm spell isn't good for the plants, I'm beginning to hope for 70 degree weather so I can go sit on my porch or take a long walk.

Today's tip is something you probably don't think about until you need to know.  That's certainly how I was about it, anyway.  It's about how to clean plastic canvas.  I'm sure you're thinking that cleaning plastic canvas is probably easy, but you need to take some care.  After all, you put all that work into making a piece, so you should take care of it as best as you can so it can last many long happy years.

I got the idea for this post when I noticed that one of my coasters was getting some coffee stains on it.

It's a little hard to see in the picture (it's along the upper edge there), but in person it looked pretty ugly.  My MIL once told me that to wash plastic canvas, run it under the faucet.  The problem with doing that with this piece is that it has a felt backing that's glued on with craft glue, which is of course water soluble.  If I ran it under the faucet, the back would likely come unglued.

So I did a little research and played with this coaster a little bit, and I thought I'd share with you what I found out.

How To Clean Plastic Canvas

• If the stain is on the surface, gently dab with a damp paper towel, then with a dry paper towel.  Repeat until the stain comes out.
• If the stain is deeper or has been sitting for a long time, dab with a paper towel dampeded with an oxygen cleaner (like Oxyclean).  Let sit for five minutes.  Dry with a dry paper towel.  Repeat as needed.
• If the piece doesn't use craft glue, and the stain is very bad, you can fill a bowl or bucket with warm water and a small amount of oxygen cleaner and let the PC piece soak in the solution for 5-10 minutes.  Rinse thoroughly and allow to air dry.
• DO NOT RUB!  Acrylic yarn is likely to pill or fray if you rub the piece.  Never use a brush of any kind.  If you need to do a deep cleaning, use a kitchen sprayer to blast water through it (and only if the piece doesn't use craft glue).
• If your piece is dusty, run your vacuum hose gently across the surface to suck it up.  Don't use a brush or hand duster, as this may create pill or embed the dust into the yarn fibers.
• And finally, clean up any stains or messes on your PC piece as soon as you notice them.  The sooner you clean them, the likelier they are to come out.

I ended up dabbing my coaster with a wet paper towel, and then a dry one.  The stain took a couple of passes, but it came out really well.

So there you have it!  I hope that list comes in handy the next time you spill coffee on one of your favorite coasters. 

Tuesday Tips: Accuquilt Die Storage

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  This week's tip is about sewing.  I realize that I frame my blog around plastic canvas, but the truth is that I love to sew too!  Sewing and plastic canvas are my two crafty passions, and I don't see a reason not to share this tip!  After all, maybe you'll find it handy!

I have a nifty gadget called an Accuquilt Go! Baby fabric cutter.  It's a little machine that lets you cut fabric quick and easy with the use of a rolling device and cutting dies.  If you're into sewing at all, I'm sure you've heard of these things before.  I was a skeptic at first because I thought they would waste a lot of material, but if you use it properly, it really doesn't.  And yes, it does save a lot of time cutting fabric!

However, it takes up a lot of space in my already tiny crafting room.  The dies can be pretty large, despite the fact that I have the the smallest cutting machine they make.  I usually had them laying on cabinets or on my ironing board, but I had to keep moving them out of the way when I needed to use that space. 

Finally, I came up with a pretty simple and elegant solution.  I suddenly had an extra magazine holder, and thought, hey, why not just pop them in there for the time being?  Well, that worked so well that it's become their permanant home!

As you can see, it's getting pretty full, so I'll have to get another magazine holder soon (actually, I made that one from an old box!), but I really like this solution so I'm going to keep using it.  It takes up less space than other holders that I've seen, and it keeps them safely out of the way.  I also store some of my fabric cutting rulers in that same magazine holder when I want them out of the way, too.

I hope that little tidbit gets you to think about magazine holders a little differently!  Have you ever used them for anything other than magazines?  I'd love to hear your ideas.

Tip Tuesday: Photo Setup

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Today's tip probably won't be useful to everyone, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway because I thought it might help at least some people.  I'll be talking about my photo setup that I use for my Etsy shop, and what I use to get good shots of my designs.

Now I realize that I don't take the best photos.  I have trouble getting the right lighting a lot of the time because my house is very dark inside, and maybe I'm impatient with the arrangement of props and such, but I think my pictures do a good job of illustrating what I'm selling, and in the end that's important.  You need a photo that's well lit, has good color, and is nice and crisp.

I have two cameras, but I only use the one for my product pictures.  It's a Nikon D40 DSLR.

This is actually pretty old by digital camera standards.  I bought it for my hubs as a wedding present, and we got married in 2007!  Yep, 10 years this year!  It was $400 when we bought it, but if you want this camera, you can find it used for $160.  Nikon still makes entry level DSLR cameras though.  Looks like you can get a Nikon D3400 with a zoom lens for $499.  Of course, you probably already have a smart phone, and most of those are equipped with decent cameras these days. I'm a control freak though, and like to have more control over my photo than most smart phones let you have.  Not to mention I don't have a smart phone!

Since I don't have very good lighting in my home, I use a photo light box.  These are pretty simple devices, and you can actually make one yourself if you want to.  It's simply a square frame with white cloth on all but one side.  You put your item you want to photograph into the box and shine light through the cloth into the box.  This makes it so the light is soft and diffuse with few shadows. 

This is the one I have.  I got it on Amazon for $30 and it came with four different colored backgrounds (red, blue, black, and white).  I got a 32 inch one because sometimes I make a big project and I knew I would need the extra space to photograph it.  What's great about this one is that it pops open, and when you're done it just folds back up and takes up very little space.

Unfortunately it looks like it's unavailable, but here's the product page with all the info.  Maybe you can use the info to find one like it that you like.

The next thing you need for a photo light box is of course lights.  I went and bought four inexpensive clamp style work lights at Homedepot.

While there, I also bought a 4 pack of 100w equivalent of LED bulbs to go into the lamps. 

I wanted LED because A) they don't use very much electricity despite being very bright, and B) they're made of plastic so I don't have to worry about breaking any glass.  They work really well.

I attach all the lamps to a 4 outlet adapter, plug that into an extension cord, and then plug that into the wall I'm working closest to.  Pop open the photo light box and put in the white background.  Then position the lamps so that there's one on either side (I clip one to a box and one to a chair), one on top facing down, and one in the front facing in.  Here's what it looks like.

My photo light box also has a front cover with a small slit in it for your camera.  That way more light stays in the box, and you can put a light in the front too.

Here's the other side.

And here's a peek into the camera slit.

And when I'm done, it all folds back up and fits neatly into my craft room.

Of course, even with this setup, the pictures don't come out perfect.  I need to go in later and work with the photos to correct the colors and lighten the background.  What I use for my photo editing is a program I've been working with for almost 20 (!) years, Correl Paint Shop Pro.

It's usually pretty reasonably priced.  It's normally $100, but you can frequently find it for $50 or less.  If you don't want to pay for a photo editing program, there are free ones, the most popular being a program called Gimp.

Here's a picture of my latest project straight off the camera card.

And here's the edited version of the same photo.

It does take some practice to get photo editing right.  Even thought I've been a digital artist since 1999, it still took me several months of trial and error to get my photos to start looking the way I want them to. 

So there's my photo set up from start to finish!  I hope that helps someone out there with their business.  Photos of your product are the most important part of your listing, and when you're trying to represent something that you put a lot of love into, it's worth the time to put time and effort into the photos too.

Tuesday Tip: Wrangling Craft Cord

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  I hope you all had a good weekend.  Mine was not quite so great; hubs just got over a bad cold and I was going crazy because I hadn't been alone for well over a week.  Eeek!  (Good thing I'm not a parent, right?  Lol)  Thankfully he's fully over his cold now and back to work, and I have the whole house to myself again!

So this week's tip came to me when I was working on the Floss Card Pattern.  While I was wrapping up my embroidery floss, I had to untangle it from a bunch of my craft cord, and I thought that the floss card idea would work great for the cord. 

Of course, the cord is much thicker and comes in pretty long hanks.  It's even more unwieldy than loose embroidery floss, if you can believe that, so there's no way that it would fit on the floss card.  Instead, I decided to just wing it and make something that looked appropriately sized.

Here's a before picture of a hank of cord:

And here's the after:

Much better! 

Since I didn't use a specific pattern, I decided to make this a tip instead.  Basically what I did was I made the floss card pattern only bigger, and finished off with the tape just like I did with the floss card.  I just used scraps of plastic canvas in shapes that looked big enough.  Then when I was done, it all fit nicely into a little shoe box with my collection of embroidery floss.

Tada!  Now instead of a messy ball of knots in a dark and dusty drawer somewhere, they're neatly wound cards filed away on my crafting bookshelf. 

So how do you keep your small bits of cord or string organized?  This is the best idea I've come up with, but to be honest, before I did this all my string really was balled up in a drawer out of sight!  Which worked until I needed something, lol.

Have a great Tuesday, everyone!

Tuesday Tip: Plastic Canvas Scraps / How I Buy Plastic Canvas

Hi everyone!  How have you been doing?  Getting through these long winter days without going crazy?  I sure hope so.  I deal with winter by keeping myself busy.  Consequently, that's why I haven't been posting a lot in my blog lately; I've been so busy with side projects that I haven't taken the time to write!  Which I understand is pretty silly.  If I'm bored, I should blog, right?  I promise I'll try to!

Today's tip is a two-fer.  Since both tips are kind of small, I decided to put them together so you get two tips for the price of one! 

My first tip is a pretty simple one.  Saving plastic canvas scraps.  Maybe this seems like a no brainer for you, but it's such an important tip that I figured I'd better mention it.  I mean, there might be someone out there who hadn't thought of this and might thank me later!

If you work with plastic canvas with any frequency, you soon realize that it can be a wasteful craft.  You take a large sheet of PC, cut out the small piece you need for your pattern, and then you're left with half a sheet of PC.  What do you do with it?  Do you throw it away, or do you save it?  If you save it, then what?  Just throw it in a pile?  That could get messy pretty quickly. 

To make my PC go further, I save most of my scraps.  I like having a wide variety of pieces because you never know what size you're going to need, and this saves you from having to cut up a new sheet.  Here's what my scraps look like.

I keep it in one of my plastic drawers.  This is wide enough to hold all but the biggest pieces, and deep enough so I can keep quite a few scraps indeed.  As you can see, I keep all kinds of scraps.  The big pieces are on top, and the smaller ones are on the bottom.

I don't keep every single scrap.  I used to, but then I realized that I actually never use the tiny scraps.  As a rough rule, I tend to only keep pieces that are the size of my palm or bigger.  It's painful, but you do have to throw some pieces away to make sorting through your scraps easier. 

I actually end up using my scraps about half of the time when I'm working with PC.  They're especially useful for magnets and coasters, but any time you're working on a small piece is a great time to poke through your scraps. 

So that was tip #1.  Like I said, probably not much of a revelation, but it's so important to me that I thought I'd better mention it.  The next tip is another way to save money, but this time it's about how I buy PC in the store.  I'm a huge penny pincher, and trust me when I say I've searched for the absolute cheapest way to buy PC, and now I want to share that with you!

For starters, I want to say that this tip will probably change with time, and it may also be different depending on where you live.  As far as I can tell, these prices are at least consistent across the USA.

I always buy my PC in bundle packs. 

I get my regular sheets (10.5x13.5 inches) at JoAnn Fabrics.  They sell packs of 12 for $5.99 regularly.  However, if you can find a 60% off coupon, which I get about once a month in the mail, you can get it for $2.40!  That ends up being about 20 cents a sheet, which is the very cheapest I've seen PC anywhere, by about half actually.  I try to stock up as much as possible.  It's sad to say, but PC isn't very popular and there's that chance that stores may stop carrying it.  I currently have about 4 unopened packages of PC, and lots of loose sheets.  I should be good for a while.

I also frequently use Ultra Stiff  (12x18 inch) PC in my designs.  The best place I've been able to find to buy this is at Walmart.  At least in my local Walmart, they carry a 3-pack for $3.47, which is about $1.15 a piece.  You could technically get it a little cheaper at JoAnn if you take in a 50% off coupon, but they only sell their utra stiff PC as single pieces, so you would need one coupon for each piece, which is kind of a pain.  So I just buy it at Walmart. 

So there you go, folks.  The cheapest way I've seen to buy PC!  Do any of you have a better source for PC?  Can you buy it in super bulk somewhere for even less?  I'd sure love to know if any of you know!  

Tip Tuesday: Wall Thread Storage

What is it about the new year that makes me (and apparently everyone else) want to start organizing our lives?  Is it the fact that we all decide we want to start the new year with a clean slate (and desk)?  We want to clean out last year's messes and swear this year will be different?  Or maybe the real answer is, that we just want to find room to put all those new things we got for Christmas!  Either way, I think we all have at least a little bit of that urge to start going through drawers and clearing out the old and getting a little more harmony in our lives.

If you follow my blog at all, you know that I've been on an organizing kick lately.  I go through this about once a year.  Last year, I spent an entire week doing nothing but organizing, ironically, my craft room.  Despite how messy and unkept it is now, it was way worse before that.  I figure if I keep doing this once a year, I'll eventually get it the way I want it!

Just a warning, the post ahead is picture heavy!

Tuesday Tip: Homemade Yarn Holder

Hey there, everyone!  How are you doing this chill Tuesday morning?  Did you survive the holiday weekend with your sanity intact?  I hope so!  I managed alright, probably because I knew I could leave the chaos of my family's homes soon and drive back with my loving husband to our quiet home.

This week's tip is another yarn related tip though not necessarily a plastic canvas one.  On my trip to Asheville, NC, I bought two balls of the prettiest purple baby llama yarn, and I just had to make a hat out of it!  I'll be sure to post pictures of it sometime soon, it's so nice.  Well, because it's a high quality yarn, it came as a twisted hank instead of a nice neat skein, which means I had to roll it into a ball before using it.  And then of course I had to knit with a ball of yarn, which is hilarious if you have curious cats around.  Knitting makes the ball roll a little, and then the cats get interested, and before you know it your living room is covered in beautiful, expensive yarn.  Argh!

I thought about getting one of those fancy yarn holders you see on pinterest or Etsy, you know, the ones that look like bowls with a notch or a hole carved into it for the yarn to come out of, but they're usually pretty expensive.  Then, last week I saw something at Joann's that caught my eye.

It's a big plastic jar with a lid on top that has a hole.  Huh.  Simple, yet effective.  The problem I had with this one was that it was very light weight, and I just wasn't sure it would do the job of holding the yarn down as I tugged on it.  I could just envision the whole holder rolling all over the living room floor.  (On the plus side, it was only $10.)

But it did give me a good idea for something I could make myself, and I already had all the things I needed to do it! 

Being a serious homemaker type who gardens, cans, and ferments, I just happened to have a half dozen half gallon mason jars sitting around my house.

Plus, we're trying to get away from using plastic containers to store our leftovers, and we use mason jars a lot as an alternative.  So we have a bunch of these plastic mason jar lids for storage (is that ironic?).

I also decided, after looking at the half gallon jars, that those are probably too big for a small ball of yarn.  A wide mouth quart jar is perfect, though, and it uses the same size jar as the half gallon jar. 

Once you've collected those two or three things, actually making the yarn holder is easy peasy.  Just Get your husband or boyfriend to drill a 1/2 inch hole into the top of the plastic storage lids (or do it yourself; I did!).  Sand it lightly to make sure the yarn won't catch on any rough spots, and you're all set! 

Here's everything all together; a drilled lid, an undrilled lid, a quart jar, and a half gallon jar. 

I found that the half gallon jar is perfect for small-medium skeins of yarn and medium sized balls.  The one pictured is a skein of Red Heart Classic; I was also able to get a skein of Red Heart With Love into this jar as well, however a Skein of Red Heart Super Saver wouldn't fit.  Make sure that if you use a skein, the yarn is coming out of the middle, not off the sides.

The quart jar is just right for smaller balls and small skeins.

The price break down for the half gallon jars is as follows:

 Case of 6 half gallon jars -- $18
                             +
Box of 8 plastic wide mouth storage lids -- $5
____________________________________
$25 for six yarn holders
Or $4.16 for each one

(All prices are from Walmart.com)

Quart jars are cheaper yet, because they come in a case of 12 and are usually cheaper per case.  Or, you could be really cheap and go to Joann's and buy a single jar for a couple of dollars!

Personally, I think having multiple yarn holders around would be very useful, like if the project you're working on uses multiple yarns.  Or, if you're prone to having multiple projects going at once, just stuff your project right into the jar, needles and all, and set it on a shelf. 

So what do you guys think?  Do you use a yarn holder?  Or do you just let the yarn ball roll all over creation?  Would you pay $50 for a fancy ceramic holder?  Or are you super cheap like me? 

Have a great Tuesday everyone!