Practice Practice Practice

In an attempt to learn and fine tune a new crafting interest of mine I've been playing around with a few gadgets and looking around for hints and tricks online on how to use them. My first find was the Sizzix Big Shot. I mainly liked the idea of being able to add embossing and impressions to cards and envelopes that I send out.

My second find was the Craft ROBO. I liked the idea of not having to take an exacto knife to everything I try to design. Also this machine is great with cutting out vinyl which I could also use when it comes the the small details of decorating my future daughters nursery.

One thing I soon found was that the Craft ROBO was not so easy a contraption to learn. I had to do a lot of searching and reading to find good worthwhile tutorials on how to create the lines that it knows to cut vs. the lines that it just dots for easier bending. Just figuring out the loading of the paper was my first real challenge.

Last night I did some looking into more information and finally tried out a large pillow box design. It worked! haha. Just for fun I ran it through the Sizzix Big Shot embossing to add a little design and finished it off with some color and a ribbon.

Nothing special but yet I'm happy that I've succeeded in making at least 1 pillow box using cardstock. Next task is to try out various types of paper!

Finally have my Art Area setup!

When we'd first moved into this house I saw that we would have an extra bedroom and I declared it would be my arts, crafts, office room. Well, you know how it is. You unpack the things you need right away and then all the little knick knacks and decorative things remain in the boxes. We slowly piled all those boxes along with all my college art supplies in the spare bedroom. It became more and more filled with half empty boxes.

About 7 months later we decided to try for a child and were instantly successful! So now we're looking at this spare room and realizing we need to clear it out to turn it into a nursery. I was a little disappointed that I'd never gotten to turn it into my art room.

I first started thinking about trying to turn our outdoor storage shed into my art room but soon as the weather warmed up and we stepped into there I realized that I would roast during the summer and freeze in winter. I started looking at our front room where our pool table was. With a little house rearranging I could claim the back wall area!

So our first step was to find a reasonable craft table that I wouldn't feel overly guilty about getting stuff stained onto it or accidentally knicking it with the exacto knife. Using an old Staple giftcard from my aunt we got a nice large 8ft table! My husband then helped me move some of the furniture around and now I have my own art area set up and ready for crafting.

I've started using it test out ideas of mine for things I'd like to create and start selling in Etsy. Below I will show you the progress photos over the couple weeks that this task took to complete. It's really not complete yet. But mainly I just have to organize the items I want on the shelves and table.

(Click each thumbnail to be taken to larger view)