Sunday Felt Like a New Day & A Day of Organizing (long)

   Just popping in to thank everyone that commented on my last post. I felt much better yesterday evening after posting and then reading all of your supportive comments. So thank you for reaching out.

  Weather doesn't usually get me down either but I think it has been the combination of allot of things and not feeling well. I have just two more days of the steroids and am down now to the one pill a day. These really got me in a bad way this time around. They cure things but they are really hard on the body. This time I was just walking around like I had too much to drink-lol  and I drank no wine or anything while on these pills. This is the first day I didn't feel like that-so good news on that front.

  Today it was cold, windy and rained all day long-for sure not a nice Easter weekend around my area if one had plans for outdoor activities. We will be close to freezing again tonight and tomorrow evening as well. I think the following week we will finally get some end of the rain and cold. I wanted to work on killing all of this grass here and it has either rained, too windy or too cold to do that-so of course everyone's grass here is growing like crazy now with all of this rain.

  So, yesterday late I started working a bit in my craft room in the area where my desk and sewing table are. Today I worked all day figured 8 hours. I wanted to clear that  cabinet and make better use of the storage for that unit-and I achieved that. For some reason I had collected allot of flat cardboard pieces of all sizes a huge garbage bag full-what was I thinking?? haha  I am thinking perhaps to use for mixed media and messy projects on my desk top. Got rid of all that and was able to organize allot.

  The top shelf has only half the width of the board left but it worked out ok. This top shelf now has on the bottom of the pile, some frame materials of different sizes, on top is textured packing materials for mixed media journal page textures-and I now have a spot for my light box which I have not used yet and an envelope maker which I also haven't tried out and want to. Have any of you made your own envelopes? I need to try this soon When I would ride along with a neighbor to the big city down the road from me, we always made sure we had  JoAnn's coupons with us. 

  I also moved some writing materials from my vintage desk in bedroom to here-envelopes, papers, a few cards etc. In the big wooden box is tools for mountain man stuff-sinew etc , the metal box is heavy and full of old crayons-plus I bought this new box because it had the brand new blue that came out awhile back. I have a few rolls of wasabi tape too

 Here is the top of this cabinet now-so much better-to the left are a few painting books and information, in the middle and to the right are calligraphy papers, books, the vintage container was a sewing box so it has pilot calligraphy which I forgot I bought first before deciding on the dip pens, and a few other items writing related. In the cigar box are my dip pens, and the vintage tin from England has a few nibs.  So this space is much cleaner now and best of all organized. Yeh  I love this big box of dry wax papers which I buy at Sam's Club online now. I put it between my mixed media pages, and I use it also to keep my painting space clean on my desk.

  The drawers on the right are better utilized too-one for watercolor papers, one for watercolor inks, and the bottom big drawer has all sorts of art stuff, glues and odds.

  I cleaned the wood and floors etc as I worked around in this area.

  My biggest find, that gave me much needed space was a spot in my big desk I had totally forgotten about.

  This is set up with a spring that brings this shelf up to the door and works as a little table. I had my sewing machine set up here (at the woods house) before I inherited my Mom's sewing table. So this space was just so fun to find again.

   This photo is before I cleaned it This is such a cool desk.

What was neat when I discovered this again-there was a bag of odd things in it. The fun part was that Larry and I were just talking about saving an onion mesh bag so I could fill it with wool bits for the birds nests making-and here it was, along with this little note pad-perfect for my project-smiles

After going through this bag, the reason I had this was for my sun dyeing projects using Pebeo sun paints-you lay these on top of the dyed fabric and the sun will add these textures to it as it dries and the dye works it's magic-that was such a fun dye project. That was years ago now

So now I have a spot for all of those boxes of colored pencils, watercolor pencils, Crayola tins of different sorts of markers, drawing pens, gel pens etc, and I even found two kinds of chalk, and oils from Crayola-so I think I am set for supplies haha  The past two years around the end of November Crayola has a huge sale on their supplies with free shipping,  so I picked up a few items for my mixed media journal pages back then.  I also had enough room in front of these boxes to place all the mixed media papers and I found a pad of acrylic painting papers too.

  I cleaned up the area for rug hooking-which is to the right of above cabinet and right by the door. This is an antique high school desk from my school Mishawaka High School in Indiana.  When my little sister went to school there they removed them all and sold them, my brother got me one. It's perfect for the wool cutter.

I have not looked at this project since we moved here. Wow I need to get this out as it only has a bit on the borders to finish.  I wanted to try this out, to make at least one piece as my Mom was an artisan with her rug hooking. She did amazing work the east coast style not the 1/4" primitive style that many use now. Very refined work. I only have one her pieces. My brother took most of her pieces and I did have the staircase piece but I gave that to one of my cousins so it would stay in the family as he has several children.

   I got my hooked stitches a little too tight so I need to finish it then steam it and see what happens. This is all cut from my reclaimed felted down wools. I have my Mom's cutter she used in the 50's and 60's and I had picked up one at a garage sale for pennies-these are very expensive units. I searched out and bought two different size cutter heads.

This was a patriotic design

I have this much to finish all around-you can see this is a bit too tight I think-we'll see what happens.

I don't think it shows up, but this is toweling that I sun painted with a large fern on top-it is faint but pretty

  I also cleaned around my sewing table, got things off the floor in this area, and moved my Grandma's sewing box to this spot (full of beads now). I inherited my Mom's sewing room, so I have a huge selection of quilting rulers over there by the wall. This huge vintage trunk is full of all things leather-well that's another story haha

  I will close for now-I felt good get this whole work area pretty cleaned up and organized. The closet disaster will be next haha

  Enjoy your evening everyone.