132 days until my 20th Birthday...not that I am counting or anything, but eeekkk the date is definately creeping up on me quickly!

132 days until my 20th Birthday...not that I am counting or anything, but eeekkk the date is definately creeping up on me quickly!

Posted by Alice at 2:58 PM 3 comments
Deciding how I was going to display my newly sorted stash was definitely the most enjoyable part of the process. One of the difficulties with keeping my stash orderly was due to my lack of a singular creative space where I could work. I have a desk in my bedroom, however while I was at school this was used to do my homework on. In the past 18 months it hasn’t been used for anything more than storing random junk. All my Uni work is done at my apartment in the city, on my desk there and on my laptop. It never occurred to me that my old school desk could be used now as a scrapping station.
I was standing in my room, staring at all the piles of supplies, when the idea hit me. I got to work clearing all the junk from my desk, emptying old notebooks and papers from the drawers and moving books from the shelf. I dug out some empty Prima flower jars, Maya Road tins and cute colourful bowls I had collected and starting filling these with my supplies. It all came together really quickly and when I was done it looked like this:
It is small and it definitely isn’t perfect, but I am oh so happy with how everything has turned out. I like having my supplies out in the open where I can see and admire them. Just glancing up at my shelves fills me with the itching urge to scrap.
My most used supplies are all within easy reach, in bowls, jars and boxes which I can ruffle through when I am searching for that perfect ‘something’ to complete my pages. I particularly like the openness of the bowls and boxes, I can see exactly what I have and easily ‘chuck’ things back if I decide not to use them. (Perfect for a messy, lazy person like myself!)
Below is a little ‘tour’ of my new space.
I have had this lamp since I was about 7!!! It is perfect for casting light across my desk in the evenings. Here I also have a bucket which holds all my most used tools, such as scissors, fine liners, double sided tape, ink etc. The little pink box to the right holds anything which I am saving for a page idea. At the moment it holds some ribbons which will match my old school uniform perfectly and some cherry embellishments to go with a page I plan to make about my grandpa.
My shelves. I had so much fun organising these!!! I am using the maya road tins to store my hearts, stars, photo corners, circles and tabs/pockets. My ribbons are looking pretty all lined up together in the glass jars! The little cups I have had for a while but never used. I figured that they are too cute to keep packed away. Now they are holding little bits and pieces which didn’t fit anywhere else and which I don’t have a lot of. My purple box holds journaling spots/cards, whereas the gold box holds my words. The little coloured bowls currently hold tags, decorative brads and bling, however I will swap these around when I get inspired by certain products.
A close up of my ribbons!
My flowers are sorted by colour in different glass jars I collected over the years.
Here is a wide shot of the corner where my desk is. My clip it up is not going to stay there in the corner. Next to my paper holder is currently a TV which I don’t often use. I am giving this to my brother and getting myself an expedit shelf from ikea. I plan to put the clip it up on top of the shelf and store my extra supplies and albums in the squares.
This is a little shelf to the side of my desk. At the moment it is holding paint, glitter and my paper trimmer. Not sure if it will stay like this when I get the expedit shelf or not though.
And lastly here is a glimpse inside my desk drawers. The top one holds tools. The next two I am using to store extra embellishments which I don’t use as often. They are sorted into baggies by themes such as ‘things with wings’, ‘ephemera style items’ and ‘borders’.
The bottom drawer is just holding my extra paper scraps, but I want to sort through and use as much of these so I can free another drawer for myself.
What now? Well now I am off to do some scrapping!!!
Anyone else have photos of their scrap spaces they can share? I would love to see!!!
Posted by Alice at 4:07 PM 4 comments
Labels: Articles, Organisation
And so the sorting began….
Previously, I had kept my supplies in boxes according to what they were. I had a box for chipboard, jars of flowers, a box of tags, a box of stickers etc. I realised that the reason this wasn’t working for me was because my supplies were not sorted into categories which I search for when I am creating a page. When I need an embellishment, I never think “I want to use some chipboard” or “I need to use a sticker”. No, I find myself considering exactly what will help me tell the story on my page. I go searching for circles or hearts or stars or butterflies or flowers….
And so I started making piles. As my piles grew, I put them into plastic take away containers on my bed. By doing this I could see exactly what I had, what I obviously liked buying and what I use the most.
One of my biggest piles was for my words. Often I do a page, but find myself stuck on a title. Sometimes I don’t know what the title should be or discover that I don’t have the right alphabets to make it say what I want it to. Over the years I have collected masses of embellishments, stickers and rubons with words on them. I hardly ever use them because previously they have been packed away and mixed with my other supplies and I never thought to go searching for them. Now, with my words all together in one place, I plan to use them for titles and to help tell the story on my pages.
Other major piles I had were: journaling blocks, tags, flower shapes, photo corners (another item which I love but hardly used because I could never find them!) and ribbons. As you can see from my ‘before’ photos in my previous post, I have a HUGE ribbon collection. What can I say? I just love the textures, colours, look of ribbon on my pages…and I also like wearing them in my hair when the mood strikes! Lol!
I have always been stuck as to how to store my ribbons. The big tub which they were in was always overflowing, tangled and just too irritating to wade through if I was searching for a particular colour. I had these big glass jars which I had been using to store my flowers in, however they weren’t working for me. The jars were too big for the amount of flowers I had and I couldn’t sort the colours properly in the 5 jars which I owned. If I wanted a single flower, I had to tip the entire contents of the jar out to find it. So, I decided to use these jars for my ribbons instead, sorted by colour groups. This has to be my favourite organisational choice so far. I will now be able to see exactly which ribbons I have and feel more inspired to use them on my pages. (And they look really pretttyyyy too!)
I spent a good two days sorting everything out. I went through my paper stash, putting papers by my favourite manufacturers together and then the other random sheets left over into piles sorted by colour. I also pulled out my scraps and put them together in a container. It is shocking the amount of scrap paper I have! I knew that I had to put it somewhere near where I would scrapbook, to ensure that I could use it up and access it freely when I am making pages. I found a blue plastic basket which I bought a few years ago for my paints and placed any scraps which were inspiring me in there. The rest got placed in the bottom drawer of my desk. As my blue basket gets empty, I will refill it with more scraps from the drawer. The basket can also hold new scraps which I create while scrapping.
It was a long, but enjoyable process and with everything sorted, it was time to work out how to display it!
Posted by Alice at 10:45 AM 4 comments
Labels: Articles, Organisation
Over the past few days I have been attempting to declutter my scrap stash. During the next couple of posts, I will share here my process as I wade through my supplies and reorganise them to work for me and the way I scrapbook.
I often admire other people’s scrapbook spaces and wish that mine could be as organised and aesthetically pleasing as theirs is. I imagine what I would like mine to look like, if I had a house of my own. Recently it occurred to me that instead of waiting and wishing, I should put my wants into action. I know that I can’t have a whole scrap room to myself right now and that organising my supplies will be difficult with my living in two places at once (Uni in the city and home in the country). However, I was determined to give it a shot!
The majority of my scrapbook supplies are home here in the country. I have more time to scrapbook when I am home and I have more space here, so this is where I have decided to keep the majority of my supplies.
Now, I am the first to admit that I am a messy person. I don’t particularly like it, but it is the way I have always been. As a child my room was never tidy, Mum was always (and still is!) on my back to pick up after myself, my handwriting is relatively messy, my email inbox is full to the brim and of course my scrapbook supplies are in a state of complete disarray.
Over the years I have tried to sort my stash in different ways. The most recent was in plastic containers by product type which I stored in a spare side of my wardrobe. This was a good idea at the time, but the whole concept of having to open and close containers and put things back where they belonged just didn’t seem to work for me…


The worst thing was, because it looked so messy, I was finding scraping with everything extremely daunting. I would decide that I wanted to use white paint only to discover it was hidden underneath a huge pile of paper, spend hours looking for my Kaiser bling and accidently buy doubles of the same items because I couldn’t see what I already had. It came to the point where I couldn’t be bothered starting anything at all because just looking at ALL THAT STUFF was utterly exhausting and that definitely wasn’t inspiring me.
Something snapped a few days ago. I felt embarrassed looking at all this stuff. All my precious supplies, which I had spent so much money, time and energy on, deserved to be treated so much better than this. And so, with a few free days ahead of me, I decide to take action...
(to be continued...)
Posted by Alice at 4:12 PM 4 comments
Labels: Articles, Organisation





Posted by Alice at 11:51 AM 1 comments
Labels: Inspiration
I have returned from a 12 day camping trip to Central Australia with University. This was definitely one of the best trips I have ever been on!!! I had so much fun, met so many lovely people and learnt a lot about Australia which I didn't know before.
We stopped at Glendambo for lunch and just had to get a photograph with this sign. Very cool!
Emily and I sharing breakfast the first morning after camping at Port Augusta.
Eeeekk!!!! Being trapped down a mine at Cooper Peedy!! HELPPPP.......
Us in our tent at Yalara near Uluru. We had to sleep in these tents each night. Thankfully they were easy to put up and take down... but they were not very warm! The coldest nights I have ever experienced!
A group of us standing at the base of the Olgas after a morning bush walk.
Sunset in front of Uluru. Watching the rock change colours in the different lights was amazing!
'Surfing' on the rock caves at the base of Uluru!!!
Standing near this freezing waterhole at Simpson. We had the chance to swim across it, but it was so cold that not many of us did.
The view from Anzac Hill in Alice Springs.
We climbed Kings Canyon and walked around the base of it. Truly one the prettiest walks we did.
I loved all the 'Alice' signs up everywhere around Alice Springs!!!
Getting a kiss from one of the local reptile inhabitants!
Me with some of the girls *cough* guys one fine evening in Alice Springs.
"I'm in, I'm out...." Me standing on the board between South Australia and the Northern Territory.
SOOOO MANY long us rides! We had a 32 hour bus drive express on the way home!
No camping trip is complete without marshmellow toasting and a bon fire!
We climbed the rock!!!!!! Well...we climbed a rock anyways...... At the base of Uluru.
One of my favourite parts was hand feeding the wallabies at Alice Springs. They were truly the most gorgeous little animals!!!!Posted by Alice at 12:59 PM 4 comments


Only a quick post....I am off to catch the bus back to Melbourne...feel like I am spending my life on the bus and train lately! *rolls eyes*
Chat soonies!!!!
Alice
xoxo
Posted by Alice at 9:29 AM 6 comments
Go swimming in a bikini and not feel self-conscious
Teach myself to be a good runner and complete a marathon
Become a vegetarian
Be able to speak French fluently
Buy a country cottage in Europe and live there for a year
Hold my own art exhibition
Loose weight, tone up and shock anyone who hasn't seen me for a while by how good I look!
Work for a leading design firm
Learn to love meditation and yoga
Live by the sea
Go for a ride in a hot air balloon
Have an article written about me in a leading magazine
Have a "Blair" style closet full of gorgeous clothes that I love and which fit me perfectly
Go to a third world country and volunteer
Release my own product line
Go skinny dipping at night in a public place
Write and publish a book
Pack a bag and go on a spontaneous, heat of the moment holiday
Take dance lessons again
Swim under a waterfall
Swim with dolphins
Experience a white Christmas
Get all my family photos sorted and backed up a few times
Write my own autobiography
Read a book a fortnight for a year
Research and record my family history
Keep a diary for a whole year, hide it away and read it again in 10 years time
Grow my and eat my own fruit and vegetables
Become the mummy of two beautiful ragdoll kittens - Bella and Rose (Yes I have already chosen their names! lol)
.....to be continued
And here is a layout for the SM cyber crop!!!! So much fun! Make sure you head over to the forum for more details:
http://www.scrapbookingmemories.com.au/forum

Posted by Alice at 6:15 PM 0 comments
Posted by Alice at 5:37 PM 1 comments









Posted by Alice at 7:46 PM 3 comments