It's done!!

... Well, hello all! It's been quite a while since I added anything to my blog. This is a long post, but keep going to the end - there's something special!!

As you may know from previous posts, we moved back to Wales in October last year after very nearly 7 years in Northville, Michigan. It's wonderful to be here, but I do miss my stateside friends. And I really, really miss my local US craft shops - I was very lucky to have two wonderful shops within easy reach of our home in Northville - Scrappy Chic, Livonia and Stampeddlar, Northville. If you're in Michigan, both are worth a visit.

Now that I'm back home, I'm finding that my local shops are probably going to be online shops - Seven Hills Crafts, Art from the Heart (yes, I do know there is a real shop and I'll get there soon), Bumbleberry Crafts, and I'm sure I'll find lots more soon.

We've been extremely busy since getting home - lots of renovation work being done on our bathrooms - will share photos once the work is completed. And I've been busy sorting out my craftroom. I'm very lucky to have an enormous room with great light. Here are some photos of my new space:

The tall cabinet is Storeage4crafts. It holds 54 Really Useful A4 4L boxes, and it's not far off full - mostly with stamps that I purchased while in the States. The tall tower unit is home to most of my Stampin' Up! and Uniko sets. On the far wall, you can see where I keep all my Dyan, Dina and Tim stamps, along with my embossing folders and various punches too.

My desk fits nicely in the corner with a daylight lamp on the desk to provide extra light at night. On my desk, I have several storage units holding Gina K and Memento ink pads. On the small unit - you can see my Distress and Distress Oxide storage units.

This shows yet more storage - various items, ribbons, paints, cutting/embossing station, Stampin' Up! inkpads, etc etc.

The Ikea Kallax units, also came back from the States, are for storing various journals, papers, inks, photos, etc - all work in progress. On top of the units are perspex contains where I store dies - MFT, Concord & 9th, Waltzingmouse Stamps, Altenew, CAS-ual Friday, and lots of free ones too.

The last photo shows two Raskog carts (both came back from Michigan). They are full of paints, sprays, inks, glitter paste, watercolor pads, and all manner of coloring paraphernalia.

I am really happy how my room has come together.  and I can't wait to ink up some stamps!! I think I'm going to join in a couple of challenges in the next week or two. I'll have to get a move on, as my ankle surgery is now likely to be the end of this month and I won't be able to get upstairs to use this fab place for a couple of weeks!!!

One of the best results of the move home is that I've been able to go through my stash. I've catalogued new items, remove old stash, and discovered that in my haste to get some new stash before leaving Michigan, I did end up with some duplicates!! Hey ho!

That's all for now, hopefully my next post will be for a challenge! Thanks for stopping by.

Getting organised ...

.... Hi! Good afternoon. No card to share with you today, but a few photos of some recent crafting organisation. I was lucky enough to visit Village Paper & Ink, Gina K's shop in Wisconsin earlier this year. My wonderful husband treated me to all the full-size ink pads in Gina's collection (I didn't get the pigment inks). I was thrilled to bits to get them all.

I got them home and, for a while, they stayed in the carrier bag. Finally, I took off all the cellophane and started to use them, but I still didn't really have anywhere to put them. Last Sunday I ordered a Slim Inkpad Holder (72 pads) from Stamp'n'Storage and it arrived yesterday. I've spent the last few days reorganising and labelling the ink pads. It's not my idea, but one I've borrowed from Jennifer McGuire. Here's a photo of my new unit full of Gina K ink pads, along with some of my other ink pads:

The unit fits nicely on the cabinet and makes it really easy to get at all the pads. The photo below is a close up of the labels.

I also have a couple of ink pads storage units for my Distress ink pads and also for the Distress Oxide pads:

This unit contains all my distress ink pads. I didn't take a photo of the oxide unit, as it's still got quite a few empty slots for when Tim releases more oxides!! That's all for now. I've still got a lot more tidying up to do. See you soon.

New Craft Room ....

.... Hi! I've finished my craft room - at last! I went to Ikea yesterday to get another Kallax unit and a small table as I'd run out of shelf space. Jonathan and I put them together at lunch time and I spent the early part of the afternoon finishing putting things away. I then managed to make a card! Yea!

My room here at our new house is quite a bit smaller than my previous room. However, as it should be a bedroom, it does have the bonus of a nice deep closet which is the perfect place to put stuff. Here are a few photos of the room, still a bit messy, but at least I can work at my desk now.

Inside the closet - I was able to put my stamp storage boxes along one side. In the middle is the shelf unit - at the moment I've just put stuff on shelves, I will sort out their proper homes sometime next week.

The other side of the closet has this 4 hole Kallax unit - there's space on top for my 12" x 12" design paper storage boxes and some space at the side for various bits and pieces.

I've been able to put the tower unit in the corner of the room here which is the perfect place. And you can see a new box of goodies from Stampin' Up! that arrived yesterday - still some space in the unit to fill!

This is my work area.  I've got my desk in the corner with two small units behind me on which I store various bits - tapes, cards, washi, pens, etc.

Finally, the larger Kallax unit (which was originally for our bedroom) and it's full!

It's been fun going through all my stash. I've rediscovered stuff that I'd forgotten about and will be using in the coming weeks. At some point I'm going to put my artwork on the walls - but that's a job for the future. It's been a busy day, and I'd best come to a close and get dinner for us all.

Do stop by tomorrow - I actually have a card to share with you.  See you soon.