MFT February Creative Chat

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It's time for the MFT Creative Chat. The My Favorite Things Design Team Creative Chat is a monthly feature, where we are challenged to explore our creative spaces and share valuable organizational methods, tools, and shopping strategies with you. You'll be able to peek into our creative spaces, ask questions, and share your own ideas in the MFT forum.  This month, we were asked the following questions: 

 

Show us how you store your ribbon.

What are your favorite types of ribbon?

Any tips or tricks on how to use ribbon on stamped creations?

Visit Kim's Blog for a full list of designers that have taken up the challenge and get ready to delve into the minds of our creative team.

OK, ready for a tour of my ribbon storage? I have a lot of pictures for you to see, so get comfy.

First of all, here’s a fabulous rack my DH built for me for ribbon that I want to keep on the roll. It’s attached to the door of my stamp room using otherwise wasted space. I keep scissors and a measuring tape handy on a hook. I just love looking at all those colors, LOL! At the very bottom, I store all my 1/8” ribbon rolls. It’s too narrow to wind and I use it to package cards I sell on Etsy.

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In this close up, you can see there’s a dowel just above each shelf that the ribbon is passed under. I can pull off what I want and it keeps the whole roll from flying off the shelf.

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To get the most in my space for all other ribbon, I adopted this system that I saw on Becca Feeken’s blog a couple of years ago. I love it! You will notice that I can see every ribbon I have at a glance. I really like being able to do that (otherwise I forget what I *do* have) and this does the trick. Each color of ribbon is wrapped on a cardboard “bobbin”, secured with a tiny rubber band, then “filed” in a drawer of a Sterlite tote. More about that later.

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I arrange my ribbon by colors. In this drawer I have blacks, grays,  whites, and creams. Metallic silver is considered gray.

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This drawer has browns, yellows, and the start of oranges. Metallic gold is considered yellow.

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This drawer finishes the oranges and goes on to rust, then the start of the reds.

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In this drawer I keep the rest of the reds and the start of pinks.

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In this drawer you’ll see the rest of the pinks.

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This drawer has purples going into true blues.

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This drawer has more aqua blues and the bluer greens.

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This drawer contains all the yellow greens.

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In this drawer, I keep all my multicolor/holiday ribbons.

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OK, now for a little about HOW I do it. I get this mat board weight board at Office Max. It comes in 30” x 20” sheets and I have them cut it into 15” x 10” pieces for me so I can handle it on my paper cutter.

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Then I cut each section into 2” x 2 1/2” “bobbins”. I get 5 strips and 6 “bobbins” from each strip. So, you can see you can get a lot of bobbins from one sheet of this board. If I remember correctly, it’s about $6 for each board and they charge a few dollars to cut it into quarters. I also use this board for the dividers in each drawer. They’re 12” long by 2” high. When I was first implementing this system, I taped the dividers to the bottom of the drawer, but now that the drawers are pretty full, they’re not going anywhere ;-)

After I wind the ribbon—I only put about 3 yards of heavy/wide ribbon on each bobbin, but I can get up to 10 yards of thin and narrow on a bobbin. After I wind it, I just secure it with one of these little black rubber bands, which I find in the hair accessories aisle at Wal*Mart, quite inexpensively. Now, this project will take some time to get set up, but I found lots of time to do it while watching TV, riding in the car--I’ve even taken it to meetings and worked on it there :)

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One caveat: most ribbon will develop creases from being on the bobbin. To take care of that problem, I keep a small flat iron handy beside my craft table chair. Once I decide what ribbon I’m going to use, I turn the flat iron on, measure what I need, and cut it off the bobbin. By that time the flat iron has heated up and I just pull the ribbon through to smooth out the creases. Takes another minute but well worth it for the ability to find what I want quickly.

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My favorite ribbon for card making is any that is soft and not too bulky. Seam binding definitely falls within that category so I use it a good bit. Here’s where I store my rolls of seam binding. I keep a roll of low-tack painter’s tape handy to keep the ends taped down—otherwise that tote would be a hot mess! I’m thinking I need some more colors, though, don’t you? Definitely need to place an order soon :)

One tip about seam binding: I used to dye/distress a bunch of it ahead of time with Distress Inks. It takes quite a bit of time for it to dry if you want it wrinkled, and have some I did up that I’ve never used. Now I buy the colored seam binding and distress it as I need it. How? I use a Copic refill (E33 is my favorite) to distress what I need for a card/project. After I drop on some E33, I add some colorless refill to get it damp enough, then just scrunch it up in my hands until it’s wrinkled enough and dry. Since it’s alcohol based, it dries pretty quickly and I don’t have to have a lot of different colors made up, and I don’t have to find a place to store it. It’s a little stiffer than that done with Distress Inks, but the convenience more than compensates for that. After it’s dry, more scrunching will soften it a bit and this method ties as well as the other, IMO. Um, ignore the paper scraps on the floor, will ya? ;-)

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I’m also counting Baker’s twine in the ribbon category and it’s also all in a drawer—not neatly. This storage “system” is not earth shattering, LOL, but I thought I might as well share it. I started to arrange it all nice but I knew it wouldn’t stay that way so I thought: “Why bother—it’s all in one place, I can see it, and I can find it just fine” ;-)

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I also love regular twine and use it a LOT! I buy the large rolls and just leave it on the rolls. Silver is used more for Christmas projects.

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And, lastly, another favorite “ribbon” of mine is twill. I store it in a drawer on the rolls on which it comes. I have several sizes of natural, several of white (more sizes in another drawer--I can also color the white with Distress Ink pads by just drawing the pad over a length of twill), and one size of black.

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Thanks so much for stopping by to take my little tour of my ribbon storage system. I hope you’ve found a little something that will help you with your ribbon organization.

Hope to see you back tomorrow for the first teaser of March! This release is AWESOME (aren’t they ALL?) so you won’t want to miss a single thing :)

 

MFT February Creative Chat–The Creative Process

It's time for the MFT Creative Chat. The My Favorite Things Design Team Creative Chat is a monthly feature, where we are challenged to explore our creative spaces and share valuable organizational methods, tools, and shopping strategies with you. You'll be able to peek into our creative spaces, ask questions, and share your own ideas in the MFT forum.  This month, we were challenged with the following:  

• Show us your creative mind at work.  Take us on a journey through a card-making session, start to finish.
• How do you select colors, layout, embellishments, and overall design?
• Share your creative process with us.

Visit Kim's Blog for a full list of designers that have taken up the challenge and get ready to delve into the minds of our creative team.

OK, so are you ready for lots of pictures? I’m going to walk you through how *I* go about designing a card from a sketch. I pretty much do the same things no matter what my starting place is. If I’m working on a color challenge, or an inspiration piece, I almost always start with my layout. Mind you, that layout may change in the process, but that’s where I start. The exception to this rule is when I have to use a particular stamp set, say, for teasers. Then, obviously, I start with the set, but my next step is to find a sketch that will work with that set. So, let’s get to it, shall we?

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I’m going to show you how I designed my card for MFT’s Wednesday Sketch Challenge #56. First, I pulled up the sketch on my computer—I keep it in front of me the entire time I’m working.


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I knew I wanted to make a Valentine card so next I got out all my Valentine paper to see which one “spoke” to me the most.


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I decided to go with MME ‘Love Me’ collection and then worked on choosing papers. I pulled out several designs and card stocks and switched them all around until I decided this was the arrangement I liked the best.


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Then I decided on what stamp set I wanted to use. I chose to use Inspired by Love, which hadn’t see any love lately ;-) I went with the fancy heart as my focal image. 


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My next step was to see what Die-namics die I wanted to use for that circular element. So, I tried out the image I’d chosen from the set to see what die I liked best for this image. I chose the Dizzy Doily Die-namics die for this one.


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But…I think the heart looks a little lost on the large die and it was too large for the sketch, as well, so…


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…I tried it out on the largest of the Dizzy Doily Duo Die-namics dies and it was “just right” :)


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Next, I roughly laid out all my elements to see if this was really the way I wanted to go. This is where I’ll adjust a sketch a bit if necessary…


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This is where I decided on my sentiment. Since I was going to use the flag from First Place Award Ribbon Die-namics die set, the sentiment had to fit on the flag. I tried several out but decided to go with this one from Clearly Sentimental About Romance. 


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…and then I firmed up my design but don’t put it together yet.



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Now I needed to decide on some embellishments. To do this, I brought out several things I thought might work…


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…and then rejected them all for this. I felt I needed a little more aqua blue on the card so first I tried some turquoise baker’s twine. But, it was too dark so I went with red and a dark aqua button. I think this balanced it out nicely.


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I was happy with that so the only thing left to do was put it together and here’s the finished result. Sometimes I decide to sew on a card—actually, I have to make myself NOT sew on a card sometimes, LOL! I fear they’ll all look alike if I do that, so I mix it up. This one seemed to *need* sewing so I did it.



So, that’s it! That’s the way I go about creating a card. I hope I’ve given you a few tips for making the creative process easier for you!

Thanks so much for stopping by! I'll be back tomorrow with this week's MFT Wednesday Sketch Challenge! 

December MFT Creative Chat - Embellishments

It's time for the MFT Creative Chat. The My Favorite Things Design Team Creative Chat is a monthly feature, where we are challenged to explore our creative spaces and share valuable organizational methods, tools, and shopping strategies with you. You'll be able to peek into our creative spaces, ask questions, and share your own ideas in the MFT forum.  This month, we were asked the following questions:  


Show us how you store your embellishments.

What are your absolute favorite embellishments?

Any tips or tricks on how to use embellishments on stamped creations?

Visit Kim's Blog for a full list of designers that have taken up the challenge and get ready to delve into the minds of our creative team.


OK, are you ready for the tour? Let's go! I keep flat things like chipboard letters in a drawer in a Sterlite cabinet.

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I love canning jars and use them for all kinds of storage. I use them for canisters in my kitchen and buttons in my stamp room. These are the little pint jelly jars and I use the replacement white plastic tops instead of the lids and rings. Each of these jars contains one color of buttons. A little further back you'll see pint jars with color collections.

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The little 4 oz jars are perfect for brads. I don't use brads a lot, but I want them handy when I do. You'll also see some smaller button collections in these little jars. I keep all the jars on lazy Susans so I can see everything easily, at the touch of a finger.

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Here I have some Prima flowers, sorted by color, and all of my stick pins in one pint jar. I probably should sort them out into smaller jars.

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In this set of medium Sterlite drawers you'll see...Big Brads, LOL! It's even labeled! These are larger brads and Basic Gray Brads.

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In this set of medium Sterlite drawers I keep my bling.

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Bottom drawer has all my pearls.

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Middle drawer is gem stones.

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And top drawer is for my flourishes, gems and pearls.

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I also love Dew Drops. I keep my little bottles of them on a turntable handy to my stamping area. and...

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...also close by I have this nifty box of dispensers that I got on eBay. Lots of colors, conveniently packaged and also handy on my table.

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OK, that's it for storage. As for my favorite embellishment...well, it's a toss up between buttons and Dew Drops/pearls. I love buttons on ribbons, on twine, or simply by themselves--always with twine, never naked, LOL. I love them because you can use them with ANY style project--from CAS, to Vintage, to primitive, to, well, anything!

I love Dew Drops/pearls because they give the look of brads without the hassle. I never seem to be able to line brads up straight and then you've got the problem with the "legs" between layers. With Dew Drops or pearls, aligning them is much easier than brads for me. I did figure out a way around the "leggy" problem, though, and it also helps with lining them up. Sometimes nothing will do except a brad, KWIM? I'll show you how I manage them with a few pictures.

First, cut the legs off your brads as close as you can down inside the cap. I keep some wire cutters hand for this purpose.

Then, push the "stumps" down into the cap as far as possible. I use a hemostat but small needle nosed pliers or jewelry pliers would work. And sometimes I just smack it with the flat side of my wire cutters ;-)

Next, fill up the cap with liquid glue or Crystal Effects (my preference).

Don't overfill or it will leak out around your brad when you adhere it into place. Voila! No legs to deal with and you can move them a tiny bit if necessary for neatness.

And that's it for embellishments from me--thanks so much for stopping by! I hope I gave you a few things to think about when organizing your embellishments.

January teasers start tomorrow, so I'll be back with Day One and then later on with this week's MFT Wednesday Sketch Challenge! Hope to see you back!