Desktop Organizer

Greetings on a cool clear September Saturday morning. It feels like autumn today! I want to go pick a pumpkin, even though it would rot before Halloween. I also want to wear boots. And go fishing at the beach.

Anyhoo, I wanted to share my exciting little desktop organizer that I bought yesterday at Target. It has 4 triangular sections to store things in the opening on top, plus a small 3-section drawer on one side and a bigger drawer on the other. Another side has elastic strips attached in several places that can hold scissors, rulers, etc. The fourth side is my favorite. It's metal and came with 4 magnets, for use as a small bulletin board. Oh and it spins.

So I had what I thought was a pretty ingenious idea. I have these watchmaker's tins that I bought from Lee Valley Tools last year. I was going to use them for spices but after an "incident" with some paprika I decided the lids were not quite tight enough for spices. But they work fine for storing embellishments like flowers, brads, etc. So my idea was to add magnetic sheeting to the backs of the tins and stick them onto my little organizer! I used my Fiskars large Round n Round squeeze punch to cut circles from the magnetic sheets. The circles happened to be the perfect size to cover the entire back side of a tin. Which is good because if you've worked with magnetic sheets before you know they aren't the strongest magnets in the world. I was able to fit about 12 tins on organizer. Yipee for storage!

Then I had another pretty good idea. Two in one day... must have been the French toast I had for dinner. Well the organizer has a picture frame slot over each drawer. I had one sheet of magnet left, which happened to be just the right size such that when cut in half, each half fit in the photo slot. I removed the clear acrylic sheets they included in the slots to protect your photos, and slid in my magnets. Voila! A spot to stick a few of the smaller spellbinders dies.

And thus I went off to bed, tired from my own brilliance. Ha.

Happy Monday

I can't believe September is already half over. So far I've accomplished a random assortment of activities, including some landscaping work and cleaning up some of my flea market finds. Remember the rusty old watchmaker's cabinets I got in Hillsville?

I've been working a little each night on the three cabinets, sanding, priming and painting. I found this really great spray paint at Big Lots (don't get me started on the fabulousness of Big Lots... that's a whole other post). Kilz brand spray paint in "pistachio cream" for $1.50 a can! Unfortunately I'm a moron and only bought 2 cans, and now they're out and I can't find it anywhere else. So I got the little cabinet completely finished, but the largest cabinet could really use another coat. I think I'll just let it be and hopefully I'll have enough stuff piled on top and around it that it won't be noticeable. Here's the little cabinet after it's makeover:

Those are actually the same knobs... I just discovered the wonders of Brasso. :) Good stuff.

I also have a card to share. At work last week we threw a little shower for my coworker Mary who is getting married October 4. Her wedding colors are black and white, with flowers in autumn leaf colors. We decided to go with a fall leaf theme for the shower. We had an autumn leaf tablecloth and napkins. I made this little shower card to go with the theme:

The picture came out a little blurry. The "Bliss" sentiment is attached with foam dimensionals and embossed around the edge using my Scor-pal. I lined the envelope with some of the leaf paper to match.

Ingredients:

CS - stash; PP - K&Co Autumn Harvest; Flower brads - Heidi Grace; Stamp - "Bliss" from K&Co Weddings;

Flea Market Finds

This is an old shutter that I will use along with 2 other old shutters to make a room divider. I don't have a picture of the other 2 shutters (I got them at the flea market 2 years ago), but they are also green and have cutouts of a tree on them. This one was only $10.

My other exciting find was a set of 3 watchmaker's cases. I thought these would be perfect for rubber stamps. I have already started sanding them and plan to paint them white to match the craft room. A man wearing daisy duke cuttoff jeans sold them to me.

A closer view...