New Look for My Craft Room/Office

So part of the inspiration for the new look here on my Craft Blog, was the fact that I recently had the opportunity to redo one room in our house - my "office".  My craft table and supplies were spread out in our dining room, and two desks and a computer were what qualified our smallest extra room as an "office".  I've got some before an after pictures (more pics after the break) - though I don't think they really do a good job of telling the story (either the before OR the after - lol!).

Before

New Look for my blog

EDIT: Leaving this here so the post history is accurate - but most of these links are to obsolete or non-working web sites unfortunately. - August 17, 2022

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So its been quite awhile since I updated here and I decided it was time to update the look of the blog too.  I stumbled across this site:  Gotta Pixel completely by accident while looking for some info on 'scrapbook layouts' and fell in love with - well, MOST of their graphics and ordered myself a number of their 'Facebook Covers' and 'blogwear'! :P

To Craft or Not to Craft...

...well, that's not _really_ the question because if you are a crafter you are always a crafter at heart!  But some life events that have recently come up seem to be leading me in another, somewhat unexpected, direction.  A couple of months ago, as I was working on getting 'Whimsical DeeSigns' going as a small, home-based business, I also started doing some part-time freelance work writing that has rapidly gone from part-time to a full time job and then some.

News about Mini Album Classes

Finally a concrete decision and some early info on my upcoming class schedule...

I will start my first round of classes in September and they will run through December 2013.  Then I'll be breaking for almost the entire month of December, and the second round of classes will begin in January 2014 and they will run through March 2014.  I will be teaching two (2) classes each month specific to a mini album or mini albums and then a third class each month that will focus more on techniques, tools, etc.

More updates that aren't quite updates ;P

Just wanted to post a few updates for those following the blog.

I'm still working out the schedule for classes - though after some discussion with friends and fellow crafters, I am considering changing things up and possibly pushing back the "full" class schedule to the Fall.

The short version of the explanation is pretty common sense - with kids home from school over the summer, vacations and people being busy with outdoor activities, gardening, home maintenance, etc. - scheduling becomes a real issue for everyone.  So I'm sort of re-thinking things and tentatively planning on working over the Spring and Summer on my own projects as well as kits and some pre-planning so I can open up with a really robust schedule in early Fall.  I'm fairly certain that's how things will go - but when I do finalize what I'm going to be doing with certainty I will post a page with scheduling and full info here.

I'm also considering doing a few fun "make and take" type workshops here and there in the upcoming months, but that's also still in early planning mode.

This blog too, still needs a bit of updating and tweaking and though I did open up my Etsy shop with some small items just to test it all out - that is still in need of major work as well.  Soooo....what that ends up in summary is, I'm still working on things and don't have a _lot_ of new specific info just yet.  LOL!

My First Class

I held my first craft class this month - teaching how to make an Accordion Fold Mini Album. About 1.5 years ago, when I first starting scrapbooking in earnest, I was searching YouTube for some examples of different accordion folded albums when I came across Laura Denison's "Snip and Fold Mini" video (and incidentally, it was this video that introduced me to 'Following the Paper Trail' and Laura's work in general) and fell in love with it. I made up a few of these, and then, as I gained some confidence, added my own touches with a slightly different binding/covering method.  Friends and family who saw them started asking me if I could teach them how to make one and eventually that evolved into a class.

My First Swap - Updates

So in true moron form, I was so excited when I finally received my package of goods from Tmika (Scrap Da World). that I opened everything and forgot to take pictures first.  *sigh*  Okay, so chalk one up to super excitement and pure stupidity for me.  LOL!  Thankfully Tmika video tapped everyone's entries and I've got a link to those videos at the end of this post, after the break.

Quick updates

So, it has been a pretty exciting week or two - I'm going to be holding my first "class" in my home the 2nd week of March, and it looks like there will be more opportunities for those in the future as well.  The rest of the week has been me finally taking myself to task to get my little shop and things set up.  Mundane, but necessary things like creating a business card, ordering some packaging materials - etc.  But it's all still exciting because it means I'm actually not "talking about" getting go anymore but actually doing it! 

I know the site here still needs some prettying up - and my Etsy shop isn't opened quite yet - but I'm getting there.  Will try to post some pictures of the kits and from the class before the end of the month.  And hopefully finish up adding some things to my blog here as well.

My First Swap

So I've been playing around with getting this site and my little "side business" of Whimsical DeeSigns going for about a year now, and am finally starting to get going.  (I guess you could say I'm a bit of procrastinator - lol!)

Anyway, as a part of getting things moving forward, I decided to take the plunge and participate in my first ever swap.  Tmika of "Scrap Da World" hosted a really adorable and unique swap of Gift Sets that you can read about in detail on her blog or watch the YouTube video she put up about the swap.  Tmika does some really cute and creative things and this looked like a very fun way to "take the plunge". (Thanks for hosting this Tmika).