Dedicated Months

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.

The new year is fast approaching and let's hope that it is better than the one we just survived. 

In 2021, join me in creating dedicated months to achieve some goals. Your goals may be to slow down on buying supplies, get a pile of pictures into scrapbook pages, using a stash of fabric, learn something new or focus on a crafting technique. My goals are to declutter, organize and clean my craftroom and to work on my list of unfinished projects. 

January is a month of taking back your craftroom. In December, my craftroom becomes the place to wrap presents, complete Christmas projects, a dropzone for "oh my, people are coming over - we'll tidy the house and drop it all in the craftroom". 

I don't mind taking a break in January to clean and reorganize my craftroom, as I have been working on Christmas crafts for the past two months. However, don't get me wrong, I will likely have gotten some new crafting toys from Santa and will play with those when I take a break from cleaning. 

February is a month for not start anything new. I will use February to work on my UFOs - Un-Finished Objects. I don't plan on getting them all done but if I can get 2-3 of them done, then I will be further ahead than I was. 

So that is the plan. Now, I would like to repeat that plan at least one more time during the year. If I look at my calendar and historically what my schedule looks like for the remainder of the year, I know that June/July is another time that I am focused on getting projects done and August seems to be a time where I don't feel very crafty but in the mood to organize. 

My dedicated months for 2021 will be:

• January - declutter, organize and clean my craftroom
• February - work on UFOs
• July - work on UFOs
• August - declutter, organize and clean my craftroom

Maybe I will post some before and after pictures on my Instagram page @craftycanadianladies.

What will your dedicated months be and what do you plan to focus on during that time?

Wishing you and your family a safe, relaxing and happy holiday and all the best in the new year.

Rag Doll

Happy mid-month,

My friend inspired me to make a rag doll. She made one, two and possibly 3 rag dolls for her daughter. 

I have never made a rag doll before and thought I would give it a try.

She is about 15.5 inches tall and from finger tip to finger tip, she is 12.5 inches wide.

The pattern for the doll came from the book called My Rag Doll by Corinne Crasbercu. The book contains patterns and instructions to make 11 rag dolls with different outfits and accessories. 

Before sewing the doll together, I embroidered her face. Actually, Heather's face. Embroidery Library has a collection of girl, boy, women, and traditional rag doll faces. They have a library of approximately 164 faces with corresponding names. 

Other than embroidering Heather's face, creating her hair was the most fun. She has A LOT of hair. I used almost a whole skein of yarn. I thought it was going to be difficult to add hair and I had no clue how I would even approach such a task. Thank you YouTube. I watched a couple of videos and it was the clear instructions from LearnCreateSew that helped me create and attach all her hair. 

Heather's hair was the only supply that I had to buy, otherwise she is made of scrap fabric and sewing notions that I had. 

Let's hope that in 2021 Heather will find a good home. 

Organizing Time and Projects

How are you during the Holiday Season? 

Are you calm? Or are you like me and feel frantic? 

This is the time of year when I start worrying about the amount of things that I have to do and how fast time is flying by. 

In my earlier years, I would stay awake thinking about all the things that I needed to get done. I would run lists over and over again in my head. They even snuck into my dreams from time to time. 

I have learned that if I write things down, then my mind doesn't feel the need to remember. The lists help me clear my mind and brings me a sense of calm.

I would like to share with you how I organize my time and my tasks. How I organize is not for everyone but it has definitely helped me over the years. I have discovered that as long as I have a plan, I can manage nearly anything. A plan helps me focus on one thing at a time instead of the whole overwhelming picture.

Organizing Projects

When I feel overwhelmed with a list of things to do, be it creative, cleaning, event planning, etc. I will write them down on a piece of paper. I keep a pad of paper and a pen in the nightstand beside my bed. The next morning, I will sit at my computer and complete a list such as the following. 

Project template download

The list is kept in a place where I will see it often. From the list, I will prioritize the items that need to get done immediately and those that can wait a couple of days. If I have 30 minutes of free time because my family is busy, I will take a look at the list and see if there is anything I can tackle during that time. 

When the projects are broken down into tasks, to me, they appear more manageable. The budgeted time also gives the tasks a "that's not too bad" appearance. 15 minutes to complete something encourages me to do it because 15 minutes is easy. I can do that while the chicken is cooking in the oven. 

It is amazing but as soon as I organize the projects on paper, what seemed impossible becomes possible.

Organizing a Shopping Day

This organizing document might seem ridiculous but it has been amazing for me. I live about 40 minutes outside of town and do not have many opportunities to get to town to shop. When I do, I plan it to be a very efficient outing. 

I will choose to shop in the east end or in the west end of town. Often it is dependent on any specialty stores that I have to go to, such as Ikea, Lee Valley or the Scouts Shop. There is only one in town and they are located in the west end. 

Shopping day template download

When planning the shopping day, the less back and forth or going and back tracking the better. I will try to either start shopping at the closest store and make my way, in a straight path, to the furthest store and then drive straight home or will start at the furthest store and make my way back heading towards home. By listing the stores, their location and the times at which they open, this helps me to plan that shopping path. 

The last three columns keeps me focused while shopping. If I don't make a list of what I plan to buy it is very easy for me to browse and shop for things I do not need. The time to shop (last column) is almost like a challenge - "Ok, I have 45 minutes. Go!" 

In the car, I will write on the paper what time I arrived and how long it took me to shop. This gives me a visual of - am I making good time or do I need to speed up my shopping. I usually have to stick to a timeline so that I can beat rush hour traffic and make it home on time to pick up my son from school. 

Day Off

To make the most of my days off at home, I will write down a "to do" list and prioritize the things that I really need to get done. I will figure out how many hours I have before my family comes home from school and work and then write down what I plan on doing during that time. 

I will never book the entire day because I may want to take sometime to just sit but in an 8 hour day, I will plan 6 of it.

Why would I plan my days off? If I don't, I can easily "online window shop" for a couple of hours, watch crafting videos, learn how to make Minecraft houses and gardens. Then when I go to bed that night, I will stress about all the things I have to do and how little time I have left to do them in. Best to plan.

I tell my family often, the only thing that stresses me is TIME. If I have all the time in the world, I am relaxed. As soon as I feel I am running out of time then I become a short fused person.

Plus, I am happiest when I am productive.

Tell me your time and project organizing secrets, I would love to hear them. I am still trying to figure out a method to effectively organize my work life and work projects.

Scrapbooking marathon

Hello everyone and welcome back.

I was extremely busy last weekend participating in the first ever Crop & Create Delivered weekend from Scrapbook and Cards Today (SCT). 

Every September for the past 6 years, I along with 220 other women have gathered in a banquet hall at the Cornwall NavCan centre to spend 29 hours over 3 days scrapbooking precious moments. Due to COVID we were not able to gather in person this year. Despite the pandemic, Catherine Tachdjian, her family, the talented teachers and the SCT team managed to provide us, plus 700 additional women, the same experience - VIRTUALLY. 

I registered for the Crop & Create weekend back in July and in October I received, on my doorstep, a box full of supplies to complete 4 classes, some make and takes, and bonus products. It was like Christmas had come early. So exciting. I think receiving a box of crafting goodness is better than shopping for it. 

Every year I am rushing around at the last minute trying to prepare my own projects for the weekend. Gathering pictures, making project kits with paper, embellishments, stickers, etc., creating a packing list of tools and general supplies. This year, because of isolation, I was ready. I had plenty of kits/projects to work on. I had printed over 600 photos. I am going to get layouts done, memories into albums, I am going to get caught up in my monthly pocket pages. 

Um, No! 

The virtual setting was a little different than being there in person. In person, I may take one 3 hour class and the rest of the time I work on my own projects. 

The Crop & Create Delivered came with 4 fantastic classes and the class projects kept me busy for 5 days. I had taken 6 days off from work but found that 5 days is the maximum number of days I can craft non-stop.

I want to share with you my finished projects from each of the classes. Unfortunately, I will not be sharing my projects from Jess Forster - "Life by the Numbers" because much of it is journaling and quite personal. Life by the Numbers is taking a snapshot of your life right now (things you do, don't do, enjoy, don't enjoy) and journaling it in terms of numbers - like "2 is the number of hours a day I save not commuting to work" or "0 is the number of meals I love to cook" and then you expand on this for 2 to 3 sentences. It is an easy way to document your life.

Before I show the classes, I want to show my workspace for the 5 days. It didn't stay this clean but I did clean up after each project and started fresh for the next. 

The first class is from Virginia Nebel -"Collection Kit Crush". We created 4 layouts and the purpose was to use most of the kit. 

She did an amazing job at crushing the kit. This is all that I have left on my 12 x 12 sticker sheet.

Next we have Vicki Boutin - "Our Happy Home interactive album". I had never done an interactive album before and Vicki teaches it in a manner that is easy to follow. I am only showing a few pages from the album; some of my favorites.

Lastly we have Nicole Nowosad - "Creative Collage". Virginia crushed the kit but Nicole's techniques would definitely crush our scraps. I only managed to complete one of 3 projects that Nicole taught this weekend. I do plan on getting the others done before the end of this year. Fingers crossed.

I don't think I have ever used so much foam tape but it makes this layout sturdy.

Here are some of the bonus projects that SCT included in the box.

I did manage to complete one of my own layouts.

SCT is going to offer another Crop & Create Delivered in April 2021 and I can't wait. 

Ready to Scrapbook?

I have my papers - check 🗸  

stickers - check 🗸

embellishments - check 🗸 

tools and layout sketches - check 🗸

I AM READY TO GO! 

Or, so I thought.

What do you notice that is missing from my layouts?

That is correct! I am missing photos! 

Nothing dampens creativity more than spending hours looking for that perfect supply that you know you bought months ago or that picture you want to capture in a layout.

I spent months organizing my sheets of paper, scraps of paper, stickers, embellishments, stamps, inks, etc. because in order for me to create one layout, I was searching in 20 places for all my supplies. 

I finally found a system that works for me. It took a few tries. My stuff is organized. I can find it and I am happily using the large inventory that I have accumulated over the years.

Although I got my creative mojo rolling, my supplies are easily found and I am able to create layouts with more ease, I am still halted from completing a layout because my photos are not organized. 

WHAT???

That is correct, my photos are not organized. I was working on some winter layouts and when I went to the December folder for 2013 there were only 3 pictures. How can that be? December is a time for family and I am always taking pictures of my family. 

Where could those pictures be? Well, some were on a memory card in my camera, some were on the memory card in my camera bag. Digital photos were scattered all over the place. I spent a few days moving photos from 5 memory cards, a couple of USB sticks, various folders in the external hard drive and from our phones to a logical location. I simply moved photos to the proper month and year and plan to further organize them at a later date. 

Great! I can continue producing layouts on a weekly basis. Something I have never done before and it felt wonderful. 

Next set of layouts, I am working on our wedding photos. Argh! Where are those photos? I am sure I printed them. I am almost certain I flipped through them, reminiscing about that fabulous day. I looked in 8 possible boxes in my craft room and one possible place in the storage room. Nope!

I have come to the conclusion that I may not have printed the photos or that I may never find them. 

I could continue creating layouts with a place holder for the photo but it is a little more difficult. I am not sure what direction the photos will be in; vertical or horizontal. It is also best to have the photos on the layout if I want to put embellishments on them or closely hugging. 

I guess I will pause my creative projects and will spend time organizing the one thing that went amiss; my photos. The digital photos will move to a logical folder (month and year) on a hard drive. I will make a copy of those photos onto a separate hard drive to keep in a safe place, like my parents' place in case we were to ever have a fire. As for the boxes and boxes of printed photos, I will work towards minimizing the number of photos to those that mean the most to me and keeping them in the same location. 

I will never tell you what you must do. Everyone has a process that makes the most sense to them. However, for me, I am more productive when I can find everything easily. It's a good thing that I find organizing to be just as satisfying as creating. 

I hope my trials and tribulations may help you on your scrapbooking journey. 

I am off to organize my digital and print photos. 

Embroidery projects

Happy Belated Thanksgiving. 

I am thankful for many things but at the top of my list is my family and my extended family.

On August 13, 2020, I became an aunt to my second niece. 

What embroidered project would be more suited for a new baby girl than this one?

Fancy Beads and Flower

A onesie with a purple embroidered necklace. 

In addition to the embroidered onesie, I want to share with you an embroidery digitizing project. 

I was commissioned to embroider the company t-shirts and sweatshirt for Dawes Flooring. The owner, Brad Dawes, gave me his business card to use for the design. 

I used Embird software to create the embroidered image. 

I haven't been digitizing for very long but I am happy with the results.

I am thankful for the opportunity Brad Dawes from Dawes Flooring gave me. 

I have been working on other embroidery projects but unfortunately you will have to wait until 2021 to see them. They are so cute.

Rainbow or Colour Wheel

How do you organize your fabric, threads, buttons; your papers, inks, embellishments; your markers, paints, and other supplies?

Do you organize them by theme, by holiday or season, or by colour?

Do you organize them at all? And that is fine if you don't.

Although I am not the tidiest person (always something more interesting and fun to do than cleaning), I do love to organize. Organizing and being organized brings me a sense of peace. 

If my supplies have a product code, I will organize them in number sequence. 

For most of my other supplies, I organize them by colour.

Can you pick out the error in my labeling?
Hint: It's not the "Red"

I have watched several YouTube videos to get ideas on how to organize my supplies. All the videos I watched, with regards to organizing by colour, recommend using the rainbow order.

The rainbow order makes sense, however, I have modified this order to put the red at the far right side of the rainbow (right of the purple) and organized going left. Another colour order but very similar to the rainbow is the colour wheel. I start at the red pie piece of the colour wheel and organize clockwise. 

Starting with red and moving my way around the wheel to the orange has given me a place to put the in-between colours like fuchsia (between red and purple), turquoise (between blue and green), and chartreuse (between green and yellow). Also, with orange being the last colour, it lends itself to be followed by brown, off-white, white, grey and finish with black. 

All my supplies are organized by red - red/violet - violet - violet/blue - blue - blue/green - green - green/yellow - yellow - yellow/orange - orange - orange/brown - brown - off-white - white - grey - black. 

What do I do with my multicolour papers? Each one will have a dominant colour in the pattern. I use the dominant colour to place the paper within the appropriate colour section.

Organizing your stuff in this fashion may not work for everyone. The way you organize or don't organize depends on how you work and what you are comfortable with. Please leave a comment below if you would like to share your organizing secrets. 

The answer to the mistake I made in labeling my containers.... they are all labelled in English except for brown. I was talking with my son about something and I accidentally labelled that one in French. We both had a laugh over that.

Technical Difficulties

 Due to several technical difficulties, I will not be able to post my most recent projects this month. 

Giving a Pullover Sweater a New Purpose

I have a pullover sweater that I really liked and remains in fairly good condition.

I am sporting some mom curves since my son was born and many of my garments don't fit the same anymore. 

I decided to take this pullover and give it a new purpose - a cardigan. 

How did you do that, you ask? Well, I am glad to share with you how I changed a pullover sweater into a cardigan and how you can too.

You will not be able to button the cardigan closed with this method but I rarely button my cardigans anyways. I wear them to keep my arms and shoulders warm.

Steps for the transformation: 

• Find and mark the center line on your sweater. If the sweater is too bulky to mark a line you could always do a hand sewn basting stitch down the middle of the sweater by folding it in half and sewing on the fold.

• Cut two lengths of ribbon or double fold bias tape. The length should be the same length as center front plus an extra 1/4 to 1/2 inch at the top and bottom.

• Now, the scary part. Cut the front of your sweater on the line.

• Clip or pin the ribbon or the open side of the double fold bias tape to the good side of the sweater along the cut edge. 

• Fold in the top and the bottom extended portions of the ribbon/tape.

• Sew 1/8 inch seam allowance from the cut edge.
• Fold the ribbon/tape to the wrong side of the sweater.
• Top stitch about 1/4 inch from the sweater's edge making sure that you secure the ribbon/tape to the sweater.

You can add embellishments to your sweater. You can sew on buttons along both sides of the opening. I added some embroidered details to the collar area.

Embroidery design is Flirty Filigree Neckline from Embroidery Library

And there you have it. A cardigan, formerly known as, a pullover sweater.

Repurposed Jean Jacket

A couple of summers ago, I was helping my neighbour with some upholstery and window covering ideas for their new camper. At the end of the brainstorming session, she hands me a leftover curtain panel and asked me if I could use it. 

I am not one to turn down free fabric and said "for sure I could use it."

I loved the print and based on the weight of the fabric I knew right away that I wanted to make a jacket; a jean jacket style jacket. 

In June 2019, I made a short jean jacket that still fits and I figured I could use the same pattern for this jacket. However, I wanted something a little longer. I altered my jacket pattern by lengthening the pattern pieces by 3 inches and flared out each seam by 1/2 inch so that the jacket would fit over my hips. 

Within a few days I had a new jacket that was made from a drapery panel - not that you would ever know.

Not only was the fabric repurposed but the buttons were as well. I used buttons from the stash of buttons I inherited from my grandmothers. Both my grandmothers used to remove the buttons from garments that were beyond repair before they were thrown in the trash. 

I can't wait to show my neighbour what I did with the fabric she gave me. 

4 for 4

Do you have a lot of scrapbook supplies?

Are you like me and have so many scrapbook supplies that you don't know where to start?

Are you having a hard time coming up with layout ideas?

Are you new to scrapbooking?

I would recommend watching RTS Scrapbooking YouTube videos. 

I don't binge watch TV shows but I certainly binge watched RTS Scrapbooking.

What does RTS stand for? In Janet's videos, she refers to RTS as:

• Record the Story
• Rearrange the Stuff
• Revamp the Skills

If you are new to the hobby, I would recommend watching Janet's Base Page series - she has 9 videos on how to create base pages.

If you are having troubles getting your pages to the next level like I am with embellishments then watch her Learning Visual Triangles - Clusters 101 video.

And finally, if you are looking for something to spark your mojo, watch her 4 for 4 series. In the series, Janet gets you to limit all your supplies to a simple kit and from that kit you make 4 single layouts and 4 cards. 

I enjoy scrapbooking but I do not have the time, the energy or the experience to come up with my own layouts. I tend to find layouts that I like on Pinterest and replicate them for my albums. I want all my layouts to be WOW layouts. I lack the patience to start simple and step it up as I gain experience. 

RTS 4 for 4 has given me the little nudge that I need to come up with my own layouts. It is fantastic and very rewarding.

I started watching her videos to learn how to create page kits and organize myself for crops. What I got from binge watching RTS Scrapbooking series was so much more.

If you follow my Instagram page Craftycanadianladies, I will post my other layouts as I finish them. 

Hope you have a fabulous weekend.

Embroidered Pumpkin

Good day everyone.

I am sharing with you another project that I finished following OML Embroidery's how to digitize tutorial.

We started with this creepy but beautiful Halloween image and imported it into Embird digitizing software.

Halloween Pumpkin

What I love about these tutorials is that with each one of them I get to learn different elements of digitizing. The elements of Embird that I used in this project were: 

• cutting out sections of the digitized image. I started by digitizing the orange pumpkin and then cut out the eyes, nose and mouth to remove layers and prepare the area to fill with yellow and green thread.
• creating fill from outline. With one click, I was able to fill in the cut areas. Normally, I would have manually outlined the area I wanted filled but the "create fill from outline" option was much quicker and more exact.
• carving. I added details and gave the pumpkin a little shape by adding the curved lines or actually by carving out the curved lines.
• gradient colour. By adding gradient colours to the orange of the pumpkin and the yellow of the pumpkin's features, it provides the illusion of shadows.
• creating outline from fill. Similar to the option of creating fill from outline, with one click the software traced all the elements of the image I had selected.

After digitizing the image on Embird and stitching it out on my embroidery machine, I used the Brother Dream Machine to scan the embroidered image. The scanned image appeared on the Dream Machine's digital screen and with this I was able to program the machine to fill the space around the pumpkin with a stippling stitch. I wanted to test out the machine's ability to create a stippling stitch around an image because I have an appliqué quilt that I would like to add quilting/stippling to the open spaces.

With more practice I hope to get faster, better and more creative with my digitized images. The embroidered pumpkin is not without mistakes but the more I do, the more I learn, the better I will become. 

Pull compensation is one of my biggest challenges. As you can see on the edges of the pumpkin, the black outline did not stitch on the edge of the orange but about an 1/8 of an inch past the image. Eventually it will become second nature but right now, I need more practice. 

Do you embroider by hand or by machine? Do you have any tips to share? We would love to hear from you.