Southern Scraps

I finally got around to a Valentine's project. I made a heart specimen art. I plan to put this on my mantel, but as it stands, I have no other Valentine's decor as I have never really decorated for Valentine's. My goal is to have some more stuff made by next weekend to go with it. I used papers from my "scraps" and did not have to cut into a full sheet of paper. I used my Marvy mega and giga heart punches and a Martha Stewart embossed heart punch to get three layers.  I used an 11x14 frame from the Dollar Tree and placed kraft colored cardstock in it as a base. There is a seam near the bottom third because I had to use two sheets of paper but you can only tell up close. The bottom heart is attached with a pop dot as well as the top heart for lots of dimension. I'm pretty happy with my first "specimen" art piece. Thanks for stopping by. You can find me linked up at these great parties:

Just wanted to remind you about Etsy's project Special Delivery .  Etsy partners with Citymeals  On Wheels who provides meals to the elderly in New York to provide Valentine's Cards with the meals. Visit my shop and purchase a card to send. I'll send it for you so you pay NO SHIPPING. How easy is that?

I've taken a little break from the cleaning and organizing to craft something. I mean, the craft room is clean and organized ( I have just a few touches to add before I unveil it) so shouldn't I enjoy this room? Back at Halloween I made treat bag toppers, so I've adapted that to Valentine's Day and made Valentine heart toppers . These are made with Marvy Mega and Giga heart punches. The plain heart is the mega and the scalloped heart is from the Giga punch. I used a 1 1/2 inch  circle punch to punch out the circle words from The Cutting Cafe.  I applied ink to the edges of the circles. Everything is stacked and mounted with pop dots for dimension. A piece of pipe cleaner is run through two holes in the largest heart to serve as a twist tie. These are easy and fun to make. I'll be linking up to the parties on the side. Thanks for stopping by!

Since I still haven't done any new crafting due to spending my time on the home clean up and organization project, today I'm sharing another project I made as a Christmas gift. Remember my fall felt brooch? I wore it when we visited my mother-in-law for Thanksgiving and she had a fit about it. So.. I made her one for Christmas. I made her's gray so she could get more wear out of it than just fall.  Again, I used my good ol' Sizzix and flower dies. I cut multiples in different shades and then layered them. The center of one flower is a vintage clip on earring and the other center is a brad. Both flowers are accented with some stitching. So easy and fun. Thanks for stopping by. I also want to let you know about an etsy project that is going on now- Share the Love. Read more about it HERE . Basically, they supply meals and greeting cards to elderly New Yorkers in February. If you'd like to participate by sending a card, stop by my shop and purchase one. Shipping

The cleaning and organizing continued this weekend. My bedroom got decluttered and cleaned, a couple of dresser drawers sorted with things pulled for donation or yard sale, and I started in the closet. I did just enough in the closet to get the things out of the bedroom that needed to be in there. More on that later when I finish. I cleaned out and organized the three bathroom drawers. I started out with an attempt at organization as I had two baskets in the top drawer for make up and such, but there was no longer any distinct separation of contents. So... in came more baskets.. square ones and narrow ones. Now it's so much easier to find my makeup. Top drawer BEFORE: AFTER: The second drawer is brushes, curling irons, and hair dryer. There is no good fit for the dryer but overall the arrangement is better. BEFORE: AFTER:   and the last drawer- just miscellaneous stuff BEFORE: AFTER: Now sorted into extra toothbrushes, hubby's shaving stuff, and my hair acc

Remember my "non" resolution to declutter and organize the house this year? We've been moving full steam ahead and after the hall closets and pantry , I really went to work on my desk and craft room. Here is the shameful before (I can't believe I'm posting this) The first step in conquering this mess was to purge the filing cabinet of all the things that could be shredded. This took most of a week working 15- 30 minutes at a time. This had to be done in order to have somewhere to put all those other papers that needed to be filed. Once all that was done the desk was tackled. Everything was removed and sorted into stacks according to where it needed to go- stay here or return to another room. The biggest helper was to set up the desktop file box: This was inspired by House of Hepworths post HERE . I thought this was a great idea. You see the little organizer in front of it? Well, that's what I was using and IT AIN'T BIG ENOUGH! So the other box