Charm Storage - Made by My Very Own Prince Charming!

Hi Everyone,
Snow is still falling here in Jersey, and I am DONE! I am not a winter person to start with and it just seems like it has snowed every weekend for the past 6 weeks.  While it is cold and not so inviting outside, here in the craftroom it is just charming. I have to say my charm stash has gotten a tad out of control and I figured I better get a handle on organizing these little cuties before I start buying things that I already have.  I liked the Darice bead storage jars from the starts and I had picked up a few to hold some scrapebooking embelishments awhile back. If you don't know what they are here is a picture:

24 little screw top containers that fit into a plastic case.  The lid of the case is not hinged so needless to say if you were to drop it all the containers would go flying. But I like them and I found them great for the charms when Rory and I were working on the bracelets during this past holiday season. I started to buy a lot of charms thinking of summer projects like the wine charms and the beachy bracelets. So back to the store for more containers I went.  True to form, like the craft hoarder I am, I was like a frenzied squirrel gathering nuts for winter. I don't know how it happened, it was like every time the family sat down to dinner I would sneak upstairs to the computer, get on ETSY and buy charms. Want to know how bad it is? Are you sure? OK, here it is, I have a charm of, of, (I can't) a dental chair! Yup, you know that silly reclining chair at the dentist's office, Yes I have a charm of it! OK, OK, so I have 4 of them . . . and I have toothbrushes and toothpaste and some cute little floss charms too! So wait, before you call the craft police I should mention that my Brother in Law is a dentist and I thought a set of dental themed wine charms might just be a cute gift to bring to the office the next time I go for a cleaning.  See I'm not so crazy, I just think ahead.  Now what I really wanted to tell you about is my awesome storage idea that the Hubster came up with.  I loved the trays and just needed a way for them to stack safely with no chance of falling.  So, my Prince built me a little shelving unit to match the awesome ink storage unit he made me last year.  Here are a few pics:

All that was left to do was paint it black to match the ink storage and figure a way to add a pull to the drawers.  Well I took care of that. I had looked at a few miniature draw pulls and liked a lot of them but all I kept thinking was the less I spend on the shelf the more I will have to spend on charms.  So here is what I did.  I drilled a small hold in the center of each tray and made a ribbon pull.  I locked each ribbon into place using some scrapbook eyelets (sweet, I love when I use something I already own) Here are some pics for the draw pulls:

I used a strip of white paper to find the center and  marked it with a sharpie marker.  I drilled the hole with my handy dandy drill master from Harbor Freight.

  It was easy and I didn't crack any of the trays.  Then I set an eyelet into the hole from the front and used a manual eyelet setter to lock it in place. Pictures? Why Yes, yes I do!:

I never thought I would use that manual eyelet setter ever again after getting my crop a dile. Good thing I am a hoarder and didn't get rid of it.(See, always prepared!!) Now to lock the ribbon in I made a knot in the ribbon and fed it through from the front to the inside of the tray. And ran a second eyelet from the inside to the front.  It looked like this:

Once in place I crimped the eyelet with a pair of needle nose pliers. It ended up looking like this after I trimmed the ribbon and sealed it with a quick pass of a lighter:

Once the trays were done it was ready to be filled and organized and now my awesome charm collection looks like this:

and it matches my ink storage too!

I am one happy camper thanks to my very own Prince Charming! Thanks Paul, you ROCK! Oh, I gotta go the peeps are heading out to shovel snow and I think I can get in one more charm order before the day ends! Thanks for stopping by,
Lysa

Valentine's For School 2015 - What To Do, What To Do!

Hi Friends,
One week before Valentine's Day and I haven't even thought of what I am bringing in for the work peeps. More important than that was what is Rory going to do for school.  Now that brings in a whole new question. New school, now Middle School, should I, should I not?  That was the question asked by the little one. Still young and wanting to make any occasion fun, but savvy enough to not want to appear a bit corny. Well, Nonna has the answer and here it is: "To thine own self be true, and be like all good Girl Scouts and be prepared." I suggested that we make a nice Valentine treat that would fit in her backpack.  She would be prepared and if she felt uncomfortable handing them out, well in the backpack they would stay.  No harm, No foul!  The best of both sides of a story if you ask me. Gee, I am getting wise as I push 60!  So we chose some Valentine's themed pencils from Walgreens and a Dove chocolate heart.  We chose a push pencil and Dove chocolate as perhaps they are just a bit more appealing to the "more mature audience" that we are making them for. No Monster High or Spiderman involved (It's the Dove chocolate heart that steps it up)! I really do think Middle School is on the tough side, but hey if you make it through you can most likely survive whatever life throws at you. So here are a few pics of this easy peasy favor that should please anyone. In fact I just may be making these for work as well.  After all who doesn't need a pencil?

I made the page of tags using CAP2 and we punched them out with the Stampin' Up heart punch.  I used my ZING and MTC to cut the shadow heart.  The cello bags are from Stampin' Up. The white rubber bands are Rainbow Loom.  I use those bands for all sorts of things!

Here they are in a vase by the front door until she takes them to school.  Let's hope not to many peeps stop by for a visit because who could resist saying "help yourself"!

So easy, all we did was bag up the pencil and trim the bag to about 1.5 inches above the top of the pencil. Grabbed a chocolate heart and wrapped it in a 5 inch square of white tulle and secured it to the pencil bag with a white rubber band. We punched a 1/8 inch hold in the tag and made an angle cut into the hole and stretched the rubber band to lock the tag on. They came out great. We made 16 in about 40 minutes or so.  Here is one more picture:

I hope Rory ends up passing these out but worst comes to worst we will have a few extra pencils in the house and some darn good chocolate too!
Thanks for stopping by,
Lysa

Wine Charms! I'll Be Making Lots Of These!

Hi Everyone,
Just a quick post before I have to hit the kitchen and start to get ready for "the BIG game" Yes, it is Superbowl and I should have been getting ready hours ago.  I am glued to the Kitten Bowl on the Hallmark Channel and while I have been up here in the craftspace all the others in the house have been getting ready for the game. So to be quick I want to tell you that I just can't stop buying charms, yup, they are rolling in for summer themed bracelets.  Now I have been buying most of the charms on etsy and loving all of them. Some I bought were just a bit to big for bracelets. I sit with a ruler by my side and still I just can't get a true handle on the size. I loved the look of this one crab that I bought but no way could he sit on a wrist. So enter the wine charm.  I also bought some sand dollars that were a bit big as well. I know I should be focused on Valentine's Day but I have been buying summer themed charms and as it happens we are going on a family reunion vacation this year at the Jersey Shore. With snow on the ground and all these awesome summer charms helping me to keep sunny thoughts I made quick work to make a favor to bring this summer. Not only that, I have so many friends with summer places at the shore that this will be an AWESOME little gifty to send them.  It took me about 5 minutes to make the wine charms and then about 5 hours to come up with the packaging.  So silly on my part, I had an idea in my mine and just could not bring it to light.  Here is a picture of the charms, so quick and easy with pre-made wine charm rings that I got from Bohemian Findings via ETSY(SHOUT OUT! I will post their link at the bottom) I had some blue and white beads in my stash from somewhere ???

  OMG.... the pic just does not show how great they look! But they do look fantastic . . . and now they need a package. I made myself some digi paper using Stampin Up Pacific Point and a some SU stamp graphics.  I did have a hard time deciding how to arrange them on cardstock.  In the end I used my We R MemoryKeepers Chinch to punch holes to hang the charms from.  Here is a pic of that action:

I cut the printed cardstock to 6.5 inches by 2.25 and the Cinch cut the holes perfectly.  I took a my SU paper snips and cut a slit on the angle into each hole.  This worked great to hold each charm in place. Now I needed a celo bag to bag them up. I saw the new "WeRMemoryKeepers" photo fuse tool and I thought why can't I just use a metal ruler and my Tulip rhinestone setter to make my bag? So I grabbed a scrapbook page protector and a metal ruler and it worked great.  I added a graphic topper and here is what you get:

How great does that look, but wait here is the back:

I love these little favors and like the label says, Shore to Please!! I used CraftArtist2 for all the printing and the cardstock is SU Pacific Point and Whisper White.  Here is the link to the ETSY shop for Bohemian Findings:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/BohemianFindings?ref=shopsection_shophome_leftnav
I love their stuff!!!!!! I just can't wait to order more charming fun!
I can't wait to give out these wine charms to my peeps, I think they are going to be a huge hit!
Enjoy the BIG GAME and hopefully I will be back soon with this years Valentine's favor
Thanks for stopping by,
Lysa