My Craftroom v3.0...work in progress

Since My Craftroom v1.0...
I've become a mom of TWO boys...
In a new house...

My Craftroom v2.0, with the awesome mountain view is my youngest's new room...I'll miss the view...

Anyways, new room means a new attempt to getting myself organized...and treating it as a permanent move, so time to put nails into those studs!

BEFORE the organization commences...borderline horder? There was NO floor space to even walk around!

BEFORE

Now the fun starts...

Step 1

Get yourself lots of storage space. In my case, my husband is a gem, he loaded me up with lots of fairly cheap bookshelves from Ikea. There's 5 in total right now.

Step 2

Unbox all your boxes onto the shelves. I had so many boxes, I didn't even know where to start. Heck, I didn't even think it would fit onto the shelves I had. Talk about being overwhelmed!

Deep breath!

One box at a time...one box a day...one shelf at a time.

Step 3

Be consistent.

I dedicated specific things to a specific shelf and kept things together based on that rule. 

The one closest to the computer desk (in the foreground to your right) was dedicated to office supplies.

Two are dedicated to paper crafts and paper craft tools, the ones in the middle of the screen.

The far back one is was suppose to be for sewing / fabric, but that got moved temporarily to the solo shelf on the far left. I needed that far back one to add to the two I dedicated to paper crafts. I might put all my stamp stuff there.

Step 4

Keep at it.

Once one box disappears, more disappears and soon you can see the floor and walk around the room.

I can now see the floor, all the way to the back walk, AND under the middle table!

Look, I even started displaying my pin collection on the wall!

Mid-way

Step 5

Go back to Step 1 and repeat...add more storage space as needed...if you have space to add more

Step 6

Once your boxes are gone, start clearing off the desks of the loose items you haven't figured out where to store it.

Come back again to check on my progress...

Selman Family Christmas Tree!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Do you find it hard to select "the perfect" gift for your parents or grandparents or even great grandparents (GGs)?

Well, we did too!

After mailing out all of our Christmas Cards, the GGs, indicated how much they loved it and are displaying it for their neighbours to enjoy too.

An idea "POPPED" into my head, of a nixed idea for this year's Christmas Card.

Recognized this pop-up Christmas Tree? Well, mass producing it was nixed, but creating a large one for the GGs, would be perfect!

In lieu of the regular Christmas ornaments, I replaced it with photos of each member of the family. All 4 generations of us, in ornament form. Now they will have all of us around for the holidays, when we can't all be there at once. There's a lot of us now!

Turned out really well. I printed everyone on vellum paper so it would "pop" when a light is shining through.

I also found at the dollar store, these cute mini snowflake LED lights (battery operated). Perfect for the little tree.

Looks great lite up don't you think?

The best things about this Christmas tree is that it collapse flat, perfect for mailing and storing for future use.

The ornaments can be updated and added to as the kids grow and as the family expands more.

2017 Selman Christmas Cards

Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings!

Wishing you and your family a wonderful time together!

A full year with TWO boys! Where will I find the time to make Christmas cards? Let's not even get ahead of ourselves here, where will I find the time to design a new Christmas Card? It's going to be impossible!

Of course, never say never!

I started thinking about Christmas cards during the summer. Never stuck to any one idea till literally last month. Then voila, a firm idea, all thanks to Silhouette America Design Store! I love this site...I visit it weekly for free cut designs and on sale cut design. Last month, I discovered a new contributor to the Design Store, Love Pop Card, and low and behold they had an amazing 3D pop up steam engine for purchase.

Anyways, after purchasing the cut file and sending it through my Cameo, the train turned out amazing. Don't let it's intricate detailed design deceive you, it not fragile and was quite easy to assemble. Logan loved it. Grabbed it...popped it open....ran to his room to display it prominently on his bed's headboard shelf.

I toyed around with mass producing the train. Nixed it within minutes. Too many pieces to deal with in the limited time I had at my disposal.

I toyed around with the idea of a Christmas tree. Made two small ones that Logan loved immediately, so he hijacked to be part of his train display in his room. I, however, nixed this idea too. It was just missing something and I didn't really have time to tweak it to my satisfaction for mass producing. However, stay tune for how I did end up using this Christmas idea.

So back to the drawing board. I know I really wanted to make a pop-up card this year. I know, sticking to the family love, it has to represent hockey in some form or another.

Eureka! After doodling and freehand cutting, I got the prototype done of this year's annual Christmas card! I showed Richard for a quick approval, then showed Logan and he loved it and want one for ALL his friends! Eek!

Mass production commenced...
...three separate sets of design pieces were made...
...three separate cuts were run through the Cameo...

...careful assembly took place...

...decorations were designed, cut and added...

...custom envelopes were made...

...and voila

A hundred cards were made and sent out to a select list of family & friends. I capped myself at a hundred cards or I would never stop making cards!

First batch (with the majority of the cards) were completed and mailed out just before December 1st, just before international delivery deadline! My international recipients started receiving their cards a week after mailing. Woohoo! Talk about good timing!

Welcome Hudson!

It's always wonderful when a new member of the family is born.

Welcoming Hudson to the family! We can't wait to meet you!

What better gift than a Hudson Bay "Hudson" bear for Hudson!
You might be an American little guy, but your name definitely reminds you that you're also Canadian!

I couldn't resist making a little name card for Hudson.
Treat it like a book. Treat it like a sign. Treat it anyway you want to use it!
Your momma can record little things on each page about you.

Book Origami

I have always loved Book Origami! They are the perfect gift for bookworms.

I have looked everywhere, trying to find instructions on how to reproduce one for myself. For a while, all I found where places that sell one for $50-100.

Finally! The wonders of Pinterest! I found instructions on how to recreate one of these gorgeous Book Origami. The first few ones I found, didn't appeal to me. I didn't want to have to sketch my design onto the book edge...my OCD on getting the prefect image transferred to the edge would prevent me from making the first mark since nothing will be perfect. However, if you are a sketcher, check out the instructions here:

Anyways, since it's my cup of tea, I kept searching...and finally, to start of 2017, I found instructions that appealed to me. This one allowed me to combine my love for my computer and my love for my books to create a gorgeous Book Origami. You can check out instructions here:

To summarize, in brief, it's very very easy to prepare, just requires time and tedious focus on details.

1. Create your black and white design, keep in simple

2. Select a book, note the number of pages in the selected book

3. In Excel, number your columns, using odd numbers, to represent each leaf of the book

4. Embed your image onto the Excel file and stretch the image to cover the span of each column representing each leaf in the page

5. Print your excel file

6. Line up each leaf to the line on the print out and start folding off the white space

The best things about this technique is that:

- You don't need to sketch onto the edge of the page

- Your design can be more intricate

- You won't lose your place in the folding, just line up your leaf to the corresponding line on your print out

To celebrate the new year and to bid my bestfriend a bon voyage back to her home on the other side of the country, I created my very first Book Origami for her and her family.

Happy New Year everyone!

(I also unpacked my embroidery/sewing machine to create a book cover, to cover up the cover of a discarded book that I decided to use for this present, since no book lover would be able to fold up one of their favourites, that will most likely be read again and again!)

Swansia Consulting Inc - Logo

It's very hard to decide on a company name, let alone a company logo to go with the name.

Swansia is a nickname that was provided to me many years ago by a friend, for RPGs. As you can guess, it's origin was from a swan.

Anyways, at the very beginning, there wasn't really a logo since I wasn't using it for work.

Over the years, I started using it as my company identity, officially incorporating in 2010.

My company logo started off real simple, my hand written S, accentuated to look like a swan:

From there, I played around with graphics program and came up with this, which I used for a few years:

It was a nice simple logo idea, but I just felt it fell a little short. After brainstorming for a few years, I would love to unveil my latest logo for Swansia! I think this is a keeper:

Leland's Birthday Train

For parents who have a Silhouette and have kids who love Thomas the Train...this is for you...

This was a fun project for my godbrother and godsister's son's 2nd birthday...though it was a belated birthday present, since I didn't realise that assembly need just a bit more time than I had allocated...lol

Anyways, I purchased 3 designed from the Silhouette Design Store from the artist SnapDragon Snippers...quite affordable at $2.19 each (cheaper if you are a member or during the sale periods) design file that you keep forever. Here are the links to the 3 different design pieces: Engine, Coal Car, and Carriage.

So when you first purchase the 3 designs, it is for a Christmas themed train, looking like this:

So to start off, how do you get the design above to look like the train at the top of this post? It's actually not too hard, since the designs actually label all the different pieces you need to have cut...and with a little trial and error and help from the SnapDragon Snippers blog, I was able to cut what I needed in the colours that I want to assemble everything in to the theme of Thomas the Train.

With a little modification and custom designing this is what I made:

The Engine with the trim showing the year of the birthday boy's year of birth.

The Coal Car with big Ls for Leland.

And finally the Carriage Car with Leland's name on the side and of course more Ls on the front and back.

So with a little time and patience...you can make yourself a 3 car train...to celebrate a special birthday!

Happy belated 2nd Birthday Leland!