A RARE MORNING POST

Good Monday morning! For those viewers in my age bracket this is one of those mornings that brings back memories of The Carpenter's. So I have really dated my self with that comment! If you don't know about or remember the Carpenters Click on their name and you can learn more about them than you probably wanted to know. Unfortunately their musical
career was tragically cut short when Karen Carpenter died of the effects of Anorexia Nervosa. She really was the one who brought this terrible eating disorder into public awareness. More later on why these memories come back on days like this if you haven't already guessed.

Back to my morning post. A couple of weeks ago I tool up a challenge issued my my SCS FlyBaby friend Misty to organize our coloring tools so that they were more readily accessible and used more. I wanted to show you what I came up with. Another friend of mine who is the world's best bargain shopper found a bunch of planter sets made up of three little buckets on a tray. (To s how you what a shopper she is they normally retailed at $9.99 and she purchased them for $ .25!!!! Why can't I ever find those bargains???) She graciously gave me two of the sets. One of them you can see here. I have in them my Prisma pencils, Prisma markers and Copic markers. Aren't they cute? There was enough room between the pails on the tray for me to place my SU pencil sharpener.

I still had the problem of what to do with all my watercolor pencils????? I am trying to become more creative with recycling items, both to save money and our environment so I rummaged around in the box of containers I've saved from the trash can and found an International Coffee container. I wanted something tall enough to hold the pencils without their falling out but short enough that I could still find the pencils as they get shorter from sharpening after all the use the hopefully will now get. This is a closer view of what I came up with. They do lean, but don't fall out. I also keep my water coloring paint brushes in with them. (I keep my Aqua Painters in another container nearby.)

I used my Xyron to completed cover the back side of the designer paper I used with adhesive and then wrapped it around the can. The 12" length of paper was not long enough to go all around so you have to to cut a patch or add a sticker or flower to cover the gap. I didn't take a picture of my back, but I used a coordinating paper and placed a Prima flower on it for decoration. I checked and rechecked my measurements which were straight and even, but the can wasn't so there were a few gaps along the bottom. I added a band of ribbon along the top and bottom to cover those up. Finally I found a sticker from one of my many SU Simply Scrappin' kits that said create on it which I though t was appropriate and fortunately was a coordinating color. (don't know which it was, but know it is retired). After stamping Water Color Pencils on the sticker I was done. Very simple and easy.

In the first picture you can see that the boxes of SU watercolor crayons and Stampin' Pastels are still in their original containers stacked with my Twinkling H2O's which have been placed in a SU plastic container that has the dividers in it. It works perfect for the little jars I have. These will probably stay like this as they are accessible and I like their containers.

So their you have the organization for my coloring products. A big THANK YOU to Misty for this wonderful challenge. The scary thing about doing this was discovering just how many coloring products I have!!!! Now I really do hope that I use them more as I have discovered that I really like bringing out my inner child through coloring just like I use to in all the coloring books I grew up with. Hopefully my techniques have improved a bit since kindergarten, though sometimes I wonder.

Now back to The Carpenter's and today. If you haven't already guessed the connection. Or if you have and just would like a short walk down memory lane with me check this out..........Have a great Monday and hopefully I will be back tonight with another project post.