Bins.

Yesterday and today I've made several bins or baskets (whatever you want to call them) from boxes.

Over the past year I've gathered tons of boxes of all different shapes and sizes, from diaper boxes from friends, boxes from work, boxes from Amazon... but so far I've only covered a few with basic and easy materials. One or two were covered with canvas with Tacky Glue, a few covered with fun Duct Tape, one with burlap, some with jute, some with natural sisal, etc.  I've made several boxes by taping two empty Kleenex boxes together! (see below)

I've found a million tutorials for turning regular boxes into pretty baskets. I've lost most of the links, but I was able to re-find these:

For the easy canvas cover with Tacky Glue: Let's Make Something Together

For the jute covered Kleenex box: Southern Flair Crafts

For the liners (and I need to revisit these instructions): Make It and Love It

Of course, I owe all the credit to Pinterest. Love that site. Can't say it enough.

The biggest part was sewing the liners. My wonderful mother dearest taught me how to sew growing up, but I always have problems with the stupid machines.  For Christmas, I bought myself a new sewing machine that was like 75% off (gotta love Amazon lightening deals!), which I bought for the sole purpose of making these bins.  I've been afraid to try.

With good reason.  Yesterday, when I was on a roll with my third liner, this happened:

The bobbin and ... other parts that I can't remember what they're called... fell out and I couldn't put them back together again.  I had Adam try to put them back in, and when I tried to sew a line on a scrap piece of fabric so see if he had fixed it, the needle broke.  My awesome friend Tanya came over today to look at it, and she thought she fixed it.  Anyway, long story short, later today I was about ready to cry because it fell apart again.  I played around with it and somehow fixed it myself.

I've made four liners! Three of them were all by myself!

I'm confused at what I'm saying and where I intended to go and where I'm going now and this is just a bad post. 

What's going on? 

Sigh. Let's just sum up:

It's late, I hurt (as usual), my story telling is lacking, and I'm too tired to try to edit this post. You get the idea of what I'm trying to say. Things happened, I made some cool stuff that I really love and that I am really proud of, and now I'm sharing them with you. 

The liners aren't so great, but they're getting consistently better as I go. They're kind of... bulky. Extra fabric... my lines on the hems aren't straight... and I've had to pick out and re-do several mess-ups.

And now, pictures:

These are just the boxes with the four liners, and if you were paying attention earlier and didn't skip to the pictures, you would know that I have other boxes that just need liners that aren't pictured. Plus, ~20 other boxes that need to be done from scratch. 

All of these boxes except the largest one are made from Kleenex boxes! How thrifty am I?!

The bright poppy liner box doesn't have anything interesting as the base, it's just regular duct tape. I need to do something to cover that.

Tired tired tired.

Hello.

Hello once again.

For several months, I've either gotten home from work if it was a weekday, or gotten up on a weekend, and gone straight to my Craftination Station. I've been crafting so much and have enjoyed every minute of it. Obviously I haven't posted anything, so you wouldn't ever know. I haven't even taken pictures of my products (what else would you call them? works? but it's not work, it's fun?) in weeks.

This is my stack of cards that I created in just the last week. Yesterday I created probably 15 cards. I was on a streak!

Above my work area is a window where I put some of my recent cards that I think are super spectacular. Some of them inspire me to be better. Others remind me to cheat when I want to. My brother Scott says "if your'e not cheating, you're not trying". (Actually, the first person that said that was Mark Grace).

That second to last card on the window is just printed off of the computer. I guess you could say I didn't quite cheat on it because it took a long time for me to find the exact center after a 8.5"x11" paper was split into two cards.  Then I just used fonts that I already had that I .l.o.v.e.d. and printed a bunch off. All I did to finish that one off was colored part of the letters. Maybe you'll get to see the silly detail of that card someday.

This is my photo area and my smash book that's just one page from complete.

I'm smash happy. Get it? hah.

For the record, smash books are freaking AWESOME.  I've gotten nearly every one of my friends to buy one, and not every one has gotten necessarily "into" it, but they've each tried it! I think the problem is that they think of it like a scrapbook... when it's more like a random art book and a place where you can put random mementos like ticket stubs and cards you received, and can just paint a page bright orange because you feel like it.

Last bit of update I have is this inspiration board I made of Pinterest pieces Erin and I found for a wedding reception we threw for her sister at their parent's house. It was SO much fun and such a huge adventure that I've started (and I AM going to finish) a scrapbook about it.

I haven't been on Blogger at all, so I haven't even been following your creations, Michelle. I intend to fix that immediately!