Getting Creative again!

So the expected withdrawals from the scrapbooking world only lasted a week.  It's just not in me to stay away from creativity for very long.  A few things in the last week have motivated and inspired me to get creative once more.  Let me lead you down the garden path (so to speak) along the trail to my inspirations.

It all started on Monday when I saw the empty coffee canister by my desk.  Such an innocently empty vessel just sitting there waiting to be picked up, smelling of fresh ground coffee and hinting of a wake up call.  But first..my cluttered desk space was bugging me.  I needed to find room to put away the supplies from the workshop I had taught the Friday before.  In my space everything has a place and it bugs me when I can't put something away neat and tidy.  So I spent a half hour decluttering my work cabinet and in doing so I found 8 perfectly good binders filled with old resources.  The resources I chucked but I just couldn't get rid of these 8 perfectly good binders..there had to be something that I could use them for, some crafty upcycling that would give them fresh life..so for the time being I piled them up on a chair and returned to looking at the coffee canister.  My co-worker has been faithfully saving these canisters for me, with the idea that when I collected enough I would use them for something crafty.  Well I believe that time had come because as I looked at the empty coffee canister on my desk, my mind was doing a mental tally of how many canisters sat on the shelf in my craft room.  Surely there had to be enough now to create a class around, but what to make?

I took the empty coffee canister and one of the binders home and put them in my craft room.  There they sat for a few more days while ideas percolated in my brain.  After another conversation with another co-worker around scrapbooking and papercrafting ideas, a few visits to pinterest, some time spent on my favorite crafting blogs, and reading my various weekly RSS feeds, the ideas started to coalesce into that tunnel vision I mentioned before..sitting there at the back of my brain and digging a path through my consciousness.

The coffee canister became an easter container wrapped in pretty paper and covered in paper flowers made from all the paper posies I have been punching out like crazy this week (thanks to an article my co-worker shared on waste not/want not scrapbooking tips) and filled with plastic easter eggs hunted from my family's easter egg hunt.  I can picture how each container will look, all soft and pastel coloured, or perhaps they will become container's for Mother's Day and I will go fresh and vibrant with the paper selection?!  so many visions playing around for what these will become, but for now they will sit on the shelf until I can post a finished product..their time is coming soon so stay tuned!

The project that really took hold in my creative mind, the one I had to actually try first..is the binders.  I would love to say that I came up with the idea for their final vision myself but rather I was inspired by those continued conversations with my friend and co-worker.  I could picture covering the binders but ran a bit blank from there.  It was my friend's suggestion to turn them into a card holder/organizer.  From there I came across file folders and envelopes in the local grocery store, which made me think of an idea I had seen on Pinterest about a cardholder made out of a folder and several pins I had seen about using envelopes for mini albums.  I bought those and returned home after work to play! 

I am in the midst of creating this project, which I will call my "Creative Card Carrier" (sorry, I have a think for tongue twisters lately).  I've been taking pictures of the various stages of it's development, since the idea is that once I finish the prototype, I will promote it as a class (I do after all, have to find something to do with the other 7 binders!), but for now I want to share just a teaser of how it's coming along.  My next post will have all the photos and finished project.

I've taken the opportunity to use up all my extra Stampin' Up! Designer Series Papers

Before I finish for now though, I will say this, this is a great project for getting rid of scrap or mismatched sheets of paper, I've finally found use for my washi tape collection, AND it uses far less adhesive paper sheets than I originally thought so it shouldn't be an overly expensive project to do.  I just love when ideas come to fruition and projects become a reality!

I've started this project and should have it completed this weekend, which means stay tuned next week for more photos and a final product reveal!

Cheers!