Book rack makeover

Yesterday, on my way home from running errands, I saw a little wooden magazine rack sitting out on the curb. Similar to this:

I've been wanting to put something in the playroom for the kids to keep their books in, so I picked it up and had some ideas to make it over. I painted most of it last night, and added the finishing touches and alphabet print today (which, okay, made it not quite as free as I'd originally intended, but it's worth it!). I think it turned out pretty cute!

Bow storage

I've been saving this little shoebox because it seemed perfect to use for something crafty - the little window in the front had a lot of potential, and the shape and ribbon handle are so cute.

I have a place upstairs in the nursery to store hair bows and headbands (which is also super cute, and I need to put up pictures sometime), but I needed something small downstairs since that's where I get the kids dressed pretty frequently.

I covered the back of the box with the cute numbers paper (all of my papers are from a Studio Calico kit), and cut down the little ridge inside that separated the shoes to cover the inside too.

On the front, I put a little strip of coordinating paper and big foam letters.

I've gotten really into washi tape since Studio Calico started putting them in almost every month's box, so I put some black & white washi tape around the outside edges to finish that off a little bit and add some contrast.

A yellow flower for a pop of color, and we're all set! Easy peasy. I like that this is easy to throw all the bows into (while color-coordinated fancy organization is cute, it's a pain) and it's easy to see what's inside.

A Little Peek

I've done a lot of crafting lately, but I've neglected this blog - I've spent most of my non-baby, non-cleaning, non-errand time doing actual crafts or posting to stevenandeleanor.com. I thought I'd put up a quick picture of what I did today, though. I've been picking up these easy 12x12 frames at Joann - only about $4 with a coupon - and I originally had something else in mind for them, but hadn't gotten around to doing it yet.

My husband got me a subscription to the Studio Calico monthly scrapbooking kits, and I've been having so much fun making fancy baby books with new, coordinated supplies every month. I thought it'd be fun, instead of sticking the pages I make straight into the books, to display them a while on the wall.

The 12x12 frames I picked up at Joann are perfect - they're unobtrusive, easy to get pages in and out every month, and have enough "give" to allow the 3D embellishments I like to use. Right now, I've put up a few of my favorites from the last couple of months, and I plan to rotate them out every month so they coordinate a little bit, since each Studio Calico kit has a ton of coordinating elements. 

Nap-Friendly Crafts: The Ridiculously Easy Nursing Cover

I made this nursing cover almost entirely during a naptime, including this blog post. Like I said: ridiculously easy!

Supplies:
Muslin blanket (from our stash of, like, 400 new blankets)
2 yards of wide ribbon (the only thing I bought for this)
Big button
Sewing machine

I started by folding down one corner of the blanket and pinning the ribbon to it - I pinned from the back to make sure the blanket was straight against the ribbon.

After I did that and got my straight fold, I cut the long end off the ribbon (about a yard, maybe more - nothing about this is exact) to make a strap, unpinned one end, and sewed on the end of the strap so it would be under the edging ribbon.

Then I sewed along all the edges of the edging ribbon, turning the ends under, trimmed the strap to the length I want it, hemmed the end, added a big button to the blanket and buttonhole to the strap*, and trimmed off the folded-under corner. Easy peasy!

*Not shown, because I'm going to ask my mom to do it - I don't know how to do buttonholes. But you could also do just a decorative button with a snap on the back side and strap if you wanted.

A few words about Papertrey

One of the goals I've had for this blog is to keep it completely drama-free, and I'd like to continue that, but because I've ordered and used so much product from Papertrey Ink in the past, I want to say a little bit about the firestorm that's blown up around them in recent days.

I haven't been involved in the forum discussions or other drama that's come up lately regarding their customer service, so if you're interested in details of what's happened recently, you can catch up with some excellently written blog posts about it here, here, and here.

As for me, the main reason I haven't been involved in the discussions is the same reason that you've been seeing more and more product from other companies on my blog lately. I was fairly irritated when I discovered that Papertrey had discontinued all of their inks due to problems, but had only posted that info on the Ink section of the site - no recall emails (even though they send out frequent emails to their customer base), no blog posts on Nichole's blog or those of any of the design team (which I have in my RSS reader, so I see them daily) - just one mention, buried in the site, which I didn't see until after the time had passed to be able to get a refund for the defective inks I already had.

I decided to give PTI the benefit of the doubt on that, and give them credit for acknowledging the problem with the inks and discontinuing them. Plus, I figured, the recall notice said they'd be releasing new inks soon, so I could just wait.

"Soon" ended up being... a year? Maybe? Possibly more.

The next order I made took a very long time to arrive, but I thought I'd try one more order, since I LOVE their products.

Unfortunately, the next several times I tried to place an order, nearly everything I tried to put in my cart was out of stock. There's no notice on the site itself if something is out of stock - it just wouldn't go into your cart. I wasn't trying to order hot new releases, and I wasn't even ordering in the week after release week when supplies tend to run low. In fact, some of the things I wanted most were older releases (a year old or more) that hadn't been featured on anything in a while. When I emailed Customer Service to ask when they might be back in stock, and to request a better system to let customers know when something isn't available, I got a very dismissive reply.

That was the end of my love affair with PTI - I still think they have amazing products, but if they can't get their products into my hands, what's the point?

The reason I post all this is that I'd sort of thought I was the only one, and I wasn't going to make a big Denouncing Statement or anything like that, since the company still had such good products that other people love. Now that I'm seeing that there are so many others who had my same issues, I want to put my voice with theirs and withdraw my support of the company. I won't stop using the products I already have, but I'll be removing the link from my sidebar and not ordering from them again.

Help?

So I've got sonogram-picture pages, and coming-home pages, and... now I'm coming up blank. What other pages am I going to need for these baby books? Any particular events that I'll definitely want to record? Give me some ideas.

Pictures already?

I know that sonogram pictures are notoriously vague and something "only a mother could love" - they're a little creepy, to be honest.

But I thought I'd scrap them anyway, since I have them.

The layout I'm less crazy about:

There's something wonky about the flourishes, but this was the first thing I scrapped while I was here, before I had any supplies, so it's kind of fun anyway. I used the baby-themed page kits my dad brought me from Michaels for this one.

And the one I like a little better:

This is a mix of the baby-themed page kits (the background paper) and the Studio Calico kit I used last week - I'm probably driving this chipboard font into the ground, but I love it!