Jun pics

A perfect match

Vinyl, meet my Silhouette. Silhouette, meet vinyl. Then Silhouette and vinyl meet my crazy organization obsession. There. I'm sure you will all play together nicely.

I've had a Silhouette machine since I'm moved to a city without a scrap booking store. It was my gift to myself 3 years ago when we moved out of Washington to uh...a less populated area. I was feeling sad and knew I would go through withdrawals of not being able to die cut at my leisure, so I bought it with grand intentions. Don't get me wrong, its been used, but three years and two more kids later, it hasn't been used as much as I anticipated. But that has all changed. Between this and my usually strong obsession towards organization, my house will be going through a transformation over the next few months

My first try at this. Labeling our playroom bins. Only one of my four kiddos can read, but this will help out in many ways. Babysitters. Weekly playgroup clean up. Me. (OK, so its mostly for me.) Our playroom can get quite messy at times. Its the price I pay to have an hour to get things done. Sometimes I'm amazed at what they can do in such a short time....and then how agonizingly long it takes them to clean it up. (Another project this summer....edit playroom toys...but that's another post.) Anyhoo...I bought these wooden plaque-type things at Hobby Lobby awhile ago with the intentions of labels the big wicker baskets in our playroom. But then I got home, looked at my vinyl, looked at my Silhouette, got scared and hid the supplies. Repeat for 4 months. Finally last month I decided to face my fears. After it was over I was rather pleased with myself, mostly for being able to check something off my ever growing list, but also because I knew I had opened up a whole new obsession!

The project

The short version....I spray painted the wooden plaques.  I painted both sides so that when the kids grow and their toy stash changes, I can use the other side.  After the paint dried, I used my handy dandy crop-o-dile to punch holes in the wood.  (Yep...it goes through that too!)  I then took a brown antiquing stamp pad to the edges.  Choosing the font was tricky, because the had to be bi g enough to read, but narrow enough to fit the longest word in between the holes.  (Yes, in hind sight, I should have used a font a little less similar to my own handwriting.)  Put the vinyl in the machine, had it cut the letters, removed the part around the words,  then applied the transfer tape.  Cut out each word then applied it to the wood.  Removed the transfer tape and voila!  I used jute to attach them to the baskets. 

We have 6 wicker baskets and they are are done. Now I need to tackle the red plastic bins on the upper shelves.   Will post a completely picture when the room is done.

***Please disregard the toys that have been cleaned up shoved under the shelves by my children.  For some reason they don't think that I can see them.