Altered Rolo

I've been trading altered rolodex cards with friends from ATCsforAll. When I trade with someone that I don't have a rolo for, I cut out the return address portion of their envelope, paste it to a blank rolo card, and file it. I thought my rolo holder looked a little boring, so I added some stripes with white electrical tape.

New Year's Resolutions

This year I decided to make some resolutions. I kept them pretty vague so that I would be able to actually keep them for a month or two.

I noticed in Cloth Paper Scissors that many people made plans of doing an ATC a day for a year, or an inchie a day or an art quilt a week or whatever. I thought about making a resolution like that, but figured I'd bomb out in no time. I just don't like feeling like I HAVE to do something. So I decided to just make a resolution to do something creative every day.

Well, that sounded alright and I did it for the first few days while I was visiting my parents, and even on the day when we drove 12 hours to come back home. But once we got back to our apartment, I realized that my simple little resolution would not be so simple. Why?? Because my "creative space" (a 2x6 table in our computer room) was a disaster. I tell myself that I'm messy because it helps my creativity to have all of my "tools" out at all times, but I had gotten carried away. The table that seemed HUGE when we bought it was covered with the aftermath of many many projects and in the actual flat space available, I could just barely fit a 8.5x11 sheet of paper. So this led to resolution #2: CLEAN UP!! I took a before shot to document my progress. A real mess.
Needless to say, it had gotten to the point where I could no longer work here. I didn't even really want to be in the room with that mess anymore! I could barely get into the chair, I had to shuffle piles of stuff around in order to do anything, my super cool altered rolodex was more of an obstacle than a decoration (and practically useless as an address file), and even though it seemed like all my supplies were out, I could not find anything!! Clearly, something HAD to be done.

After sorting out paper to keep for projects and paper to recycle, trash that might find its way into artwork and trash that was just TRASH, I could actually see the floor. My husband seemed pretty impressed with my efforts even at this early stage (I guess that says something about his opinion of me as a houskeeper, haha). Then I went on to some fun cleaning up: sorting through teeny bits to go in my little drawer unit, flipping through my ATC collection while butting cards in to boxes, filing images into a shoebox, and organizing the funky fibers that nice folks from ATCards.com had sent me. This was really enjoyable -- I cut up some of the cardboard boxes from the TRASH trash pile and wrapped the cool pieces of yarn onto them. I think they look pretty happy in their new home, and I'll probably be way more likely to actually use them now that they're not squished up in envelopes anymore.

I grabbed a few of my favorite books from our overstuffed bookshelf and put them in a crate, along with some inspiring magazines, and put my shoebox of images and basket of sewing notions on top of the crate. This freed up a lot of space, and I can always shove the crate on to the floor when I start a big messy project. Now my rolo file is a lovely centerpiece at my table, and I can really enjoy flipping through the cards.

I got a set of stacking bins for larger items, things that plug in, and made the top bin into a mailing station. It's got all my stamps, envelopes, used envelopes, ATC sleeves, and note cards. So I'm ready for some mail art now :)

Here's an after shot. It's not perfect, but it sure is an improvement. My sewing machine is still living on the floor, and my set of drawers is still covered with a pile of who-knows-what, but, hey - it's a start.