Council Rock Ode to Joy Flashmob

After the lights go up on stage, you'll  see of group of 3 violinists enter from the left (white T-shirts) , MK is in the middle, followed by her strings teacher Mrs. Bennet. Musicians and vocalists  were selected from the entire school district (elementary through high school). They put this together for a meeting of all district teachers. The teachers were only expecting the cellist to play the piece that you see at the beginning of the video.  It's amazing what they could pull together with just one group rehearsal. Stage crew, lighting and camera are also students.

12 Lamps of 2013

Hi there Tim.  What is your preferred form of verbing your name?  Because when  I saw this lamp at Ikea the first thing that ran through my head was that it was just crying to be Tim Holtz-ed(?).  Initially I was  going to Christmas tag it and having one at either end of my dining room side board.  But, as I mentioned before, with the move and all, things got a bit timey wimey and the Craft Cupboard Under The Stairs has just newly started to function again.

the shade that goes with the lamp is a flat strip of plastic with notches at the ends to hold it in a round shape.  It has holes in it to accomodate the bracket that fits on the lamp base.  I used the as a template to create the shade out of a recycled manila folder.  Rather than cutting the tabs, I just overlapped the straight edges and secured with brads.  The overall height of the lampshade is a bit longer than the one that comes with the lamp - a preferable length to me.

I picked this stamp because it seemed to lend itself to layering and fit the Valentine theme.  I used Kraft core and the postcard texture fade x 2.  I cut them in half and pieced together with tissue tape.  I followed Tim pretty closely, with very few exceptions: http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2013-february/.  You probably recognize the vintage lace decorate strip cut from metal tape.  The pointy finger is stamped on craft card cut with the ticket mover and shaper and the other ticket is stamped with “To my dearly beloved”.  I secured both of these with brads I covered the base of the lamp with flowers cut using Tattered Florals Bigz die, mover and shapers and decorative strip.

And Tim is right.  I had a blast with the distress markers and water brush .  I am not at all good with water colors but it seems easy to get nice results.

Craft Cupboard Under the Stairs Learns TARDIS Technology

IT'S BIGGER ON THE INSIDE!

As much fun as that would have been, the truth of the matter is, we have moved and WE HAVE A CRAFT ROOM!  My magic craft cupboard (which often demonstrate more characteristics of Hermoine Granger's handbag, then Harry Potter' bedroom) is now in the hands of a lovely young couple who were quite complementary of our organizational skills

The craft Cupboard Under the Stairs household now has a lovely craft room where we can all get down to some serious business.  We were quite fortunate this fall to find above mentioned lovely couple to buy our townhouse so that we could buy this lovely fixer upper within walking distance of the borough!  By fixer upper we mean LOTS of scraping to remove wall paper and popcorn ceiling and switching out of light fixtures and window shades.  It's going to be so much fun putting our own mark on things, crafters that we are.  The kitchen will also require overhaul, but that's the best part.  New Kitchen!  This isn't our first remodel rodeo, so we know what we're up against.

Anyway - back to It's bigger on the inside.  TA DA

I will probably blog my storage solutions periodically, in the hopes that I'll get some feedback and other suggestions...Unless things go all timey wimey again.
xoxo