I have a confession to make

Good morning loyal readers.  I have a confession to make. I have dual personality traits. One side of me is very detailed and organized while the other side of me is quite chaotic and messy. My office as a whole is pretty cluttered, however, there are a few spaces within my small confine that I think are very organized and I would like to show you that area.  It's mostly the area where I store all of my stationery and art supplies. I am always inspired when I read a blog post about storing mail/art supplies so I hope that my post might give someone else a bit of inspiration or an "aha" moment.

My office is tiny and the layout is sucky. There is a built in desk which was already here when we bought the house so it makes everything kind of limited on where I put things. My work station/desk area faces west. The drawers in the picture above face south, but they are arranged on the north end of my office.  If I swivel my chair slightly to the right, my elbow touches this storage chest. Yes, that's how tight my space is. Ugh! You can kind of see what I store in the drawers- paper clips, highlighters, washi tapes, self inking stamps, and miscellaneous.

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Washi tapes take up two drawers.

Right next to the first storage chest is another one.  This is still within an arm's length and I can access everything quite easily. The black drawers contain business related items for my doTerra oils and the Make-Up Eraser. This is also where I store all of my etsy items that are currently listed for sale or about to be listed. The mini storage chest on top in the middle is one I have my hands constantly in and out of.  It's where I store all my glues. The green and purple krates house sticky notes, and then you can see the green and white polka dot can where my pens are.

A look inside. I use the glue sticks for mail art and for gluing my handmade envelopes. I use the other glue on the far left more than any other glue. This is what I use to moisten and glue my vintage stamps to envelopes. Then there's double sided tape which I also use on my envelopes.

The drawer containing some etsy items for sale.

The postcards I enclose with every etsy order thanking my cusomers.

These set of drawers are next to the bookcase that is next to the black storage drawers. This is not within reach but it's not something I need to use constantly. Starting from the bottom up, this houses some of my paper goods including stationery/writing papers, handmade envelopes, photo papers, miscellaneous papers, address labels, and another drawer of miscellany.  Next to this I have a table with two large printers. One that does everything and another that is a photo printer that can print up to 19x13 photos. And underneath that table is a set of teal storage drawers (like the black ones, only more narrow with just 4 drawers). The table with the printers are on the East end of the wall. 

All handmade envelopes, most by me, but some by others who sent them in a swap, etc.

Next, in another post I will show you the rest of my storage for postcards, notecards, greeting cards and more stationery. 

Did I confess that I might be a tad bit of a hoarder when it comes to paper?

Well, consider this my 2nd confession.

Now go have a wonderful, creative day.

Elvis is headed to Rhode Island

Good evening my friends.

Elvis is on his way to Rhode Island with a list of weekly goals.

The list of goals is for a swap I joined on Swap-Bot.

I also signed up for the Adventures of the Traveling Postcard so that's what's in the envelope above Elvis.

I want to share with all of you my new year so far.

We're barely midway through and I feel like I have done a lot already.

I keep getting little inspirations here and there that are nudging my subconscious to take action. One of those inspirations came about last week when I was browsing Amazon for journals. Well one title led to other titles and before I knew what was happening, I was browsing the books and clicking on the icon that urged me to look inside. This happened over and over again until my eyes couldn't take it any longer. A peek inside one of the books was talking about the art of manifesting. Well, my interest was piqued long before I looked inside. I knew that I was going to like what the author had to say just by the title of the book, "Write it Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want & Getting it."  I took it to heart and I am now currently writing free style in my journal first thing in the morning before I even pry my eys open. I set the timer on my phone for 15 minutes and I just write about all that I desire no matter how unrealistic. It feels good.

It's liberating. It's therapeautic. It's me taking the first step towards manifesting my dreams into reality.

How about a little mail porn before I go on with my jibberish!

Three pen pal letters that I mailed a few days ago.

I'm almost caught up with all of my replies.

Postcrossings on the way to Ireland and the Ukraine.

A postcrossing card from the Ukraine.

The sender writes that the name of this car is Zaporozhets and is a typical retro car from 1960.

Now back to more jibberish.

One of my inspirations came from out of nowhere or maybe it came from watching episodes of American Pickers or Auction Hunters or The Longest Yard Sale. In any case I have developed an interest in Estate sales. I'm talking about the kind of sale handled by a third party after a person dies. Last week I immersed myself in cyberspace googling estate sales in my area. I combed through hundreds of pictures and mapped out four estate sales to attend. I managed to go to three of them and I bought items from two. Before I ever started looking at estate sales, I had already made up my mind that I wanted to sell vintage items and other used stuff either on Ebay or Etsy. I came up with a shop name and designed a little banner for the shop.

So technically, my shop is open because I have listed one item, however, I won't consider myself in business until I get a few other items listed.  With that being said, I'm wondering what kind of items you all buy on Etsy and Ebay. I would love your feedback.  I have been doing research on the top selling items, but I want to know what you think. So can you please do me a favor and leave feedback in the comment section and tell me what you like to browse or purchase in these stores.  Thank you so much.

I went to my first camera club meeting of the year and it was really good. The auditorium was so packed that many people had to stand. I'd say there were over 125 people in attendance. We haven't had that kind of attendance in awhile so it was nice to see all the old faces and some new faces as well. The first program meeting was about night photography, which is my favorite photography to shoot. The presentation was by Royce Bair, a Utah resident. If you're interested you can read his bio here.

I have a jewlery party to attend this coming Friday, a business seminar on the 25th, and a photoshop class on the 26th.  When the month of January has passed, I can look back and say, " wow, It was a productive month and the new year is off to a good start."

I scored some postcards from one of the estate sales.

These are all from Argentina and although they pre-date the internet, I believe them to be from the 80's or 90's.

Have a fabulous week, everyone!