Purple Sage Creations: August 2010

Keeping Those Papers Organized

Can you hear the school bell ring? Yep! It's that time of year again...Back to school.

And that's my inspiration for this little creation:

I have 3 children in school right now. After school each of them reach into their backpacks and hand me a stack of papers. Some are just for me to enjoy and some have to be signed and returned. The trouble is, I don't remember who gave me what sometimes. And I can't always rely of my little ones knowing. They hardly glance at them most of the time. I had to find a way to organize them according to child.

This is how it works: My children place the paper that I should see on the *in* clipboard and attach a clothespin with their name on it to the papers. I take a look at them, place any signed papers on the *out* clipboard also attaching their name clothespin to the stack. I made a clothespin for each of my four children and one for my DH and I. This way the entire family is covered. So even though the picture above only says *MOM* and *DAD* there is one for each of us. And the twine holding the clothespins is full when all of us are on there.

So I showed my creation for today, now let me tell you how I made it...

I found two inexpensive clipboards. I painted each of them with Barn Red paint using a sponge brush. It took a couple coats to completely cover.

After they were dry I stamped the apple boarder from PTI's School Time stamp set using Whisper White Craft Ink from Stampin' UP. When dry I added a black and white gingham ribbon. One clipboard I tied a bow, the other I knotted a couple lengths of ribbon together.

To create the tag I punched Old Olive cardstock with the scalloped punch (both from SU!). The I used stamped the apple using Ridinghood Red from SU! and the boarder with black StazOn ink onto PTI's white cardstock. (both these stamps were also from the School Time stamp set). I used a circle punch to punch them out. Then I used a white gel pen to create the little dots on the scallops.

The same method is used for creating the clothespins. Just stamp-off the apple before stamping onto the tag. This way it is lighter and easier to write names using black marker.

Then use super strong double sided tape to attach the small clothespin.

I used a tag punch to display which clipboard was *IN* and *OUT*. After punching I stamped the notebook stamp from the same stamp set onto the white cardstock. I used Baja Breeze ink from SU using the stamping off technique. Then I wrote *IN* and *OUT* with black marker. I attached them to the top right side of the clipboards with super strong double sided tape.