Organization: Paper Scraps

Like many things I have organized and re-organized, my paper scraps were one of those things that I just couldn't seem to find something that worked for me.  Whenever I would mat a photo or use a sheet of paper for a title I didn't want to just waste the rest and throw it away.  At one point I tried throwing all my scraps in a bin, but quickly grew tired of trying to dig through the pile of paper to find the color I needed.  I then tried drawers, but at that time there were only the smaller sizes and I scrap 12x12 mostly so some of my scraps would be 12" in length and they wouldn't fit in the drawers.

Then came the sterilite 12x12 drawers!

1 set consists of 3 drawers so I bought 2 of them to stack on top of each other.  I then assigned each drawer a specific color

My drawers are divided into these colors:
1. red, yellow, orange
2. green, blue
3. pink, purple, peach
4. white, cream, and gray
5. black, brown
6. metallics, misc., and patterns

Now I can fit even my 12" scraps and whenever I am looking for a certain color I can just go to that drawer.  Before I cut a whole piece of paper I look in my scrap drawers to see if I have something that may work instead.

I did this a long time ago and am too lazy to change things around, but if I were to categorize my colors today I probably would do it a bit differently.  I probably would put reds and pinks together since some of them can overlap in color and some I have a hard time deciding if it's more on the red side or the pink side.

This is the way I store almost all of my cardstock and patterned paper scraps.  The only scraps I don't stick in these drawers is my Stampin' Up cardstock and Papertrey Ink cardstock.  I keep those scraps with my full sheets in a different system.

The Evolution of Cartridge Storage

It felt like a never ending quest: find the right storage solution for my Cricut cartridges.  I don't have a whole room to myself, I only have a craft space.  I am always reorganizing my things, trying my best to fill all my supplies in a tiny little space.  Sometimes I even feel like I am organizing and re-organizing more than I am crafting!

It started out simple enough when I had just a few cartridges.  I had them on a shelf in their original boxes behind where I sit:

Then my cartridges somehow multiplied and outgrew the shelf.  I had this space on the side of my table that my husband built me and it seemed like such wasted space.  We had some leftover foam core board from the ink pad holder the same wonderful husband built me, so he also built me a shelf for my cartridges to store them in that wasted space:

All was fine and dandy for a while, but as you can see, the bottom kinda gave out and somehow my cartridges multiplied again!!  They just keep doing that! ;)  So I again ran out of space.  This began my latest search for a way to store my cartridges.

Now, I am picky when it comes to the way I store certain things.  I know how I work, and I know what would get on my nerves in terms of using something!  So when looking for ideas I had certain criteria:

• It didn't necessarily have to stay in the original boxes, but everything had to stay together: handbook, overlay, and cartridge.  There are a lot of wonderful ideas on how to store handbooks/overlays together and then cartridges seperately.  However, for me, I knew this wouldn't work because I didn't want to have to go to one place to grab the handbook or overlay, and then open up something else for the cartridge.  Also, even though I have a Gypsy, I still use my cartridges in the machine and wanted ti keep everything together.
• I had the idea that my new storage would involve keeping the cartridges in alphabetical order, but the storage had to be something I could easily add new cartridges in alphabetically, without having to move everything around all over again
• Last, I wanted the new storage to be something where I could store the seasonal and solution cartridges along with the regular cartridges.  I hated having those types seperate from the others because I would forget about them and hardly used them.

So the search began....  I did google searches, and message board searches, and ended up on You Tube trying to find videos on organizational ideas.  And that's where I found it!  So, keep in mind, I am not the one you came up with this idea, but once seeing it, I knew it would fit what I was looking for perfectly!

While searching You Tube, I found this video, which also led me to her fabulous blog you can find at Scrappin with My Bug.  She apparantly go her idea from this video!  So now you can add me to the list of those who've adapted the idea!  Here is a picture of my system:

I bought the Clip it Up Mini by Simply Renee, but didn't get the upper tier because I didn't think I would need it just yet.  HA!  Silly me!  I should know by now how these cartridges love to multiply!  I also bought the zip top bags in size 5x8.  I created the labels with the cartridge names in Publisher and made it so the name would be on both sides of the bag.  I also color coded the labels as well to help identify what type of cartridge they were at a quick glance:

• Shape cartridges: blue
• Font cartridges: orange
• Classmates: green
• Solutions: pink
• Seasonal: yellow
• Licensed: red
• Lite: purple
• Cake (which I don't have any yet): white

I really love this system because it seems to fit each of my criteria I was looking for.  I have 50 cartridges on this one clip it up and they are kinda smooshed in there, so I know I will have to get the upper tier for any more cartridges.  I'm so happy I finally got this project done...now it's off to the next project - stamp organization!

Friday Favorites: Becky Higgins sketches

In honor of Becky Higgins resignation from Creating Keepsakes, I figured my love for her sketches would be perfect for my Friday Favorites.

Before I begin, though, I want to apologize for any blurry pictures!  We just got back from apple picking and I wanted to quickly get the pictures and in my laziness I didn't go back to redo blurry pictures!


I loves sketches, all kinds, but these are the ones that introduced me into the sketch world.  It seems that finding the perfect picture placement for my pictures has always been the hardest part for me, so having a blueprint made things go so much faster for me!

After a while it seemed that I had collected so many of Becky's sketches, plus her 2 sketch books (at the time) and I was getting tired of always pulling everything out each time.  So I came up with a way to put it all together and it made it so much easier for me to browse the sketches without having a whole bunch of different books.

I decided I would take all her sketches and put them in one big binder.  I started with the monthly ones from the magazine.  I took the sketch and the layout examples and put them in page protectors and then into the binder.  I did these for all the ones I had when I had my subscription to CK magazine.

When I no longer subscribed, I would get the sketches from online on the website.

 I put the sketch and the examples layouts on a sheet and then print out each month, hole punches the sheets and put them in the binder with the others.

The next part was a little traumatizing, but after I did it, I felt it was worth it.

 I ended up taking apart the idea books so I would be able to put that into my binder

I did it for both the books...

Now I had all her sketches and all examples in one place.  All I have to do is pull out one binder instead of a bunch of magazines, 2 books, and some print outs from the computer.

The only one I don't have in the binder is the Best of Becky Higgins Sketches - her latest sketch book.  I like the way the book is set up and I didn't want to take it apart.  But there is something I did do in this book...

I know the pictures is blurry, but down at the bottom of the page I wrote where the sketch came from.  So if it was from the magazine I wrote the month and year.  If it was from one of the books, I wrote which book and the page number.  This way I can reference the sketch in my binder.

I thought I would also show some scrapbook pages I did using the sketches as inspiration.  Most of the times I start with a sketch and I modify it some way to fit the pictures I have, but sometimes I do my own page almost the same placement as the sketch...it really depends.  Oh, and let me apologize again for the pictures taken right from my album.  Again, laziness!  I just wanted to get the pictures and didn't want to pull each one out of my album and then have to put them back in.  Also, I was trying to get some of the 2 page layouts side by side and I can't seem to get it to work, so I'm sorry that they're not next to each other!

   

Title: cricut cartridge - Storybook, Patterned Paper: Basic Grey (I think...I can't remember!)

Those are just a few pages I have made using sketches.  I just love how it makes things so much faster for me when trying to design a page, especially for the part I seem to struggle with the most - picture placement.

More on ink pad organization

A while ago I posted about how I store my ink pads, and since they were mainly the small little squares or cats eye I just stored them in a sterilite drawer. The only problem was that I would store them upside down and could never see the color I wanted to use! It was quite frustrating to have to turn each one over just to see which one it was. So I thought I would change that!


To solve the problem, I took some leftover rubber from my Stampin' Up! stamps and cut out a circle. I mounted it on a little peg thing from one of my sons' broken toys. I then took each color and stamped it on plain white paper. Next I wrote the color of the ink on the colored circle and then punched it out with a circle punch.


Then I just took some photo squares and adhered the circle to the back of my stamp pads. Now when I look in my drawer, after referencing my swatchbook, I can find the color I am looking for easily! Much better!

Of course now that I have Stampin' Up! ink, I need to come up with a way to store those. Right now I actually have my husband working on something for me based on a lot of ideas I have seen around. I just wish he would finish it!!

Organization: Ink Pad Storage

In my never ending process of organization, I thought I would share the latest way I store my ink pads. This method may change after a while when I need to move things around again, but for now this way is working for me.


These are just the 8 1/2x11 sterilite drawers I got from Wal-Mart. Each type of ink pad has its own drawer: 1)dye inks, 2)distress inks, 3)chalk inks, 4)slow drying pigment inks, 5)fast drying pigment inks (like Brilliance), and 6)craft inks and StazOn (which is currently empty at the moment.

I usually buy the little cat's eye or cubes if I can because that way it's more economical to be able to have more colors and it's also easier for me to store. These drawers sit on a shelf, which is behind where I work.

This one is my dye inks:

This is my distress inks:

I am still so confused as to what kind of inks to store upside down, so I just store all of them upside down. The only thing I hate about this is that you can't see the color of the ink pad. The Distress Inks have the name written on the bottom, which is a big help, though.

These are my chalk inks:
What I am going to try to do is stamp a small circle and then punch it out, try to write the color name on it and attach it to the bottom of the ink pads. I just haven't gotten around to doing that yet.

I used to store my ink pads in hard plastic pencil type cases I got at Staples, but I outgrew that. I rearranged all my other stuff to make room for this new ink pad storage set up. So far it's working! But I have a small space and I am constantly having to re-organize everything in order to make the most of my space.

Organization: Color Swatch Book

Sometimes I wish I could organize the rest of my house like I organize my craft stuff. Most of the time I think I work more on organizing my stuff than creating with it.

One of the things that annoyed me while working on a project was never getting the right color and wasting a whole lot of paper in the process. This was especially true for when I wanted to print out titles or journaling in a certain color. They would always print out a different color than what appeared on my monitor. To fix the problem I decided I would make myself a color chart with all the colors in Publisher and use it as a reference for choosing just the right color for my project.
I made 1 inch squares and each square was a color from Publisher. I then printed it out with my color printer and put it in my "Create" binder (which I will share another time). This is just 1 sheet for an example. Then the next time I wanted a specific color, I would just use my color reference sheets and I had no more surprise colors.

I also started doing this for my ink colors as well. That way it was easy to see what color they looked like once stamped on paper.
This system was working for me for a while, but I seemed to outgrow it. I was acquiring more things I wanted to put in a color directory, like stickles, and a section in the binder wasn't working anymore. I wanted to come up with a way that was easier to use for a quick reference but I just couldn't figure out how to do it.

It finally hit me when I was reading the blog, Triple the Scraps. She has great organization tips and one of her tips was how she set up her own ink color swatches, which you can see here and here. She also had another entry with stickles, which you can see here. I loved the way she had hers set up so I took the idea but went a little bit overboard with my own creation. It was a bit of work in the beginning to put it together, but once it was done it's now easy to maintain, and I absolutely love it!

This is my color swatch book:
I have everything divided into sections and I used Fabulous Finds Cricut cartridge to make the tabs. I glued patterned paper to chipboard and used it as the front and back covers. I printed out the pages for the inside to use for my color samples and then I binded it all together with my Bind it All.

The first section is my Publisher colors
The blank section under each color block isn't done yet, but that will be for me to write in my reference as to what color it is. Either by the number or the location.

My next section is ink. I have a section for dye inks, pigment inks, chalk inks, distress inks, etc...
Some of my other sections include stickles, liquid pearls, paints, flock, glimmer mist, etc...
For the ink color samples, paint, and stickles I put it directly on the paper For things like the flock and glimmer mist I did it on another piece of paper, cut out the circles using a punch and taped it into the spot in the book.

Also, I added a section in my book for each specific color of ink (just ink).
This way if I am looking for a certain shade of blue, I can go to my blue section and see what color works best for my project.

I think the size of the booklet is 8.5x5.5 - basically one standard size sheet of paper cut in half. It's small enough that I keep it on my desk and it's so easy to grab and the tabs make it easy to find what I am looking for.