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I store my wood-mounted stamps in 9x12 or 8 1/2 x 11" "box frames" that you can get in the Framing Dept at Michael's because I find the Stampin Up boxes take up a lot of room, and the frames allow me to see the tops of the stamps at a glance. I just take the cardboard insert out of the box frame and store the stamp rubber side down. I then store these in a 13" x 9" x 5 1/2" SQUARE-cornered (not rounded) basket that I also obtained at Michael's. I can fit (and remove easily) a frame of each size in a single layer in the basket. The basket can easily hold 5 layers (10 frame trays).
Carol Duvall had something like this years ago on her show, they also suggested photocopy your stamps and tape the image to the bottom of the acyrlic frame so that you could remember where each stamp was to return too. TFS!!
I love the stamps in the basket, great idea. My DH built me a stamp rack for my wall, like in the stores. It works great for my loose stamps. I have alot of stampin up stamp sets and I'm not sure how I am going to organize them so I don't have to rummage thru them all.
The stacking plastic paper organizer trays work great for storing the acrylic picture boxes with mounted stamps, and they are easy to find at thrift shops and garage sales. Just make sure you get ones that mesh together, as different brands have the slots in varying patterns. I'm not sure how high it would be safe to stack them. My sturdier paper organizers are already full of stamps; so these are handy for the overflow.
I store my wood-mounted stamps in 9x12 or 8 1/2 x 11" "box frames" that you can get in the Framing Dept at Michael's because I find the Stampin Up boxes take up a lot of room, and the frames allow me to see the tops of the stamps at a glance. I just take the cardboard insert out of the box frame and store the stamp rubber side down. I then store these in a 13" x 9" x 5 1/2" SQUARE-cornered (not rounded) basket that I also obtained at Michael's. I can fit (and remove easily) a frame of each size in a single layer in the basket. The basket can easily hold 5 layers (10 frame trays).
I love this idea. I currently have mind in some shallow cardboard boxes because my dad works for a box making company so we have a ton. The problem is I have to open every single box each time I'm looking for a stamp! Kind of annoying, but this would work tons better!!
__________________ Becky
Jack of all crafts, master of none. Stickles Swap
You take your ribbons off the spools and put your ribbons into the "purse." You then feed a few inches of one end of the ribbon through small holes that have been punched in the clear plastic portion of the purse.
I made mine by using one of the clear, zippered bags that sheet sets come in. I feel so wasteful throwing those away anyway. To make the holes, I just used my 1/8th inch and 1/16th inch hole punches and punched a bunch of holes.
Hi,
My Neice gave me a big bag of the Gerber Baby Food Plastic Rectangler Boxes. They are perfect for small items and the lids stay closed. They stack up well. When she first gave them to me I thought "What am I going to do with all of these" Now I am asking friends for more.
Hugs
Beryl
My Dad loves Blackburn's jam's and gives me at least one jar a week. It looks like a miniature beer mug, handle and all, and has a green screw-on top. I filled them with different colors of flowers and when interspersed with other supplies, they just bring a smile to my face! I got 6 jars across a small hanging 3 shelf bookcase that I picked up for $1.00 at a garage sale. Two of it's shelves hold SU stampsets upright rather than flat. I picked up a bright white scrapbook shelving/cubbyhole unit from Michaels and love it! Loose stamps are sitting all over it, the ribbon spools fit on the dowel rods. At another garage sale a financial adviser was selling 7 in/out boxes - 12"x12" - she caved for $1.50!! my paper is sorted on them. One Sterilite Clear View 12"x12" 3 drawer storage unit holds cards, another holds my son's finished scrapbook pages, & I just purchased another for the grandkids pages. They are great buys from JoAnn's with the 40% off coupon! A 4'wide x 5'tall x10" deep 4-shelf homemade bookcase holds mags, 2 xyrons, and misc. JoAnn's had a canvas 2-sided paper file at 80% off, which now holds specialty paper (2 pockets are filled with pink girlie paper/embellishments for my latest granddtr! My 5' desk has the PC, photo printer and regular printer, and a silhouette. It also has tons of discs with fonts and embellishments, which are not catalogued yet. A 4' folding table sticks out into the room for work. Oh yes! This summer i splurged and got an LCD flat screen TV so i won't miss 2.5 men!
I have a problem tho - what to do with all the punches in baskets on the floor??? I still have the back of a door and one upper wall free. Any ideas?
Retired PJ, I've seen people use the over the door shoe storage for punches, They sell at the $ store, also curtain rods the thin rod kind. Good luck it sounds as if you've got your room pretty well organized.
Mouseyr61 - I've no loyalty to brand so have a variety of sizes and shapes. I'd bot a towel rod and looked at curtain rods but they're too fat. Whatever I use will have to withstand abuse and keep them stable because the grandchildren romp in this room, and, they love to use the punches.
You take your ribbons off the spools and put your ribbons into the "purse." You then feed a few inches of one end of the ribbon through small holes that have been punched in the clear plastic portion of the purse.
I made mine by using one of the clear, zippered bags that sheet sets come in. I feel so wasteful throwing those away anyway. To make the holes, I just used my 1/8th inch and 1/16th inch hole punches and punched a bunch of holes.
__________________ Becky
Jack of all crafts, master of none. Stickles Swap
Very nice! Can I ask where you got those drawer/magazine holders in pic # 16? they have 3 small drawers and on the side is a vertical opening. It almost looks like maybe it's turned on its side and the drawers were turned? Anyway I could use something like that.
Hi Gale! I got them on auto delivery from QVC about 2 or 3 years ago. You know, I never though that they could go that way. They actually come with an insert for 12x12 paper, which I placed all together with the rest of my CS/bg paper, which you can see here:
all my stamps are vertical and with the end of the clear cases labelled I can find what I want...
the bins are labelled with pencil so from far away they are 'quiet' but close up I can find what is in them.
plus there are hints for words to spell out and sentiments that I can computer generate so that I don't have to buy a whole set of flowers just to get a great saying...
at least not everytime.lol!
everything is seasonal/ by category
and now there are two more bins high stacked on top as well as the pokey metal accessory trees in the corner are all full up too...
I an still morphing and moving stuff around because all my furniture ,
aside from these trofast ikeas systems ,
are all scavenged and free and dumpsterdived finds.
I like my stamp budget so consequently have no furniture budget!
these bins come in a few different sizes and one lid size fits all so I only have a few lids for transport to crops.
handy.
and I found a few duffles and hockey bags and rolling suitcases that fit all these so I can haul them without the non-secure lid opening up.
I even travelled greyhound that way a coupla times!
I am leaning towards getting more of these or maybe going the way of the iris cart, which I have been avoiding, and dividing everything into color by cart.
I fantasize about having a rainbow wall...
red cart would have red embellies top drawer, red fibers next, red scraps next, whole 8x11, then whole 12x12 then seasonal stuff that color like valentines.
then orange....with halloween stuff, say
then yellow with sun moon stars..
put a counter over it all and that is the way I am leaning now...
a little 'rummage through' action is good for creativity so the top will always be a little messy!
__________________ if your path is boobytrapped you are probably on the right track to treasure BUT if everything is inordinately hard you probably are rushing to the final exam in the wrong place a day early.
Wow what a mountain of great ideas..... I will for sure be putting some of these in effect real soon. I too use a Tackle box for my small embellishement, and flowers, and it is perfect for crops. My newest organization is for my unmounted stamps and acrylic stamps as the collection was taking over my life. I just happened to have posted photos today on my blog... LOL...
For my eyelets and brads, I got these tic-tac like storage containers from W*Mart in the jewelry making section. They were about $4. I like these because not only can I see exactly what I have, but I don't take a chance in spilling them.
For ribbons and other embellishments, I was storing them together with like things (like all the ribbons in one box, etc) but found I had to dig to find what I was looking for. So I recently bought more Iris Cart drawers, which is how I store my loose stamps, ink pads, embossing powders etc, and made a drawer for each color. So one drawer for pink, one for green... Then I put all the embellishments that were that color in that drawer. So now when I'm making a pink card and want a pink ribbon or pink prima or pink bauble, I only have to look in the one drawer and I can find just what I'm looking for. I find I'm using these embellishments so much more now.
For ribbon, I had so much and most of them are small pieces, so it wasn't worth trying to keep them on the spools. Instead I bought some small zip top bags (3 x 4" I think) and put each piece of ribbon in it's own baggie. Then those bags go in the drawer. I got the bags on ebay. They were about $3 for 100.
I may have to try this when I get my new room in December. Thanks for sharing!
__________________ Cory Creativity is intelligence having fun. - Albert Einstein Gallery S2S: -$16.05 (yikes) 2013 Card Goal:5/100
I love this thread, I asked along time ago if we could have a forum for organizing, but for whatever reason it didn't happen.
Anyway, I'll tell 3 of my best organizing ideas...
I built (DH helped) an island for my craft room, I used 2 storage stacked drawer units, each one is about 2 feet wide (30ish inches deep) and about the typical height of a kitchen counter top. I put the two next to each other then placed a piece of cheap melamine (home depot) on top leaving about a 1 inch over hang all the way around, then my hubby attached quarter round molding on the underneath side matching the measurement of the drawer units, (making a lip to fit around the drawer units) this is what keeps the top from sliding around. Now I have 6 very large drawers right under where I work. I really love how this worked out.
Another thing I did was very recent, I unmounted all of my SU stamps. I finally did the alphabet sets last week, I did not know how I was going to store them because I felt they would take way too many CD cases, so I started to unmount by pulling off the wood and foam, (I intended on putting them on the thin easy mount, but I didn't have enough so I knew I would have to do that part later, in the mean time I put them in an organizing box that has 24 2x2 sections (thinking it was temporary), well after filling all the spots in 3 boxes, I decided that this is so clean and easy to see what the different alphas are that they are staying this way, without foam and I will use double stick tape when I use them. And speaking of these storage boxes they are available in the craft section at walmart, BUT they are much cheaper in the fishing dept. at walmart!
My last really great organizing thing is my book shelves. I have the typical white somewhat cheap build them yourself shelves from office depot. I think each came with 5 move-able shelves. They worked fine when my sets were mounted and in the plastic boxes, but when I unmounted and went to cd cases to store the sets I knew each shelf would be way too deep, and therefore wasting valuable space. So I decided to buy melamine to have my DH cut to use for more shelves, well that turned out to be too expensive. It was much less expensive to buy another book case and just use the shelves. Now each book case has eight shelves, with each of the 9 open areas just slightly taller that a cd case. I can fit tons of cd cases on each shelf. I have managed to (almost) 2 book cases with just my SU stamp sets.
Another storage solution that really works for me is my scrap paper storage. I use a mail sorter unit from an office store it has 4 columns with 6 sections in each (great for SU's 4 color groups). In each color group I have a bag well it's actually the cellophane wrapper that SU's paper used to come in. Anyway, these fit in the section because they are the same size as the paper, I use one per family and put all of my scraps in each bag for that color family. When I go to use paper I always pull the bags first, I get my color inspiration and then see if I have the size paper I need for my project before I use a full sheet of card stock.
Oddly enough, I should be cleaning my stamp room instead of being on SCS, it is truly a mess right now!
I don't know if anyone has mentioned an over the door plastic shoe holder. i store ribbon,small clear stamps,markers,brayer,cuttlebug folders, and any other small bits and pieces. It's great because you can see everything you've stored at a glance.
I bought some plastic drawer units at Target. They are about 1 square foot in size and have 3 drawers about 4" high each. I stack these from floor to ceiling and can get 9 units (27 drawers) in one stack. In 3 stack I have all my card making supplies which includes over 1500 stamp (mostly Stampin UP) and they are still in the original plastic boxes.
I tried so many ways to store my ribbon including the gutter method, dowels, drawers, SU ribbon holders... and found that by cutting matboard into 2X3" rectangles and wrapping my ribbon onto these using tiny black rubberbands (from hair care isle of longs) I could get all the ribbon that use to be on a 5foot dowel into half of a 12"x12" drawer. It was amazing how much space this saved. I divided the drawer in 4 rows using the matboard then sorted each row by color. I can see all my ribbon so easily, I can pull the drawer out and take it to my table and it cost less then $5 to do. You need a handheld rotary cutter to cut the matboard. I ordered a wooden stamp pad organizer with space for markers and reinkers from Ebay. The maker is "the creative country crafter". They do quality work. I love it. It is large but I can see everything at a glance and reach everything in it from my work table.
I also use the tictac boxes and divided plastic containers for storing small embellishements then store them in my drawers. The drawers are clear so I can kindof see whats in them but I also plan on labeling them in the near future. I keep all my stamps in the bottom half and the embellishments at eye level with items I use less often in the top drawers. I keep a step later handy so I can get to everything easily. I have 85 drawers and they take up less then 6 feet of wall space (floor to ceiling) and store all my supplies. The 1500 stamps take up less then half of that space. I also have a spreadsheet with all my stampsets listed alphabetically and my drawers are numbered so I can see on the list which drawer each stamp set is in.
I recently bought two cubes from michaels, They are wooden and actually are wider and deeper than the plastic iris type carts. i kept having trouble with the plastic ones, the drawers kept falling down. I didn't really have anything that heavy in them but they still fell. SO now I put the stuff from my plastic over to the wooden ones with room to spare. The wooden ones look nicer also they are white lamenate like my closet shelves, so they dress it up.
I am going to take my SU sets and rearrange them so they are by catagory instead by set. I have smaller loose ones that I can group together and the cases that only have the one big background stamp can go on the rack that my DH built. I am hoping this will narrow down my cases and I'll use more of the stamps. I've seen where alot of people are removing theirs but i can't afford the special stuff to adapt them to the acrylic blocks.
Deb_t I too have a spreadsheet with a list of supplies/stamps/ink - the stamps are listed individually but also have a column for the 'set' name. I was thinking of adding a column which would identify some of it's group uses....at the stamp shows they make artistic or floral scenes, and i draw a blank when i sit down to duplicate it.
What categories do people use for storing stamps?
We do a lot of transporting and had a tendency to leave totes in the van - some of the stamps starting sliding off the woodbase. You would think common sense would have cautioned us, but it happened.
I'm curious to know for those of you who wrap your ribbons around something flat (ex. mat board) do you find that it creases, or even has a slight bump when you lay it flat on your project?
As for unmounted stamps, I am trying to decide if I should mix the brands or not. Meaning that I have the sets in cd cases then on the book shelves by category (similar to SU"s categories, but even more broken down). What I want to know is if I show then add in my PTI or TAC sets that fit into each category, or should I keep them separate (like I do now)?
And lastly, I have heard about some people storing all of their embellishments by color, I heard this right around the time when I finally organized mine by product (brads with brads and so on in divided plastic boxes). Anyway the idea appeals to me (somewhat) because it makes sense as far as when you want something pink you can just go to that one spot and see all of the choices, BUT I think I'm too____ (fill in the word);) ! So how do any of you get past this?
Y'know, I'm liking more and more the sound of the over-the-door shoebag holder for holding the smaller/bulky things, like the brayer, the smaller paper trimmer (if it fits), thinks like that. It sounds like it would be very helpful.
I think I might also try the idea of storing like-colored embellies together.
It is a bit pricey but I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE my "Clip It UP" I have the base in addition to the add on tier. I did a search in the BST forum and found someone who needed to sell theirs at a discount. I use different size jewelry zip lock type baggies to seperate my embellishments by color. Here is a link...
DITTO!! I just got mine today and I use the 8 1/2" x 11" page protectors that go in notebooks and this thing stores ALL my scraps of cardstock... one for each color. I'll post a photo if anyone is interested.
I have a LOT OF SCRAPS and this thing holds them sorted and I can find what I need in a jiffy... I used to put them in 8 different binders on my shelf and every time I needed another color, it was get another binder on the table and flip to find the color... now they are all here on one rotating rack.
If you want to see it filled with SU paper scraps and all my other scraps, go to my blog!
What a great thread! I just won the fight over my out of control polymer stamps that were all over the place! not a friend of CD cases I came up with a small folder system for them, oh it works so well! some photos and description here
__________________
currently designing for: Clear Artistic Stamps, Elemental Doodles and RubberRoadAdventures!
Well since this thread has been revived and I have a few more organizational pieces, I will post the links here. For some reason I can't edit my original post on page 1. Anyway, I hope these help too.
I bought a dyno label maker for making my filing cabinet neater. But have found it works great to label the ends of my ink pads. You can buy them preprinted from SU but you have to buy all the labels & I don't have all the ink pads. My problem is not really organization but having to many unfinished projects. lol My new years resolution a month early is to complete "ufo's" before I start a new project. . . . .until I log on to scs and see one I just can't resist trying.lol
I put on a french cd every once in a while and "attend'
Fancy French Finishing school !
I think I need some french wine and french chocolate to get me through the next 'school day' though...
so many barely started crucial projects....
__________________ if your path is boobytrapped you are probably on the right track to treasure BUT if everything is inordinately hard you probably are rushing to the final exam in the wrong place a day early.
It's not all that unconventional, but I use this craft mate for my brads, eyelets, hot fix crystals, buttons etc.
The reason I like these are that you can open just one of the compartments on a tray without having to open them all (6 trays of 14 compartments each). I tend to be klutzy and knock things over. It's much easier to pick up the contents from one little compartment than to have to pick up and RE-SORT everything (ugh!). Plus it's PURPLE!
You can stack it nicely in a cupboard/bookshelf, hang it in a closet over a hanger or from a peg on a coat rack or from an S hook on a dowel rod and it's easy to grab to take along. I keep tools like my cropadile in the outside pocket and there are 2 side pockets for things like tweezers or glue.
It's not all that unconventional, but I use this craft mate for my brads, eyelets, hot fix crystals, buttons etc.
The reason I like these are that you can open just one of the compartments on a tray without having to open them all (6 trays of 14 compartments each). I tend to be klutzy and knock things over. It's much easier to pick up the contents from one little compartment than to have to pick up and RE-SORT everything (ugh!). Plus it's PURPLE!
I have a freind who has one of those (not purple though, I love purple). I wished I would have seen those before I found the one I am using. It is black and only has a single row of trays that have 6 or so indivdual compartmeents. I use them for my beads. I agree about opening indivually, i also get a little klutsy.
I just recently got the Craft Mate also. It's smaller than the one you have--with 8 rows of 7 compartments each. I really like it. I did take out the pins from each row that "locks" the row shut since each compartment snaps shut, and I don't have little ones around. I found it to be more user friendly that way. Just personal preference.
I got mine at Mike's with a 40% coupon--so, I think, I paid $12 for it.
I have fallen in love with these ribbon holders from organizemore.com
He also has stamp set holders, ink pad holders and other cute ideas.
Ann
Thank you so much for sharing your ribbon organizer and the organizemore.com site, I love this idea and it looks just like what I have been looking for. Organizes, and looks like it holds a lot of ribbon in various sizes. Also matches the jetmax cubes.
You're awesome!
