Everyone who crafts has some sort of organization. And whether or not they are good organization options depends on you. Organization is as much a statement of your personal preferences as your choice of car or bedroom décor. That being said organization falls into two schools of thought…is it functional or is it pretty. Now the better thing would be functionally pretty. I fall into the functional style with as many touches of pretty as I can incorporate.
When I got my new space in 2011, I thought I’d have this Kitchen of a craft room. One with all the cabinets and storage of a kitchen. But my husband’s practical side intervened and my dream of a kitchen craft room died. So what I have is my hodge podge of mismatched metal office desk and filing cabinets with their plastic cousins and particle board counter tops.
Now less you think I’m unhappy in my space, let me say this; I often refer to my space as a sanctuary, a haven of rest. Sounds like heaven and for me it is heaven on earth. It is here that I am creative and without creativity I would be less.
I have some storage tips that I love to share and I hope that the ones I share with you today will be helpful to some.
I store dies (shown below) and punches on Bygel Rails from IKEA.
I bought some of the rails and the “S” hooks and hung my wafer thin dies in the original packaging. For those I did not have the packaging for, I bought some plastic zip lock style bags from eBay; punched a hole in the top so I could hang them. I went through several storing options before settling on this one. I sort them by company. My dream is to one day sort them by company and by type; like all borders together and all labels.
I store my full size ink pads mostly in old cassette tape holders.(the one linked is not shown below but I have several of those)
For my mini pads; I store them in these Stuftainers by Stampendous:
My sprays, both homemade and commercial are stored on a frames from Ikea.
For my vast stamp collection; I keep all unmounted stamps in binders.
Inside the binders the stamps are stored on Wilson Jones index dividers when I can find them. If I cant I have made my own by laminating cardstock (I use the brand that I bought at Sam’s; that I was hoping was 110# like Paper Trey Ink’, sadly it was not).
For my clear stamps I keep them in their packaging and using my ATG gun, I tape the package to the dividers; being careful to make sure I can easily get into the packaging to remove the stamps.
To see my room you can watch the video tour on YT. I covered the bank of white cabinets with curtains as I have since removed the doors as they were in the way.
In His Hands,
A while ago I was looking for some Fresco Chalk ink pads and asked if any vendors that belonged to an online group had any for sale. No one wanted to take my money or had none to sell.
This is where Ronita comes in, she too is member of this group and emailed me to say that she had some and would gladly send them to me if I would supply my address.
She sent me something like 17 of them with reinkers for some. Wow what a gift.It would be time to thank her if that was all she had done. But a couple of weeks letter she send a lovely hand written note and asked if I knew any one who would love some craft items. I do and emailed her to tell her so.
A couple of weeks later a large box comes full of all kinds of things. See this video:
Surely that would be the time to thank her but some boxes arrived this week. I have shared all the gifts with my friends. I decided to make her something practical that will hopefully remind her of her generosity. I made a her a pill box that I decorated with Prima’s Fairy Rhyme paper.
I topped it with a fairy acrylic piece that I had in my stash and some pearlized mica bits from Stampendous and some flat back pearls.
And using the same paper and dies I created a card to go with it.
The label die is from Spellbinders and the others are from Paper Trey Ink as are the stamps. The flowers are from I Am Roses.
I hope these will help Ronita understand exactly how grateful I am for her gifts.
In The Hands of the Creature,
QP
This is an ATC I created in mixed style for a swap on Sisterhood of Ohio yahoo group.
There is a video where I go into detail about the process.
But I think I left out saying I distressed the edges and I did a final over-stamping after I colored with the markers.
In the Hand of the Creator,
QP
I am getting into mixed media and as such have been on a stencil kick. I am finding some cools ones out their in cyber land that I had not seen before. This place has the most unique ones.
They even have a stencil of the month club. I have not joined yet. They will also give you a free stencil if you blog about them.
In the hands of the creator,
QP
This is my first mixed media project. I just decided to go ahead and do it.
Pam
©2009 QueenPam's Adventures in Creativity | by TNB
