National Scrapbook Day - Let's Organize!

Happy National Scrapbook Day!!!   I hope you have something fun planned for the day.  There are soooo many NSD sales, blog hops, crops, virtual crops, etc.; there is no excuse for not finding something to do today!   Two quick shopping opportunities you may want to check out: 

1. Provo Craft is sell a limited number of Cricut Expression 2 Anniversary Edition machines on their website for $349.  

2. Cricut Machines.com is offering a FREE Yourstory bundle with the purchase of a cartridge (from a specific list of cartridges).  Just use the coupon code "mothers" when you check out.  The cartridges (at least all of those on which I clicked) were all priced at $39.95.  So it is about $50 (with shipping) for a cartridge and a Yourstory bundle!

Now on to today's topic - Organization!  Two and a half weeks ago I decided that my scraproom needed reorganized, rearranged, and purged.  It took me almost a week, but I completely re-did my scraproom. 

Monday  - I pack up EVERYTHING and moved it out.  I took the Store-In-Style cube desk apart, as well as my Store-In-Style towers.  I then moved all of the furniture around until I had moved every item in the room to a new location. 

Tuesday - I went through every drawer, shelf, cubby, etc. and cleared out and reorganized all of my items.  I also began moving everything back into the room and storing everything in a more organised manor. 

Wednesday - I sorted cardstock and paper.  And sorted, and sorted, and sorted.....  I disposed of very little paper, but I did find a better way to organize and store the printed cardstock/papers.

Thursday - I finished putting everything away.  My husband liked this as boxes of scrap-stuff filled the hallway and parts of our bedroom.  I added four new cubes to the room and a new 12x12 rack to hold all of my solid colored cardstock. 

Friday - I completed all of the finishing touches.

Let's tour:  When you enter through the door directly in front of  you is the Cricut desk.  This is a Store-In-Style desk and I love that it holds both of my current Cricut die cut machines, with room to add the new Expression 2 when it arrives!  The desk is wonderful in that it has four deep, spacious drawers that hold lots of useful items.  The top drawer houses my Cricut Imagine cartridges.  The second drawer is filled with paper punches.  The third drawer down is stuffed with various colors of Cricut Vinyl.  And the bottom drawer.... Okay, I honestly do not remember right now!  Also the other side in split cube on the slide out shelf are all of my cartridges.  I have about 100 cartridges sorted alphabetically in snapware.  In the bottom half of the split cube you will find my Yourstory and Jukebox.

Above - This cute triple tray sits atop the desk - in the spot my new E2 will call home in the near future!!

Below - A peek into my cartridge sorting method.

One of the newest residents of my scraproom is this wonderful paper sorter.  Towering to 54" tall, the rack holds all of my solid color cardstock, sorted by color.

Right Turn - Once you reach the paper tower you must turn right and continue around the room.  You will immediately encounter the wall of cubes!  The bottom six cubes are more of my Store-In-Style cubes.  As you can see they are larger than those by other manufacturers.  To top four cubes on the left are from Target.  The remaining smaller cube is made by Jettmax.  I truly prefer my Store-In-Style cubes, but I will be the first to admit that they are more expensive, heavier, and larger.

There are a lot of products stored in these cubes: 

Drawers - Gypsy drawer, knitting drawer, general craft item drawer, and "leftover" 12x12 printed paper/cardstock.

Bottom Middle Cubes - magazines and thin books, pages to be booked for my daughter and for the family books.

Bottom Right Cubes - Pages and paper for Carter and Gabi, Aaron and Crissie's pages to be booked and Ian's pages to be booked.

Upper Right Cubes - Imagine cutting mats and solid white smooth cardstock, Yudu Card Shop and Card Shop screens.

Upper Middle Cubes - Lots of card making supplies: cards, envelops, etc.  Embossing tools - powders and embossing gun.

Upper Left Cubes - Cardstock stacks and all of my Cricut Cartridge overlays and books.  The books and overlays are in large snapware and are sorted alphabetically.  The cutting mats which are currently being used are sorted atop the snapware.

Top - On top of the cubes are three items - Caroline the dress form, who holds some of my embellies.  A ribbon box with a ribbon sorter bag.  And a spinning embellie holder.

Continuing to the Right - The first part of my L shaped main desk and the two hutch storage units.  The butterfly bucket under the desk contains printed cartstock/paper sorted by brand/line.  As you can see, this is where most of my flowers are stored, along with a few stamps and some of ribbon.

Right Turn - As you turn to the right you will see the other side of the L shaped desk, which is also my main work area.  On top of the L shaped desk is the drawer desk top piece by The Original Scrapbox.  I love this organizer!  It is great for holder very commonly used items. 

Copics and Ink pads are stored above the desk and are sorted by color.  The desk is topped with Cricut Created works of art and Mr. Cricut!

Next to the main work area desk is a tower of Kaiser Craft cubes.  I love these cubes.  The cubs hold my most used cardstock/paper.  The top to cubes are sorted by theme or brand.  There are Valentine, Easter, Halloween, Fall, and two Birthday themed shelves.  Others are sorted by brand.  The bottom two cubes are all Christmas paper sorted by brand.  I find this method works really well for me. 

Right Turn - Just before you exit back out the door you will encounter this tall thin shelf unit.  It contains my Grand Caliber, Spellbinder dies, and Cuttlebug embossing folders.  Above that is what I call "Stamp Land".  I have my stamps sorted by brand and/or size. 

Top - Atop the shelf unit is a snap together small cube set that hold all of my brad, eyelets, and buttons sorted by color.  The little drawers were easy to label and are perfect for these little embellishments.

I know this has been a VERY long post - my fingers are tired of typing!  I hope my room might inspire you to better organize and sort your tools and supplies.  I have found that I am back to my old habit of completely cleaning up after each project - the only way to keep my room super clean.  Also, I find I am more creative in a clean room.  Maybe it is just that I do not have the mess to distract me!! 

HAPPY NATIONAL SCRAPBOOKING DAY!!

An evening of organization and hard labor

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was debating what to do about the quantity of stuff in my craft room?  I finally reached a decision and after careful measuring and shopping, I purchased two sets of chrome shelves. The shelves are 36 inches wide each which was great as the closet was just over six feet wide.

A word about this closet - in addition to holding overflow scrap stuff it also holds the front door wreaths, some sewing odds and ends, as well as the fall and Easter decor.  Our builder was awesome in that he utilized the high ceilings in the house and installed two "over the hanging clothes" shelves.  He did this in every closet in the house which is awesome.  I measured the closet thoroughly and realized that a 54 inch shelves would be perfect.  Imagine my delight when I found 54 x 36 inch shelf units.  Two of the units fit perfectly under the two rows of existing shelves in the closet.  By adding these shelf units I now have six shelves ceiling to floor in the closet.

I did not touch the two upper shelves, but I did sort through the mess in the bottom.  I was able to put everything back into the closet in a more organized way, as well as add my scrap totes, Yudu machine, my old Expression machine and second cake machine (don't ask).  I now have plenty of space on my cubes for Imagine machine when it arrives.

If I find that I need more space still, I can always banish the holiday decor and door wreaths to the attic.  But in the meantime, I have cleared my desk and work space counters and have made it easier to get to everything in the closet.  An evening well spent!

Cuttlebug Folder Storage

This post is in response to a thread on the Cricut message board. Some posed the question of how to store their Cuttlebug embossing folders. I must say there were a lot of creative and interesting ideas posted, but I like my storage system. I use the Cuttlebug binder system.

Before I detail the system let me share the benefits: the binder stores easily on a shelf; it holds a variety of sizes and shapes of folders; the system is awesomely transportable so I can easily grab my binders and head off to a crop; and best of all, everything is in one area.

The binders come with a few pages already in them but additional pages with varying pocket configurations are available. I purchased my sets from Custom Crops, but the products are readily available from a number of craft providers.

I know that the binders were created for the Cuttlebug products, but I find that they work equally well with my sizzix embossing plates and my nestabilities. In fact I love the Cuttlebug binder for my nesties... Even the tall nesties fit in the binder with no problem.

My Scraproom 's 2010 Face Lift

Wooo-hooo! I have added six new cubes (store-in-style brand which I ordered from Oriental Traders) to my scraproom and I am very pleased with them. I ordered two cubes with two drawers, four basic cubes, and two sets of shelves (for a total of ten shelves). I really like this set and they are such an improvement over what used to be in this area of the room.

For those who have not followed my scraproom growth, we purchased a new house 2.5 years ago. The smallest bedroom in the house was immediately tagged as my scraproom. I thought this was fair - leaving the larger rooms for the two kids who still come home occasionally. I started with my L-shaped desk and a simple rectangular desk. In 2008 I added the shelf unit. Last January I added the Store-In-Style cube desk. I added the Kaiser paper storage cubes (under the L desk) mid-year 2009. And now these six cubes.

Santa brought me a new flat screen TV for the scraproom and this has been fun.... Lots of SVU while scrapping. Let's hope that this doesn't make my projects a bit "darker."

Oops! My other New Year addition are the plastic drawers under the Cricut desk. I have nine drawers and sorted my scraps by color. This has been a God-send in helping me save paper and stay organized.

I moved the cardstock paper stacker to this little wall by the closet. There is still a nice four foot entry area to get into the room.

This is a view of my basic work area - my desk top. This is where I do most of my creating. The ink organizer was also new. Santa brought that too (Santa is wonderfully supportive of my scrapping fun).

And finally, remember Caroline, my wire dress form? She is still on my desk holding bunches of scrapping embellies. I did get one more thing from Santa that made Caroline very happy - hooked clips. The clips are made for the circle hanging scrap racks, but I use the clips on Caroline and my embellies.

Well that is it - my Scraproom 2010 face lift. It may not be as fancy as some, but I really, really like my work area!!

More Cards and Some Organization

Remember last month when I pledged to make 6 Christmas cards each month (instead of the rush at the end to create 72 cards)? I worked on this month's cards a bit today, with mixed response on the nearly finished cards. I am not feeling the love on the Partridge in a Pear Tree. I think he need words.... And ribbon.

However, I do like the pine cone cards. I made three of these. All of the cards were cut from the JOTS cartridge, then dry embossed with my wizard, and finally heat embossed with three colors of embossing powders. The pinecones then each were embellished with a cute little winter saying rub on. I did not find a cute little saying that went with the bird & pear!

Next, I played with the egg card cut a little more. This is a combination of Storybook and Doodlecharms. Honestly, I liked the fun colorful egg cards better!

My friend Kathy, as I often refer to her on here, was interested in seeing my card storage solution. I add another member of the Shelf-it family to my scraproom. I previous enjoyed my Stamps organizer and Inks organizer, so I added the cards organizer. The second photo shows the inside of the card organizer.

The tabbed dividers are labeled with card type on one side, or by month name on the other side. As you can see, I preferred the card type. In the rear of the organizer there are two sections that hold quite a variety of card paper and envelopes. Down front on the left are a few stamped images I have been working on.

Still Busy with the Cricky

After completing a project for BBTB, I moved on to the practical and the inspiring. First I saw on the cricut message board that Jody P had created upside down stickles holders. So I thought to myself, I can do that! I have several sheet of acetate that one of the guys at work salvaged for me when it was about to be thrown out (Thank you Charles!), so I decided to use that for my stickles holders. I purchased four 5 x 6 inch containers for $2.00 at Hobby Lobby (I TRIED to be good while I was there). I cut 12 holes in two half sheets of acetate. I trimmed the edges and used my glue max gun to adhere the acetate to the plastic container. It is perfect. I have space for 24 colors of stickles, not that I own that many. Thanks for the idea Jody.


Then I moved on to vinyl. I have been wanting to play with my new Home Accents cartridge, so I dug through my little pile of vinyl and found a 24 inch piece which I placed on the 12 x 24 mat. I used all HA on this design. I had a bit of vinyl slippage on the cutting mat, I think maybe because the mat was SO BIG. I also realized that I have two bubbles in my cut vinyl (I'll have to climb up and do some additional smoothing). I put this over my computer/cricut desk in my scrap room (above my new Making Memories Large Embellishment Center). I know this looks small in the photo, but it is 23 inches x 5.5 inches.

Two days of Cricutting and a trip to Hobby Lobby

I have enjoyed the last two days SO MUCH!!! Not only did I finish the BBTB challenge early, I made two gift card holders (see the photos of the Teapot) for a swap, and I cut titles and embellishments to take to a crop at the lake next weekend. One of my friends (well two friends really) and her mom host several of us at their lake house for a non-stop crop every few months. It is so wonderful! Anyway, I spent some time organizing my photos and I cut some page titles, etc. to go with some of the photos.

This evening I went to Hobby Lobby seeking markers. I really wanted Copic markers, but I just could not justify the $5.00 per maker price! So I looked around and found that all maker sets were on sale. I ended up with a really nice set of Faber-Castell (24 set) markers. Again, I was happy with the sale as even my second choice markers were normally priced at $60.00. The thing is, with Hobby Lobby there is NO REASON to ever pay full price. Everything goes on sale regularly. Anyway, now that I have exposed my cheap side (!!) I will move on.

I had one last Christmas gift arrive today. Dh gave me the Making Memories Large Embellishment center. I am very pleased with it as my main desk (and hutches) were over flowing. So a lot of the flower, the stickles, and the cirlce punches now have a new home (along with Michelle and Barack - just for Jen to enjoy).

While I was rearranging things in scrap-land, I also put away (sorted by color) the 100 sheets of assorted bazzil card stock that ds gave me for Christmas.

I hate that my break will end on Monday..... I love having this much time to spend with my toys!!