Making Things Better #3

 

My next project to make things a little nicer for myself was to organize and protect my card making supplies.  Although I’ve managed to acquire the vast majority of my papers, envelopes, dies and so forth as gifts and on a very thrifty little budget by shopping around and buying things online from sellers on eBay as well as in thrift stores or craft stores using coupons, it is still an investment and I don’t want things to get damaged.  Plus I find I am much more productive when I’m organized and it is easier to find the things I need.  Who doesn't, right?

 

I used some clear mailing labels I had print labels off the computer

The drawers are proving to work out very nicely

It took me a little bit to figure out my best system and while I was doing that I made do with items I already had on hand.  Once I was able to determine my workflow and how I liked to have my supplies arranged I was ready to invest in a few things to make it a more permanent and workable situation.

 

This matte protects the table and gives me a great surface to work on

I started with a couple of the plastic paper storage drawers to organize my stickers, embellishments, gems, etc. and was surprised at how quickly I filled them up.  I decided to go ahead and purchase a third one to store my embellishing folders, dies and die cutting supplies in.  I was able to get all three drawer sets on sale for  $10.99 each plus I had a 20% OFF digital coupon too.  I used containers I already had to keep my special pens together, a couple canning jars to store scissors and other crafting tools and a few boxes I’d cut down and used to keep my recycled greeting cards in as well as to temporarily store my card bases and extra envelopes.  The cards and card bases as well as the envelopes get used up quite quickly so this seems to be working rather well for the time being.  At some point I will likely upgrade these items too once I figure out exactly what I want to have, but until that time I am quite happy using my customized boxes.

 

The 12" X 12" paper bins are wonderful for organizing my papers by type
The gray bins hold extra supplies and my recyclable greeting cards

I use this box to keep all the Christmas themed greeting cards in

With all of the little pieces taken care of I moved on to the larger issue which is figuring out what to do with all of my 12” X 12” papers and card stock.  After much searching and contemplating I decided on a set of 6 plastic storage bins made exactly for this purpose.  The set was nearly $40, however I had a credit on my Amazon account so my out of pocket ended up only being $17 once all was said and done.  I originally had in mind some type of shelving unit, but the prices on those are far more than I was willing to spend and they didn’t really provide a lot of storage.  Once I’d ordered the bins I still wasn’t completely sold on them until I realized how nicely they would work once I had them loaded.  They hold a lot.  They are even better than I initially thought because now all of my papers are really portable, which means I can load my stuff into Laverne and take off and make cards anywhere I go.  Whoo hoooo!  Once I came to that realization I was super excited about these bins.  And I do find they work just perfectly for me.

 

This shelving unit I bought off Facebook Marketplace for $20 in 2019
It has been a great piece to hold all of our craft stuff and now some of my card making supplies

 

This card stock scrap binder has been a big game changer

Scraps, now that is a monster all of its own.  What to do with all those scraps.  Well, my youngest came up with a brilliant storage solution for all of my cardstock scraps which I like to organized by color.  We place those into page protectors and they are now stored in a large three ring binder.  I just happened to have the page protectors and an extra binder in our school supplies bin.  That made it not only easy, but basically free. 

 

Ribbons fit perfectly in this shoe box

The die cutting station

The rest of my scrap paper scraps went into plastic shoe boxes with lids that I already had.  I have one for Christmas and one for everything else.  So far that works.  Other miscellaneous items were sorted and went into a divided plastic container I had.  Another identical container was used for all of my die cuts.  And that seems to be working rather well at the moment too.

 

I still have my sewing area

I put one of the shelves back up for my dolls to stand on and watch me work
I love to come in here and get creative

Now my papers are organized by type and theme, I know where all my little pieces and parts are and I feel really good about this room whenever I come in because it isn’t chaotic and everything has a place.  I will continue to work with and tweak my crafting center as time goes on, but right now I am extremely happy with it.  And while this project was a little more of an investment then some of my others I feel it was definitely worth it.  Craft room organization can get very expensive, but I figured out a good way to do it by spending less than $50 out of pocket.  That is a small investment I can easily live with.