Organization within organization

Hello Everyone, 

Today, I wanted to share with all of you how I organized my stamps.  I shared a little bit of it in the post about my new studio.  Now that I've had the opportunity to work within my studio for a little while, somethings need a little more organization.

I have chosen to organize my stamps by theme or category.  The majority of the stamps I own are by Close To My Heart or Stampin' Up.  Each company packages their stamp sets for easy organization on a shelf or in a bin.  So I chose not to separate any of the sets.  I have 10 large organizers by Close To My Heart.  I use 9 to categorize my stamps and the 10th one is for stamps in use.  Each of the 9 organizers holds 1 to 3 categories.  I love having my stamps cataloged this way.  When I am searching for a particular set, I go to the category I believe it should be in and start looking for it there first.  I've tried to make a catalog book of the stamps I own, but I found it looked messy after I decide to part with some of my stamps.  I like going through my boxes and flipping through the stamps.  This way I might find another stamp that will also work for what I am doing.  I would of never thought of that set had I not thumbed through all my stamps.

However, I found it time consuming when it came to putting the sets away.  In my 10th organizer I hold all the sets I am working with divided up by the projects I'm working on.  Sometimes it takes me a while to put the sets away and I tend to second guess myself as to what category I originally had the set in.  So to solve my dilemma without spending hours on a catalog book, I decided to color code each category.  

Close To My Heart used to put their stamp sets in categories too.  They assigned colors to each category as well.  As you can see in the photo above, these were some of their colors and categories.  I chose categories by the way I think.  What would I call it?  What best describes this group of sets?  So after I had divided up my sets into categories, I had various colors throughout the category from CTMH's previous categorizing.  That is what was making me second guess myself.  So to put an end to this madness, I discarded CTMH's colored category card and put plain colored cardstock in it's place.  I used shades of one color per container.

Here is what the end result looks like.  Now I can put my stamps away easily and not second guess myself.  It also makes it easy if I do decide to put a set in another category.  This arrangement is also pleasing to my eyes and draws me more toward my stamps.

Thank you for stopping by and please check back with more hints, tips and tricks for the scrapbooker.

So much for my New Year's Resolution...

Unbelievable!!  I cannot believe that my last post was in March!  I really wanted to post at least once a month this year.  What happened?  Who knows...another mystery question that will linger on into the universe to probably never be solved.

OK, so now that that is out of the way, I'd like to share an idea that I had.  All of us have leftover scraps, right?  What do you do with yours?  I decided to go through all my scraps and figure out what to do with what I have.  I really had good intentions on using my scraps...at one point...but now...  I took all my scraps and cut them down to either 4x6 or 4x3 pieces and filed them with my Project Life cards. 

All my scraps that are smaller than 3" wide and are 12" long, I create rosettes for future projects or give-a-ways.  

I scored a few at a time instead of 1 at a time to make the process go by faster.  I also used a border punch on some of the wider pieces.

I folded several pieces at a time.  Kind of like an assembly line.

I used the smaller scraps to make circles for the rosettes to be glued to.

I overlap my rosettes instead of butting to ends up to each other.  Overlapping seems to hold better and have a more finished look to it.

Here are a few rosettes that I made.  I doubled some up for a different look.  I didn't add any centers to them because I don't know where they will be used just yet.  Plus if I give them away I don't want the receiver to have to settle for what I chose to be in the center.

I don't have all the strips turned into rosettes yet.  But every time I get a creative block, I pull some strips out to make.  By the time I'm done making a few, I'm ready to get crafty.

Anything smaller than my smallest punch was tossed in the trash.  All other scraps were sorted by color and put in a baggie and stored for future possible use.

Thanks for stopping by!

Got Magazines?

If you are a crafter of any sorts, I'm pretty positive that you have idea books and magazines taking up valuable real estate in your craftroom.  I sure did.  I decided one fine day that I was only going to keep what I liked out of the books/magazines and get rid of them.  But I didn't want to have to store the pages that I tear out and I wanted to keep the books intact so who ever received them once I was done had the entire book/magazine to flip through.

Today, I wanted to share how I decided to keep the ideas that I liked out of all my books/magazines without tearing the pages out.  

I chose to scan all the ideas that I liked.  Yes, I know that the books that are pictured are now available in digital format.  But I had the hard copies.  Plus I usually don't like all the samples in every book.  I know that's not nice to say, but I'm being honest.  I really like this idea because it allows me to only keep the ideas that I am absolutely in love with.  

Most of the ideas that grab my "its a keeper" attention are ones that can be easily replicated in volumes.  For example, I don't like to just make one card.  I like to make multiples of the same card.  So with that in mind, I'm looking for ideas that have embellishments that can easily be duplicated. 

With this scanning process, I can also take out parts of the book/magazine that I don't need or aren't interested in.  This works really well for the kinds of magazines that have two samples on each page.  If I don't like both samples, I just highlight the one I do like and keep only that part of my scanned image.   

Now keep in mind that these are for my references only.  My own digital idea book if you will.  I keep my scans filed on my computer under each book/magazine publisher that I had scanned them from.  For example, the books shown above are all from Northridge Publishing.  So I have a file for that publisher.  Within that file I break it down to what kind of book; cards, scrapbooking, Cricut, etc.  The cards file was getting so filled up that I broke that down even further by theme.

I know this seems like a lot of work, but once it was done and all those books came out of my crafting space...WOW what a difference!  I no longer buy books or magazines for ideas.   I strictly use my folders and Pinterest.

Thank you for stopping by!

Trying to catch up...

I wanted to share this layout with you ...

As soon as I received my Cricut Explore, I wanted to test what it could do to make my life easier for me.  In the past I avoided images that had more than 3 layers,  It was a pain on my Gypsy to figure out all the layers that went with them, the colors they should be, just frustrating all together.  Well with this new Explore machine the guess work is completely eliminated.  I just select which image I want and it knows all the layers to go with it.  Amazing!  Plus the design program is in color!  OK, I know this is all old news to everyone by now and I created the images for this layout back in April and designed the layout in June.  So I'm a bit behind in my sharing...

Here is the layout without the insert.  I used retired CTMH papers that went with the characters really well.

Here is the left side with the insert.  I took a CTMH pocket page protector and created "doors" to put in the 6x4 pockets.

This is the right side with the insert.

I really love the vibrant colors of this layout and how it turned out.  The Explore machine made putting the images together super easy.  I love layers and making my own embellishments!!

Thank you for stopping by!