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!

Oh my, oh my..... What to do with the loot?

 Three and a half years ago my husband and I purchased a new home.  Before the paperwork was ever signed I had selected the smallest of the four bedrooms to be my scrapping room and the formal living room (that we never use) to be converted into an office/library for Doug.  Great plan.  We each had a room and our hobbies would not overflow into other areas.

Three and a half years later I am wishing I had selected the bonus room.  I have such a mess in my scraproom.  I have never unpacked and put away all of the loot from CHA and now I have double the piles because of my CKC shopping.  But what is an avid scrapper to do? I must have toys and scrap "stuff", right?  I know YOU understand.

Yesterday I began taking items out of their bags and boxes, planning to sort then into piles and put everything away.  That plan quickly deteriorated into a huge mess, with no real rhyme or reason.  I have reached the realization that until I reorganize the room contents I cannot hope to add in new supplies.

This is one of MANY issues I will have to resolve - pictured above are pages and pages of "unbooked" scrap pages.  I have completed the scrapping but need to purchase albums and move the finished albums to the office (yes, Doug's area - but the bookshelves are there).  By the way, there five more shelves of "unbooked" pages behind the bag!

To add to the confusion, I have a Yudu ordered, a Spellbinders Grand Calibur coming in October, and of course the new Cricut Imagine machine.  I think I need to add a shelf unit in the large closet and make additional storage in there.  Either that move to the bonus room!!

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!!

Scrap Room - A Work In Progress

My scrap room, which has been shared on this blog previously, continues to change and flow (as opposed to grow!).  I find that as I continue to expand my scrapping/card making supplies and (hopefully) abilities, my room has changes with me.  It always seems cluttered to me, but I think that is my attempt to keep most of my supplies within sight.

My scrap room is actually our 4th and smallest bedroom.  My older son was a senior in college when we purchased this house so I knew chances were that he would never move home.  Initially I had a twin bed in the room.  But when my daughter moved into a house at college, she took all of her furniture with her.  I used that opportunity to put two twin beds in her former room as well as lay claim to all of the scrap room.

I purchased the Scrap-in-Style cube desk set and moved the cricut and the computer to the second desk.  Santa brought me the wall organizer that I use as a hutch on the cube desk.  Also, in top drawer under the cricut, I have my cartridges organized so that when I open the drawer I can see all of the carts immediately.

I found this white shelf unit on close-out at Target for $60 and grabbed it!  It is actually as tall as me, so I have to reach up for the items on top.  The good news is I do not use those items very often.  The top shelf is great for storing my Stampin' Up stamp sets.  The shelf-it containser hold loose stamps and ink that is used less often.  My nesties and Gypsy reside on the bottom shelf.

I know my space is not nearly as FAB as some that I have seen on line, but I really am happy with it - mess and all!!

One More Addition to Scrap-Land

I would like to introduce the new addition to my scrap land, Carolyn. Carolyn is a 27" tall iron dress form that has joined my pink, white and black scrap room as an organizational addition. Carolyn will reside in the "dead space" in the back corner of my L shaped desk. I have used bent paperclips and attached embellishments to Carolyn, the type of embellishments which are tough to store in other places. I have some items that if they are not in visual range, I forget to use them (AND NO! That is not an indication that I have too much stuff. There is NO SUCH THING as too much scrapping stuff)!! Carolyn not only looks cute in that corner, she also will help to keep my desk top free of clutter.