My Scrap Space Redo

 Recently I gave you a sneak peak at my scrap space and the embarrassing mess I had in this room.  After a few inspiring blog posts about organization I decided to jump in and reorganize my space.   

****Warning...this post is LONG.

These next three pictures are the before shots. Try not to judge.

 I am horrible about getting out several projects at once or getting out multiple supplies and not putting them each away before getting out more. This results in a mess like this.  My table gets so cluttered until I have no room left to scrap.

 

I told you in the last post that my wonderful parents built this shelf for me for Christmas 2009. We saw some similar in a pottery barn catalog and decided Dad could make me one to my size specifications. Even with all this space, I still managed to be unorganized.

 Behind my table area was this card table with my Cricut Expression on it. Since my laundry machines are downstairs, my drying rack was in the way right in front of the table and I was using the top of it to hold my mats, etc. In general I was not putting things in their proper place and this was the result.

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AFTER

 

Now in this corner I have my carts of storage (not sure what to do with my decorative suitcases or metal cart yet now that it is clear. Any suggestions?) I also had my husband install two IKEA rods that can be found in the kitchen section for about $1.99 each. How can you beat that? In my old scrap room, before my new baby took it over, I had IKEA metal baskets hanging from these rods with my tools in them. I had these stickers and die cuts hanging in my closet. Now that I don't have a closet I hung them from these rods. 

I have to be able to see my stash and had previously organized them in a binder, but then I never knew what I had. So I grouped them into themes and put all items of the same theme on an "o" ring and clipped it up.  Now when I need something for a page, I unclip the ring and take the whole lot to my table. Open packaging are stored in zip lock bags or the smaller jewelry bags if they would fit. 

 

Here is a close up of my ring of rub-on's. I have them separate because I don't want them to get squished or pressed on. 

 

We rearranged the table and turned it, it really opens up the room now, though you can't tell it here. I now have space for my Cricut table in this corner, the bag and box are just being kept for future trash containers, but will eventually be gone. My Cricut mats are all nicely placed behind the machine. The blue box is of wood letters from my daughter's room, but I have to return them and get different ones and the plastic bag is my current trash bag for my crafts.

 

Here is another angle of this side of the room. You can see I have plenty of natural light. The foam on the wall is not my decorating, I share this space with my husband's studio in the other half of the room. My Hubby's a musician so I have to deal with the foam (sound echo dampeners) taking up my wall space. Hubby also got the best part of the room since he was there first with the nice long wall above where the table would go that could have been used for storage of tools...sigh...maybe one day I will have my own room again. I know he would like his room back too. But two babies back to back will cause the house to be taken over with large toys and two nurserys.

 

VIOLA! My new oragnized shelf. It is not all color coordinated like I would LOVE to have, but it works, and it looks much better with better use of space.

Originally I had my Dad build in this ribbon rod on my shelf, but I decided I preferred to take my ribbons to my table then cut them to fit my project as needed. So I ended up mostly sticking my ribbons in the following storage options.

I placed my loose ribbon in these jars from Michaels, and I LOVE that they are decorative and functional.

 

Then all my ribbon that would not fit on the rod were stuffed into this random canister that had once held chipboard and I had outgrown this storage and had ribbons just sitting near it like you can see if you look closely behind the canister.

 

So instead I took out the ribbon rod and I ended up placing all my ribbons in this basket and it holds them all perfectly and I can easily take the basket to my craft table to match ribbon to my project. I still have my loose ribbon in the jars which you can see in the left side of the photo.

 I have decided to recycle my baby food jars...like I said, I have two small children and no shortage of baby food jars. Someday I hope to make them cute, but I think they work great despite looks. I also use these super cute IKEA jars on the right of the photo.  I they come in sets of 3 and were also really cheap..between $1.99-$5.00 I can't remember now. I store all my small embellishments in them.

 

 In this section, which is now right next to my chair and within arms reach I keep my go to items.  My flowers, buttons, home-made spray inks, reinker, paint, ink pads, and chalks.

 I used to keep my inks just in the cube, but I kept knocking them over, now I can easily pull out the basket and see what I have, yet keep them contained in one place.

 I used to just stack my inks in the cube but this left a lot of unused space in the back section of the space. So now I have them in a narrow basket I was not using at the moment from my IKEA shelf so I can use the space better now.

Now I have this caddy filled with all my Close to my Heart Embellishments sorted by color.

 As you can see I can easily grab the color I need and put them away easily.

 

I placed all my punches in this wire basket to contain them without taking up too much space. Honestly I don't use them often since I have my Cricut.

 Now I store all my cartridges ( I don't have many since I have Sure Cuts A Lot) with their names showing for easy access as well as my acrylic blocks.

Finally I store my Close to my Heart stamps in these two cases, my floss in this plastic storage along with envelopes and canvas I can alter.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my space and hopefully I can inspire someone else to make better use of their room. What do you think? I would love to hear any suggestions of how you store your stash and how I can change mine for the better. Thanks!

My Scrapbook Storage

Heart 2 Heart Challenges is starting a new challenge called From Your Heart to Ours.  The Challenge this week was to show how we organized our supplies.  It has inspired me to start thinking about reorganizing my entire scrap space. My scrap space is in a terrible state right now (which will be a post soon all its own soon) so I took a few pictures of how I organize my supplies that I do like right now.

 I am embarrassed to post this, but here is a sneak peak at the horrible state my scrap space is in.  (Seriously how do I let it get this bad)

My wonderful father built me this shelving system for Christmas last year and I LOVE it. We took a picture of something similar in a Pottery Barn Catalog and my Dad sat down with me and we designed it from there. I am currently working on organizing the lower half of the shelf better (as well as the floor in front). You see that box in the middle on the bottom shelf? It has all my stickers in it. I recently had a second child and had to evacuate that room and move to the basement. But I had been using the spare closet shelves (wire kind) and the "O" rings to hang all my stickers in baggies. Each ring held a certain theme of stickers (wedding, baby, travel, etc.) So they are still on the rings, but I am planning on getting a few IKEA shelves to clip these to now that I had to move to the basement.

 This is how I store my buttons.  I originally used the jars on the right of the picture which are from IKEA. Since I have two girls who are 21 months and 7 months I have a lot of baby food jars and I decided to make use of this opportunity to recycle and reuse. Someday I hope to have the time to make them cutesy, but for now they work great.

 I store my loose ribbon in these jars from Michaels, I love how the colors show through and act as decoration as well.

 My Dad built in this ribbon rod on my shelf, but I recently decided I like being able to take the spool to the table more than having it dangle, so I will show you how I am keeping them all in a basket now in my future post about my room redo. So be on the lookout in the next few weeks for my redemption post.

So excited!

I was so excited to receive honorable mention as the cream in their coffee at The Play Date Cafe this week. The layout I selected to enter was in the previous post. I can't tell you how honored I am.  Those ladies that play are VERY good and I just have meager skills.  Congrats to all the other ladies...your works made me swoon.

PDCC64 challenge entry

This week at the play date cafe this is the color challenge.  LOVE IT! I may make a few more things with this color scheme in the future.  Here is the layout I created. My blue was a little darker, but I think it has the same feel. All the products are from Close to my Heart except the ribbon in the corner and the thread.

 

I hand stamped my own background onto the Colonial White Paper using Cocoa and Twilight ink from CTMH. I LOVE how it turned out. Having two girls I never get to use blue, but I went for it this time and I am pleased with how it turned out.

New Years Resolution

Hello everyone! I have several new years resolutions, one of which is to do a better job taking pictures of my projects. I want to do a better job both in quality and in showing the projects in various steps for all you visual learners out there.  So hopefully in the new year you will see some tutorials on my blog finally. :)

Currently working on a scrapbook page.  Maybe this means I need to go take some pictures. :)

Candy Giveaway- Share the Love

Hello Everyone! I have some great news! Dawn over at Dawn's Craft Place is giving away some blog candy in honor of her Son's wedding coming up. Hop on over to her blog for your chance to win.

More Christmas Gift ideas on the cheap!

This year our budget was tight so I ended up making almost all my Christmas Gifts.  In the previous post you saw my message board I made my Mom.  I made 3 more done in different styles for the other women I had to get for this year. However, in the hussle to leave the house on time for the holidays I forgot to take photos of those.  I had one done for an elementery classroom for my sister-in-law that was for writing to do lists and list of what needed to be copied. The second was done in a music/drama style for my aunt for work. She works in the music department at a college and it had room for notes and appointments as she is a busy woman. Finally the 3rd was for my Mother-in-law who I made on similar to my Mom's but done is brown and blue colors.  It has a place for notes and grocery lists too.

I did remember to take photos of my gift card holders I made using my cricut and SCAL program.

To make this gift card holder I used an SVG file of a fish and cut it using my SCAL program and my circut using green paper. I made 2 of the same cut so my fish is 2 sided. Then I used the blackout feature on two brown cardstock sheets which gives you a solid filled in version of your shape. I adhered one green side of the fish to the brown cardstock fish and used some scrap paper to tape in a pocket that would hold the giftcard, then I taped the other green fish to the other brown fish shape and then adhered the two brown pieces together leaving room for my giftcard to slide in and out. Still using scrap paper I hand cut a fish hook and taped it to my giftcard, tied some natural hemp from CTMH to my hook and my pole which is just a rolled piece of left over brown cardstock. So this is what it looks like put together with the giftcard inbetween the 2 brown pieces of cardstock.

So now when you pull on the fishing pole the giftcard comes out. My brother is a big fan of fishing, hunting, anything outdoors so I got him a card to Cabellas.

For my mother-in-law and brother-in-law I made a much more traditional holder...a stocking. This one I hand drew the stitches and cut the toe and heal out of my second pattern paper. I used ctmh jingle paper and stickers.