Heart 2 Heart Scrapbook Organization Ideas

This is the first of the H2H Challenges called From Your Heart to Ours.  Mary has asked us this week to show you our craft rooms and to share some our ideas on how we organize our craft rooms.  First let me show you a picture of my craft room.  I am sure you are hearing the giggling of my customers since they have never seen my room this clean.  LOL  Just remember that this is how it is supposed to look!

My kids have grown up and left home so I now use my formal dining room and big oak table for my creating and my workshops.  In the middle of the table is my white tool carousel.  It holds all of my tools plus my colored pencils and watercolor pencils.  It is great having my tools within reach and in one central place.

Can you see my paper storage in the upper right part of the above picture?  My paper storage has evolved as my business has grown.  I now store my cardstock and cardstock scraps in the gallon size ziplock bags that Hefty makes.  There is plenty of room and the bags keep the scraps together and keeps the dust and cat hair off of my paper.  I keep color families together (i.e. all blues together, all reds together etc) and then alphabetically in their color families.

Speaking of cat hair.  See that blue bin on the table near my ink carousels?  That is for my feline companion, Chloe.  I even store her!  LOL  She has claimed that bin for her own and sits in it while looking out the window or watching me create.  What I like most is that she stays off of my work.

Above is my work area.  I always stamp on my VersaMat and many times all of my supplies are crowded around this mat.  I love these bins that you see on my table.  I keep whatever supplies I am currently using or thinking about using in these bins.  If I am teaching a workshop with multiple cards, I have smaller white bins where I keep all of the supplies, including the cut paper and stamp sets, so that everything is in one place.

Another view of my workspace.

When I married my husband, the only piece of furniture that he brought into the marriage was this old hutch.  I now use it for my stamping supplies. There are envelopes, cutters, adhesive etc behind the glass doors.  The drawers hold my ribbons. dimensional elements, and embossing powders and inks.

The plastic "chests" sitting on top of the wire cardstock storage holds all of my embellishments.  Each drawer has a different type of embellishment

This is a really old bookshelf.  We bought it in 1991, but it is perfect for my stamp sets.  I love the way I store my stamp sets.  They fit perfectly in these bins.  I store them numerically, by their size (A, B, C or D).  The E size stamp sets are on their side beside the bins.

On top of the bookshelf are my How-to books, my work-in-progress album with extra layouts, and a couple of cute boxes that are holding finished cards.  On the bottom of my bookshelf is my Silhouette, my cuttlebug, and my CTMH Organizers with more embellishments.

Closer look at my bins of stamp sets. Check out my tumbled tile coaster with my cute grandson's picture on it!

This book is vital in my stamp set storage.  I don't remember where I got this idea, but I read it somewhere.  I  used to tell my customers about it but did not do it myself and I would have a terrible time figuring out what stamps were in my stamp sets.  When I would get ready to do a project, I would pick up one bin after another reacquainting myself with my stamp sets.  I would have stamp sets all over my table, trying to choose which one I wanted to use.

Now I make a copy of each stamp set when it arrives at my house.  I write the number and name at the top of each page and store it by the color of the front insert.  (Did you know that each color of our inserts corresponds to the type of stamp it is like Celebration or Sentiments?)  This way I can look at all of my 350+ sets of stamp sets while watching TV and then I can go over to the stamp set bins and choose the exact stamp sets I want to use.

I will tell you that it is MUCH easier if you start this type of organizing when you only own 30 or less stamp sets.  Imagine copying 350+ stamp sets?  LOL

Here you can see another use for my bins.  I have tons of acrylic blocks.  They live in this bin except when they are in use.  I even keep a couple of microfiber cloths to clean them.

Last but not least are my ink carousels.  I have two because I teach a lot of workshops and I have multiples of the more popular colors.  On the top are the reinker trays and some other ink pads that don't fit in my ink carousels.  All within reach - love it!

Well that is a peek into my craft room.  Now I can get it messy again creating next week's challenge!  Can't wait.  We want to see your rooms and hear some of your organizing tips.  Please link your craft room picture to www.heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com.