Color Inspiration #52

Today when I was creating my next catch-up card along Kazan's sketch 24, I used Kristina's color inspiration #52.  I might have actually used a few more colours than required, but that one patterned paper just happened to have all the colours in there (plus a few more, lol).

Supplies: Bazzill Basics Cardstock | Sassafrass Lass patterned paper | Crate Paper patterned paper | Making Memories patterned paper | Autumn Leaves clear stamp | Prima Marketing flowers | Martha Stewart butterfly punch | Martha Stewart starburst punch | Papertrey Ink clear stamp | Staz'On ink Timber Brown | Fiskars border punch Uppercrest | Button SEI | twine

Paula Pascual contacted me yesterday whether she could feature my Spring Clean Monday posts on her Crafty Storage blog. I love that blog, it has such great ideas for storage and it features many different studios from well known scrapbookers, so I was happy to say 'yes'.

Today I'll be posting my first layout which will be published in Scrapbook Inspirations magazine. Last month Shimelle contacted me whether I would be interested in contributing. My first assignment was to create a layout along a sketch. Unfortunately I won't be able to show you anything until the issue (#56) is on the newsstand, and this won't be for another couple of months.

Spring Clean Monday: Embellishments

I've got this real love-hate relationship with embellishments. I love all those little things, that put the finishing touches on cards and lay-outs, but they are a pain to store and sort. I'm slowly but surely working towards sorting everything by colour, but it's still very much a work in progress.

My flowers and buttons are stored in IKEA jars (like many of use I think), my tiny embellishments I've got sorted in bead boxes, which I purchased at John Lewis, but you can buy them on eBay as well. My alphabet stickers I've got stored in a very sturdy, perfectly sized box from Paperchase. I've got them sorted by colour as well. I do however still want to make separators, so it's easier to see the colours.

When we left Australia, my friend Beth gave me three gorgeous boxes, that were handcrafted. In those I store my bling, pearls, tags, notebooks, etc. They sit on the edge of my desk.

Here's a collage of everything:



Now that the house renovation is almost come to an end, I'm getting this urge to completely put my craft room upside down and have a serious clear-out. In that respect, I've got a question for you. Do you keep all your scrapbooking magazines, if you get any? I'm thinking about going through mine and taking out only what inspires me and put those in an inspiration binder. I'm curious to know how you organise them.

This is the end of my Spring Clean Mondays. I hope you've enjoyed it and that it might have inpsired you. If there is any tips or advise you can give me, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Spring Clean Monday: Clear Stamps

Hello Monday! Ready for another Spring Clean Monday? Today I'll covering how I've stored most of my clear stamps. When we were in Australia, I'd planned to transfer all my clear stamps into CD jewel boxes. It didn't work out very well, as they didn't all fit very easily in one box and also they were very hard to peel off. Then I saw this and this and decided that was the way to go. 

Rather than using A4 size binders, I've used A5 ones. That way, I have one stamp set per page protector and it's a little bit easier to handle. Last week I decided that to cover them. I used the Dill Blossom papers from SEI, as I've had good intentions to use them a lot and still haven't. I still love the papers, and as I had enough sheets to cover all five albums, I thought why not.

I haven't labelled all the binders yet, but I've put all the sentiments sets together and all the swirl sets, etc. On the back on the cardstock of each set I've put a label with the information of the manufacturer and name. For the label on the cover I used Spellbinder Nestabilities Labels Four.



Hopefully this will give you some ideas as to how you can organise your clear stamps. Next week is my final Spring Clean Monday in which I'll cover my embellishments.

Spring Clean Monday: Ribbons

It's already week two of Spring Clean Monday. This week it's ribbons. Let me start by saying that this was totally not my idea. I first saw this on Jane's blog. You can read her step-by-step instructions here. My eye fell on the the coloured coded ribbons, so I was very pleased to hear it's something you could make yourself. I've altered my tags a little. Here's what the end result looks like:

My strips are 1" wide and 4" long. That means you can get 36 tags out of a 12"x12" sheet of cardstock. For ribbons that are smaller than 3/4" wide I've used a ribbon punch by McGill to weave them through. For the wider ribbons I've done the same as Jane and just stuck them in between the tags with double-sided tape. The rings I've used are 2". The coat hook (from IKEA) is hanging on the back of the door in my craft room. The door is normally open, so they are conveniently tucked away, but always easy accessible. Before I changed my ribbons to this system, I used to have them in storage jars from IKEA, but I got really tired of having to tip out the whole jar to get to that one ribbon and them getting all tangled up and creased.

Hopefully you're all having a nice Easter weekend. Today the weather was finally somewhat warmer and sunnier. This afternoon we went for a nice walk into town. Next week I'll be back with my clear stamp organisation.

Spring Clean Monday: Patterned Paper

As promised in my post last Friday, I'm going to cover how I've got my scrapbooking supplies organised every Monday for the next four weeks. By no means is this the best way, but it might spark something and give you ideas on how you want to organise your supplies. But you might already be ultra organised, so I'm open for your ideas as well.

You might remember a couple of weeks ago I asked whether or not to sort my patterned paper by colour? 84% of you thought I shouldn't. Guess what, I didn't. I left it sorted by manufacturer, in alphabetical order. I've got all my patterned papers in 10 trays.

To make it even easier to find my collections or manufacturer in one tray, I've done this:



I've sorted each manufacturer by collection and put them in a page protector. Rather than putting the name of the manufacturer or the name of the collection on a tab that I've added on the bottom of the page protector (as I tend to buy collection rather than the odd page), I've punched a tab out of one of the patterned papers that will recognise what collection it is. I've got a photographic memory, so one piece of paper is enough for me to know what papers are in that particular folder. This way I can slide out that collection, rather than having to take out all the papers in that tray and go through them. I needed to secure the tabs with a staple, as the double sided tape wasn't enough to hold it. Odd pages I've put in separately, without a page protector.

I've also got a few collection I haven't broken into yet. I have put these in page protectors, but have not tagged them yet.

Here are my October Afternoon papers:



And my Scenic Route papers:



The incentive to show you how I've got it sorted worked for me. Earlier this afternoon I went out to Staples to buy some more page protectors and I finished all my papers before dinner:



It feels good to have the taken care off. Next week, I'll show you my ribbon stash.

Tomorrow I'll be back with my take on the Caardvarks 'Fantasy' challenge. Sleep tight!