Organizing my new bookshelf

As most of you know I am working on organizing my scraproom which is my formal dining room. The plan is to keep it clean and organized. This week I bought this bookshelf at Target and Bill put it together for me. Today Bill and I went to Ikea. I haven't been there since it opened several years ago. At that time the store was so packed with people that we really couldn't see anything and haven't gone back since. But today was different. We had so much fun looking around and the best part is that the prices are so good. I bought these jars to put my ribbon in. They are large and are the perfect size and add color to the bookshelf. The smaller ones that I had on my Making Memories shelf just weren't big enough and I was able to use them for embellishments.

I also bought these little spice jars to put embellishments in.

Back to the bookshelf. This shelf holds my CTMH binder that has pictures of all the stamps that I own. If you didn't see that post, you can see it here. This shelf also holds my books, idea books. and small embellishment cases.

I found these little baskets at Target. They are just the right size, and are not too big to lose things. I like to have them in sight so that I can use them regularly.

This baket holds my Basic Grey paper pads that I like to use for cards.

This basket holds clear stamps such as My Favorite Things, Hanna, Penny Black and Verve.

This basket holds specail embellishments that I don't want to forget about.

The bottom shelf holds binders that store my unmounted rubber stamps. I still have more binders to fill. I love being able to see what I have.

That's it for today. I still have a lot more cleaning up to do, so I will fill you in later.

Rubber Stamp Storage

I went to Michael's again this weekend with another downloadable 50% off coupon and bought another shelf. The coupon reads "One coupon per customer per day" Can you believe that!!! I don't think that I will ever pay full price again at Michaels. There are other coupons that I found on line as well. I had fun putting my rubber stamps up on this shelf. The stamps with the cute girl are from "Penny Black". I just love them.

Tilda Organization

I am on a roll with my organization. I decided to put all of my Magnolia (Tilda) stamps in a binder. I found these photo page inserts at Office Max. They fit in a regular binder. I bought a plain white binder and used the tag that came with one of my Tilda's for the Binder Title.

I stamped each Tilda on a plain piece of paper, wrote the name of the stamp and inserted it with the stamp behind it into the sleeve.

I plan to do the same thing with my other unmounted stamps. I am beginning to feel a big burden lifting.

Look at my new Embellishment Center!!!

Look what I bought at Michaels with a 50% off coupon. I have loved this Embellishment Center from Making Memories for so long and have finally got it. I have checked prices online and saw it for around $50 at one site, but the shipping was outrageous. Michaels had it, but I didn't like the $80 price tag, so I did a search for Michaels Coupons. There are lots of sites for printable coupons, but I wanted to make sure that the coupon that I took to the store with was valid. I went to Michaels.com. At the bottom of their screen is a printable 50% off coupon that you get if you register with them. I printed it and took it to Michaels and there was no problem using it. My dining room is my scrapbook room. It bothers me that it is so untidy, so I am going to work on getting it organized.

The majority of my "stuff" is in plastic drawers and they are just not working for me. They have become "junk drawers" and I can't find anything, let alone know what I have. See what I mean?

This drawer holds bags of unmounted Bella, Magnolia, and other stamps that need to go into binders. The mess in these corners is driving me crazy. Everything is piled up and I do not like it. I am going to try a bookshelf. I ordered this bookshelf from Target and plan to put my CTMH books, binders and a lot of this stuff on it. I would like to get "small" wicker baskets to put on the shelfs for extra embellishments. Notice that I said "small". If I keep them small then I won't be able to put a lot of stuff in them, therefore, avoiding the problem that I now have. Hopefully. These are the first set of drawers that I purchased and they work very well. I keep in them my CTMH cardstock organized by season. They will definitely stay.This table holds new embellishment and paper so that I can see it and use it. I also have my clear blocks up there. The lavendar box has cards that I have made. I plan to put these things on the bookshelf and put my Cuttlebug and Big Shot on this tableThis is my storage for my punches. It's not great, but at least they are all together.These little drawers work great for my stamp pads.I use these containers for my CTMH Stamps. I have them on shelfs in the garage. You can see my previous post on cataloging these stamps. It is really working for me.I love this Desktop Carousel from Making Memories. I keep the things that I use all the time in it.This is where I keep my Cricut machine. It works for now.In these drawers I keep my Cricut Cartridges, Nestabilities and Cuttlebug folders. The bottom two drawers hold packets of patterned paper. I need to start using this paper up, so that I can buy more. If I limit myself to the space of these two drawers, then it will force me to use it.

When you walk into my house, you see my scrap mess. It really bothers me, because I am stuck with the mind set that if you have a formal living room and dining room, then it is suppose to look nice all the time. I get this from my mom. I remember her saying "This is the first room that people see when they walk into your house, so it needs to stay clean". It didn't matter what the rest of the house looked like, but that room had to be perfect. lol. Notice the somewhat "tidy" living room. Over by the fireplace I have photo albums that need to be put away.

Then you round the corner and step into the scrap room. I actually cleaned the table off for you. Before this picture, you wouldn't have known there was a table there. lol. I was too embarassed to show it. I tend to go from one project to the next without cleaning up and this table is an enabler. lol. It also works great for my workshops. There is plenty of room for everybody.

After working in here for so long, I love it. There is plenty of light. I am close to the family and it is great for my workshops. If I had an extra room, I probably wouldn't enjoy the isolation. This works!!!! So, some how I need to get away from that old mind set. If I clean it up and get organized, I think that it will work for me, because I am not going anywhere else. If you have any pictures of your scraproom on your blog, please share them with me. And, if you have any suggestions, I will gladly welcome them.

Cataloging my CTMH Stamps

This is one job that you really have to be motivated to start! It is a lot of work. Yesterday when I came home from work, I got the bug in me to get my stamps organized so that I would know what I have and can find them when I need them. These are my CTMH stamps. Most of them have been sitting on a shelf in the garage ,mostly untouched because I don't know what I have. I really like these little boxes by CTMH. I am finding that they really are the best thing for storage. I tried these bigger containers. You can see them, but they don't close up like the CTMH ones and they don't stack. I like to keep things neat and use less space. This system just isn't working. At first it did and then I started accumulating more and more.

My stamps are all organized by like kind. So, with each box, I went through my extra catalogs to find pictures of the stamps in that box. I cut out the pictures and attached them to 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock. When I finished I will put a label on the boxes that matches the description in the binder.

I found this cute photo album at Target. It came with magnetic pages. I took them out and replaced them with Page Protectors.I divided up the pages with Index Dividers. I followed along, pretty much, with how CTMH has them organized in their catalog. But, I put them in an order that made sense to me. I started with Sentiments, since these are the stamps that get a lot of use.Followed by the Monthly Word Puzzles. These are great stamps to have because they are loaded with pictures and sayings for each month of the year. There are other Word Puzzles, but if they fell along the lines of a specific Holliday like Christmas or Valentine's day, I put them in that catagory.Next came the Tags, Borders and Misc. This category also includes backgrounds, and stamps with calendars on them. The next set of the stamps were divided by Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. The Fall stamps include, School, Fall Leaves and Halloween.

Winter includes Snow and Christmas. Following this category, I added Valentine's Day because I have a lot of Love stamps.

The next category is Spring. It includes flowers, insects and Easter.

Next comes Summer. This category covers the beach, Fourth of July, picnic, Hawaii, Trees and Outdoors.

The next category is Family. This is kind of a general category with anything kid or people. This includes baby, kids, princesses, boy trucks and the "Bella" like stamps.

Next I added the Birthday Category.

And, lastly, is the Font category. It also includes the Alpha Solos. You will notice that there are no pictures. The reason is that I thought I was all done and then I saw the box and it is big. I will finish it later.

Here is what the binder looks like with the pages in it. Hope this post helps you. Since I went to all the trouble of getting organized, I just couldn't help but share. I have a lot more organizing to do with my other stamps and embelishments, but at least this is a start. If you have any tips for me, please pass them along.