stamps storage

May 17, 2013 by Melissa Chipperfield Leave a Comment

Organized Clear Stamp Storage

Always hunting for stamp storage ideas that are simple and organized, I was thrilled when I stumbled across Jennifer McGuire’s recent post! Using plastic containers originally designated for storing soda cans in the refrigerator, she discovered a way to store her clear stamps with the help of either Office Depot CD sleeves or Avery Elle stamp storage pockets:

A girl after my own obsessive compulsive heart, she labels each and every pocket with an electronic label machine for additional efficiency when looking through her stamp sets:

I love that these clear sleeves make it easy to see what stamps are in each set when searching through your stash! I think this may just be the solution I’ve been looking for! Go take a look at her post where you’ll find even more information, including links to the specific products!

April 25, 2013 by Doris Weeaks 16 Comments

Contributor Team Studio/Space Tour: {Doris Weeaks}

Hello everyone, and welcome to my my little slice of heaven! I am very fortunate to have one of the spare rooms in our home to use for my crafty endeavors! Over the years, as my obsession with scrapbooking has grown, so has my collection of craft supplies. Like many of you, my first “major” scrapbook purchase was a Crop In Style wheeled tote. As you can guess, it didn’t take long at all to outgrow it and to start longing for my own little scrappy space. My first dedicated area was a corner desk in our tiny den. You can see that I made sure to make the most of every square inch of space!!!

My very first craft area

Once my oldest son graduated and moved out, I was able to take over his bedroom and convert it to my craft room. We had allowed him to paint the walls a dark blue, and I decided to go with it, rather than repaint. I was too excited to have my own room to wait a second longer to get everything set up! Fortunately, I had white furniture, so it brightened things up a bit!

My son’s former-bedroom-turned-mom’s-craft room

Over the next few years, this room was arranged and rearranged as my craft and scrapbook collection grew. As I’ve mentioned before, I have an addiction to all things storage, and I’ve tried just about every type of storage product that’s ever been created! Fortunately, some of the local scrapbook stores in my area started having “garage sales,” and I’ve been able to purge supplies and storage products along the way – otherwise, I would need my own scrapbook HOUSE!!!

Speaking of house, a little over a year ago, we moved to another home in our same area. We love our new place, especially because it has an amazing floor plan, one that allows my husband to have his own study/office, and I get to have my scrap room downstairs, and in an area of the house that is away from the main living areas. Knowing we were going to be moving gave me the perfect opportunity to be thinking about setting up a craft room “from the ground up.” I spent a lot of time, checking out craft spaces on CSI and Google, coming up with ideas that would work with my existing furniture. Even though it’s been tweaked a time or two since we first moved in, here is my (I think!) amazing craft room!

View of current craft room from doorway

The photo above is taken from the doorway looking in. You can check out my posts on using the Jetmax/Recollections “cubes” and accessories from Michael’s, and for modifying their embellishment shelves to allow for extra stamp storage, to get more information on how most of my storage is set up.

Closer look at main craft area

Believe it or not, that’s still my original corner desk! A few months ago, I decided I wanted to raise the height of the desk, which I accomplished by purchasing two 3-shelf and 1 corner shelf closet organizers from Lowe’s and just sat the existing desk on top! Sometimes, I even amaze myself with my crafty ideas!!! Of course, that meant I had to get my hands on an office chair that would sit high enough to work with the “new” desk! Fortunately, I found one on Craig’s List, that I was able to cover with cute zebra print fabric from Hobby Lobby. LOVE IT!

Large workspace with Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting machine

This is a close up of my latest revamp. Previously, my electronic cutter station was the Deluxe Craft Table from Michael’s (of course!). Because I am one of those crafters who has to have all their supplies visible and handy, much of my horizontal workspace is limited. I found myself moving things from place to place, even using my paper cutter in my lap, just to be able to work on a project. Obviously, this created more frustration than creative juices, so something had to give! I took ~~drug~~ my hubby with me to Home Depot, where the helpful men in the orange vests were willing to cut a piece of laminated MDF board down to 4 ft. by 6 ft. section for me. They also sell this stripping you “iron on” the cut edges, so you end up with a nice, finished piece of table top! I simply sat it on top of the Deluxe Craft Table, added the extras you see here, and I’m good to go! Ahhhhh! So nice to be able to spread out and CREATE!

I love, love, LOVE my Silhouette Cameo! Now that I’ve gotten rid of all the “Bugs” in my craft room (wink, wink!), I have so much more space, especially when I can just set my laptop on the shelf above the Cameo, connect them to each other, and away I go! Which brings me to my latest obsession:

Over-the-door shoe rack for storing vinyl collection

VINYL!!! Yep, this is my vinyl collection, neatly stored in this hanging storage rack from Bed, Bath and Beyond. I started out with the adhesive craft vinyl, which is on the left side, but decided to use some of the iron-on vinyl to make some baby “onesies” – yeah, big mistake! Now I have to have every color and pattern out there!!! I gotta say, I am having so much fun with it all, and the Cameo makes coming up with designs and cutting them a breeze!!!

Sewing desk area

And, finally, here’s my sewing table. On the right are my mason jars filled with buttons. On the left are my containers and drawers with embellishments. The spinning rack on top is from Hobby Lobby and has most of my alphabet sticker sets and miscellaneous stickers clipped on it. The shelf above is my collection of silk flowers, separated by color. The top shelf holds my cork board and my flat screen television.

Well, that’s a “quick” tour of my happy place. Thanks for coming along for the tour! If you have any questions regarding more specific ways I store embellishments or other craft products, please let me know! You can comment on this post, or send me an email (@ djweeaks at att dot com). ~ Doris

Filed Under: Contributor Team Studio/Space Tour Tagged With: craft room, craft rooms, craft storage, furniture, scrapbook studio, scrapbooking, sewing, sewing machine, stamps storage

April 15, 2013 by Doris Weeaks 2 Comments

Craft Room Feature {Soapbox Creations}

Today’s craft room was an unexpected, but very welcomed find! I was originally checking out this die, which combines the use of a card and a gift sack to make one awesome present for someone! Laurie of Soapbox Creations must be the brainchild behind the Card Hanger Die, and it’s so popular, it’s currently sold out! In any case, she has a lovely room that I want to share with you.

As you can see by the photo above, she has everything neatly stored and organized with her “go-to” supplies situated where they are nice and handy!

The ribbon shelf was made by her father, modifying instructions she found on Nichole Heady’s blog.

Another smaller table holds her stamp pads, Copic Markers, and her Big Shot cutter.

Be sure to check out her post on her craft space to see more photos. She also posts a link to her original craft room, which looked much different! Nice to know that my room is not the only one that is a “work in progress!”

Speaking of my craft room, looks like my next post will be featuring my “happy place.” I’ve recently be purging and doing a bit of reorganizing, so it’ s not photo-ready, at the moment, by any stretch of the imagination! I can’t wait to share it with you and give you the “grand tour!”

Filed Under: All Craft Rooms Tagged With: craft room, craft storage, dining room craft space, ribbon, scrapbook studio, stamps storage

April 8, 2013 by Hazel Hamman 5 Comments

The Playhouse Craft Sanctuary

Hallo, I’m Hazel all the way from Sunny South Africa. I live in the beautiful university town of Stellenbosch with my husband, Wynand. Both my boys are grown-up and I hope to extend my family to daughters-in-law and grandchildren soon.

I call myself a hybrid crafter – the only thing I can’t do is knit but don’t get me wrong, I try that as well. My husband says it’s only an excuse to own more stuff but I do use everything I buy and keep it organized most of the time.

This is my first blog post for Craft Storage Ideas and I’m here to share my favourite craft room with you. When I initially ventured out on Pinterest, this was one of my first pins and to this day, still one of my best.

I have a mini book with the title “I love …………” and one of the things on my list is log cabins – actually I love little houses – fabric, wood, real ones, even house stamps!

So, without further ado ………………………. THE PLAYHOUSE:

Darnell J Knauss used to craft in her husband’s garage (without windows and insulation!) but when this 10 x 12 (120 square feet) “shed” in her backyard became available, she converted it into craft heaven. I love the calm and serene feel of the room as well as the way that Darnell used ordinary items in extraordinary ways. Just look at this chest of drawers:

And a peek inside:

All the stamps arranged by theme. Have a look at the birthday drawer:

That’s a lot of birthday stamps isn’t it? What I love is that you can see them all in one glance.

Another “ordinary item” – the filing cabinets:

Darnell got them inexpensively from Office Max and I just love how she divided her stash by colour – each cabinet houses a different colour.

Here it is the “green” cabinet opened up:

Pens, ink pads, ribbon and paper all in its own cabinet!

That’s it! I hope you have enjoyed my tour of Darnell’s PLAYHOUSE. Please hop over to her blog, djkardkreations and see for yourself – there are a lot more pictures, ideas and detail of her craft storage system. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed!

To Darnell, thanks for the inspiration and to all of you, thanks for stopping by. Please check back as we have a lot more to share with you right here on Craft Storage Ideas. Have a great day!

Filed Under: All Craft Rooms Tagged With: craft room, drawers, furniture, repurposed furniture, stamps storage

March 7, 2013 by Anita Scroggins 4 Comments

Storage Solution – Unmounted Stamps

Hi everyone, it’s my turn to offer a storage tip and today I want to talk about storing all those unmounted stamps that come on the clear sheets. Are you like me and you have hundreds of them? I am so sad, I have sheets of them I have never even used one of the stamps from it! I am working on that though and using them one by one!!

I have wonderful storage cabinets in my studio that I got from a retail store when they retired. I wanted to be able to store my stamps in the cubbies in those cabinets, but I couldn’t find anything that would fit my needs. Sooo, I called my wonderful friend who can build anything and who works for cake and told him what I needed. Voila! Two weeks later I had a custom solution to my problem. I can store ALL of my stamps in a little bitty space now and have super easy access to them!

Here is a look at my storage shelf with my stamp storage on it. I currently have 6 on here, but only 5 are in use. I have several more in the attic in case I go crazy buying more stamps!

They are sized to hold an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet protector. A lot of my stamps came on plastic sheets that were this size so I was able to slide them right in and put the page protector on the rings. For those that were a different size I bought a package of 8 1/2 X 11 craft plastic at the craft store and used Glue Dots® to stick the stamps on. This was I could display more than one small stamp set in a page protector like the ones below.

I can get about 10-12 page protectors onto each holder depending on the brand of stamps. I have them sorted by theme so I can just grab a holder a flip through to find the stamps I want. Easy peasy.

They are only 3″ wide across the bottom so I can fit a lot of storage into a small space- AND it fit into the fixtures I already had- exactly what I was looking for.

And, yes, I do have a serious Prima addiction. I am maintaining a Prima Breeding Program in my Scrap Studio – if they ever stop making Prima’s I want to have enough of them to breed in captivity

That’s it for me today.

Anita

Filed Under: Storage Solution Roundups! Tagged With: craft room, craft storage, stamps storage, storage, studio

January 16, 2013 by Valerie Mangan 7 Comments

13 in 2013: Managing The Stamp Stash

Let’s face it – trends come and go in the craft industry. The must-haves change pretty quickly and one area where I find this particularly obvious is in my stamp stash. Since my storage space is at an extreme minimum, it’s important for me to keep a tight grip on the size of the stamp collection. Stamps – acrylic, unmounted and wood mounted rubber – take up a lot of craft room real estate and for me, need to be purged on a regular basis.

I admit, there are so many great ways to store them. I love the ‘binder with cling pages’ idea, in fact, I have one of my own:

I love the cd holder idea – there are some brands of un-mounted stamps that come in similar style cases. This example from the Delightful Order blog is very nice:

And I like the simplicity of these simple, flat, plastic packages that come from a kit club. I store these together in this small bin:

The problem is when they start to accumulate, they take up a lot of space regardless of their storage format. In addition, the wood mounted stamps can get heavy in large groups.

Since I store my stamps in an Ikea dresser, I always have a problem with the drawer bottoms bowing. So I need to be careful about adding to this part of the collection.

Another problem I have when there are too many; I lose track of what I have and don’t use them. Having that excess saps my creativity so keeping the stamp stash lean and mean is essential for me. Here is how I approach a purge:

Trends: The first category I focus on. Trendy imagery and shapes (like owls, hedgehogs, hexagons, chevrons, doilies, etc) usually don’t have ‘crafty’ staying power. I’m pretty ruthless here. If I haven’t used it in at least a year and it’s a trendy image, it has to go.

Sentiments/Words: As a cardmaker these are an essential in my stash but even they can become dated. I’m on the lookout for current and/or timeless fonts & phrases. I’m not above keeping the sentiment portion of a stamp set and purging the rest of the pieces for the sake of saving space. The binder pages are especially handy for keeping these all together in one place.

The ‘Basics’: This category has more staying power. The are the lined journaling spots, classic shapes like hearts and arrows, etc. When I’m purging this group I’m thinking more about how much I’ve used them. Are they looking dated? Unless I have something specific in mind for a project and it’s been more than 2 years, I purge them.

And lastly, Condition: I have a few stamps (mostly acrylic) that I’ve used & abused so much that they no longer make a clean impression. If they are torn or no longer making a clean print, they need to go.

I’m ruthless but not to the point of removing the stuff I love. I keep some stamps just because they make me happy. I even keep them out where I can see them.

Regular purging of product helps me justify keeping my faves and adding new ones. In addition, reviewing the stamp stash on a regular basis, or any part of my stash for that matter, is a sure fire way to spark my creativity. Don’t be afraid to let go of the products that aren’t working for you. The manufacturers will keep making more!

Filed Under: Editorials & Polls Tagged With: 13 in 2013, craft storage, ikea, Mists / Sprays Storage, purging, stamps storage

January 10, 2013 by Doris Weeaks 4 Comments

13 in 2013: Modifying an Existing Shelf

As your organization efforts continue in the new year, you might be sticking to a tight budget. New furniture or fancy organizational tools may not be an option. Doris has a fantastic idea for modifying an existing shelf to meet new needs!

Some crafters are like me, they need to have their supplies visible and easy to access. Such is the case with my wood-mounted stamps. No matter how I tried to store them, I could never seem to find the one I wanted when I wanted it! So, I thought I had found the answer when I bought the shallow hanging shelves from Michael’s. However, I found myself with too much wasted space and, when you’re a ~~hoarder~~ collector like I am, you need every spare inch of storage you can get!

Necessity being the “Mother of Invention,” I decided a trip to The Container Store was in order. In my mind, I had envisioned drawer dividers being just the thing I would need to add more “shelves” to my existing ones. Sure enough, I found just what I was looking for!

I bought a couple of packages of these in 2″ and 4″ widths and headed home to get busy.

I used the same basic instructions given for using them in a drawer, just using them vertically.

Measure and score with a craft knife at desired length until the piece snaps apart.

Slide the connectors onto both ends of your cut pieces. Remove the paper from the adhesive strip on the connector and press into place on your shelf.

I also found it necessary to have a “brace” in the middle of the dividers (since they are not designed to be used vertically), so I followed the same steps to create the brace.

A couple of design changes had to be made, once I actually started placing my stamps of the new “shelves.” I removed the rod from the bottom section to use for more storage, rather than ribbon. I also ended up adding braces to the ends, because the adhesive just wasn’t strong enough to hold them in place (again, these were not meant to be used vertically). When I ran out of materials to make the additional braces, I decided to use pieces of foam board, rather than buy additional packages just for a few more inches. It was then a light bulb went off and it dawned on me that I could have used foam board for the whole project! DOH! In fact, I’ve even seen some very talented and creative people make amazing storage pieces entirely from foam board! Rebecca featured some of those in this post, and I found some neat ideas here and here. I have to say, I wish I had thought of it before I used what I did – not that a trip to The Container Store is ever wasted! Fortunately, foam board can be found at just about any Walmart or craft store you have near you, it’s easier to cut and it’s not as costly. In any case, I’m glad I decided to add my new shelves to my existing ones because I love that I can easily see my stamps now.

I hope this inspires you to look at what you currently own and think of ways you could modify it to suit your needs in a better way! If you have any questions about my project, please let me know!

Filed Under: Product Highlight, Uncategorized Tagged With: 13 in 2013, craft storage, stamps storage, storage

December 17, 2012 by Doris Weeaks 2 Comments

Craft Room {The 36th Avenue}

What a terrible job I have, searching through hundreds of photos of craft rooms to find to bring to you! Ha ha! Sometimes, I don’t know how I am able to narrow it down to just one! However, when I came across this pretty craft room from The 36th Avenue, I knew it as the one I would want to share with you today!

I just love the soft color palette of the beige’s and white’s, with the pops of red here and there.

This looks like a cozy spot to sit and sew up some fun projects, don’t you think? Especially with all your tools hanging right there on your cute pegboard!

And how about this idea for storing and displaying your Washi tape collection? Hmmm…now where did my old cup tree go???

This dresser-turned-storage-cabinet looks awesome against the adorable polka dot wall!

Just look at all the supplies it will hold!

Is this window topper not the cutest thing ever??? I love how it adds just the right amount of color and design, while still allowing the natural light to shine on in.

Here’s another little peek around the room. Be sure to go to The 36th Avenue to check out all of the photos that Desiree has posted about her craft room. Not only will you get to see even more amazing shots of her beautiful room, she even links you back to some of the projects she’s created so you can make them too!

I hope you enjoyed today’s craft room tour. The next room I’ll be featuring will be my own! I’m so excited to show it to you, but I have a lot (a LOT) of work to do on it between now and then! As this is my last post until January, I want to take this opportunity thank you for allowing me to have a small part in your crafty life, and to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

See you in 2013!

Filed Under: All Craft Rooms Tagged With: craft room, craft rooms, craft storage, drawers, sewing machine, stamps storage, storage, studio, Washi Tape

December 12, 2012 by Doris Weeaks 4 Comments

Just 1 Tip: {Create an Inventory Binder}

Part of the fun of being a crafter is shopping for and “collecting” the various tools and elements that go into the making of our works of heART. To be honest, I’m pretty sure I spend more time looking online and shopping in stores for my craft supplies than I actually do crafting! And nothing is more frustrating than discovering you’ve managed to bring home something you’ve previously purchased – or, not being able to find something you’ve previously purchased and having to buy a duplicate (knowing the one you’ve been searching high and low for will “magically” appear as soon as you’ve begun to use the replacement – especially if it’s something that’s non-returnable!!!).

I’m also a sucker for the $1 spots at Michael’s and Joann’s and anything that has a clearance sticker attached to it. There’s so much ~~hoarded~~ crafty goodness ~~crammed~~ stashed in my craft room that there’s just no way I could keep up with what’s-what and where, so I decided to create an inventory binder to help me with that.

There are a ton of ways to create a binder. I did a Google search and came across a few ideas to pass along:

This is a list of files created by one of the “Queen’s” of scrapbook organization, “Rockester” (a/k/a Kathy Aho), of Scrapper’s Challenge.

Here is another amazing resource for pages to put in a binder from Kathleen Driggers of Kat’s Scrappy, Bloggy Life.

The first thing I did was to come up with a list of the basic categories I wanted to include in the binder. From this, I was able to decide on any sub-categories I wanted to include. I’ll warn you upfront, I’m pretty ~~anal~~ OCD when it comes to organizing – you wouldn’t have to go to the lengths I did to create something that will fit your needs. For instance, the binder I originally purchased for this project ended up being too small, so I switched to a larger size. You might want to create something smaller that would be easy to take with you on shopping trips or could even fit in your purse.

Here is the list in my “Table of Contents” – created using Avery dividers purchased at Staples:

Cricut Font Samples (list found here)
Dies
Embossing Folders
Inks/Stickles (here and here)
Punches
Scissors
Sew Easy/Stitch’z
Stamps – Alpha Sets
Stamps – Backgrounds/Borders/Fourishes
Stamps – Baby/Birthday/Celebrate
Stamps – Flowers/Bugs/Animals
Stamps – Friends
Stamps – Get Well/Sympathy
Stamps – Journaling
Stamps – Love/Wedding/Anniversary
Stamps – Miscellaneous
Stamps – Phrase Sets
Stamps – Tags/Frames
Stamps – Thank You/Thinking of You
Stamps – Through the Year/School
Spellbinder’s List (found here)

I’m not going to kid you, this took a some time to compile. Instead of just listing out the various items in this list, I opted to cut or stamp a sample of each item. Since I decided to stamp my images in black ink onto white cardstock (sold in the office supply section of Walmart), I used black cardstock to cut my dies and punches, and samples of my embossing folders. I am so “visual” when it comes to learning or trying to figure out what would look best on a project, I knew I would like the ability to refer to the actual images, shapes, dimensions, etc. I also used my handy dandy P-Touch label machine to help me keep up with who-made-what!

I also came up with a system of marking where each item is stored, but I’ll spare you that part of the process for now!

As always, we’d love to see what you’ve come up with to go along with this topic! If you have any comments or questions, I hope you’ll post them below, or shoot me an email at djweeaks@att.net.

~ Doris

Filed Under: Just 1 Tip! Tagged With: craft punches storage, cricut, die cuts, scrapbook studio, stamps storage

December 7, 2012 by Deirdre Smith 1 Comment

Product Highlight: CD Jewel Cases and Boxes

As a crafter I would think that when we set our sights on storage we definitely look outside the box or in this case inside the box. With so many stamp companies now turning to cling mount stamps or clear polymer stamps, storage of stamps can be confined to a smaller spaces.

CD Jewel Cases for cling mounted or clear stamps

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The good thing about using jewel cases you can find a box specifically designed to place your cases into. This clear box is great because you can label and see exactly what stamps you own.

Great simple idea of storing the clear stamps in empty transparent cd cases and then those into CD storage boxes. In this case a clear one that allows you to see everything through.

source

This box would be great plain as shown or you can embellish it to match your room decor.