Back with a Bang! :D
Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 08:08PM Recommitted to bloggery.
And to prove it, I’ve taken pictures of my scrap space, as promised a few weeks ago. Still some stuff to put up and whatnot, but this is by FAR the coolest scrap area I’ve ever had, and pretty much the only time I’d have said yes if anyone asked if they could take pictures of it.
Here goes! My space.
The paint on the walls is what’s in most of the rest of the house - Martha Stewart’s Carrick Bend from Sherwin Williams. LOOOOOVE this color. It’s kind of a.. tannish greenish, I guess. :) If you go to this web development company’s page, they give the Hex codes for all the Martha Stewart colors. Carrick Bend is about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. :)
We have an enormous bonus room above our garage (pretty much the main reason we bought this place), so here is the Offical Sprague Lab. Where all the magic happens. ;).
Jared’s workstation and the file servers are off the left edge of this photo. Yes. We have a bright green wall. Not acid-ey green, a really nice sort of .. the same color as my blog background green. MMM. My fave. :D
Also in this pic you can see that Jared has decorated his view of my scrap table with a Warcraft poster… I purchased the scrap table in August, and that’s what started this whole reorganization thing. I was using a really crappy little cart, and decided that I was worth this upgrade. :D I went with this freestanding kitchen counter from Ikea, which I had shipped here, and Jared and I put it together in a couple of hours. I think with shipping it was something like $500, so if you live near an Ikea, please just take a second to think about how lucky you are. ;) But even not living near an Ikea, having one I can buy stuff online from makes me pretty lucky, too. :)
Slightly different angle here, you can see my newest addition: My Samsung 22-inch Widescreen Flat-Panel Monitor
Off the right of this photo is a hutch on the other side of the L-shaped desk, where some of my most-used books are, and where my ribbon sits in jars. I don’t use it as often as other supplies, so it doesn’t need to be in arm’s reach of the main scrap area.
Up a little closer and you can see the main storage thing. This buffet was a major find when we lived in Minnesota, where we used it in our dining area. It wasn’t needed in our new place, so I swiped it. :D (Swiped the two matching glass-door towers from our old entertainment center, too).
And guess what! That’s not a Diet Mt. Dew! I totally cut loose today and got a Diet Dr. Pepper instead. ;)
Come around the scrap table and you can see the working area. The drawers in the table hold the most-used tools and embellishments, and I keep my paper trimmer (the Dahle 550) out all the time. Best part of this setup? The garbage can is directly underneath the paper trimmer. I just slide scraps off the edge of the table and they end up out of sight. :D
In the first shelf, left to right I’ve got Image rub-ons (anything swirly, liney, image-based), then Word rub-ons (anything wordy), then raw chipboard (all removed from packaging - so far I can tell where everything came from, although I’m going to start making a little initial on the back of pieces as I take them out of the packaging. I’m getting a LOT of chipboard these days), and then punches. They’re sort of all piled in there, but it works great for me, since I have maybe 20 punches.
In the bottom shelf, left to right I’ve got a wire basket with all my paints. The paint daubers from Ranger actually make me love painting things again. No more need for palettes or foam brushes, it’s so easy. :) Then comes the big Xyron 900. This bad boy ROCKS at mini-albums, even big albums up to 8.5 x 11. Anything I want to stick down REALLY well. After that it’s a big basket for patterned paper scraps, and another for cardstock scraps.
Remember a bit ago when I said I had reorganized all my embellishments by color? I wanted to test it out for a few weeks before saying yea or nay to this system, which really may not be for everyone. For me though, after several weeks of almost nonstop work using this organization method, it is a HUGE, ENTHUSIASTIC thumbs-up. Wow. It is so cool to be able to find embellishments of any color. I took everything out of all its packaging (excluding alphas, buttons, flowers, brads), divided it by color (in some cases I even cut sheets of things up), and printed cute labels for the drawers (which I’ve had for years). I have a pretty good memory for manufacturers, so I haven’t run across anything yet that I couldn’t identify, but LOTS of times now when I said as I was sifting a drawer, OH! That would be perfect here!
Best part of this? Normally I’m working in a pretty specific color scheme - maybe it’s blue, green, and brown (yeah, that sounds about right. :P). I can pull out the blue drawer, the green drawer, and the brown drawer and just leave them out as I work on the layout. This part has really changed the way I scrap, and it has been very cool.
Inside the drawers of the table. The right and center drawers have 3 long plastic bins in them. Right drawer holds flowers, then buttons, then various kinds of adhesives. Center drawer holds the most-used tools (Tombow, eraser, mini-stapler, staples, paper piercer, scissors, etc), then all my stamping and distressing inks (which I use much more often now that I know where they are), and circular chipboard (which I use SO often - on pretty much every layout) that it deserved a spot front and center). The left drawer has a desk organizer with little cubbies, and four tins from the Target 1$ spot. I keep mini-brads, rhinestones, acrylic blocks, and other tiny charm-ey bits in organizer, and then scissors, hole punches, paint brushes in the tins.
On the buffet I’ve got most of my alphas (including chipboard, stickers, and rub-ons) still in their sets divided by color, hanging on a Clip-it-up. Alphas that are multi-colored are in the basket right underneath, and the tiny rub-on sets (i.e. Making Memories) are in the pink bin right next to that. One thing I discovered about myself: I don’t like too much randomness, especially in titles. Why that didn’t become clear to me after 3 years of scrapping nothing but the same font/sticker/rub-on (or 2 at the most) for ALL the letters in a title, I don’t know. But keeping sets together so they spell things is a priority here. :)
The center basket on the buffet holds a variety of acrylic stamps.
And of course, pretty much the centerpiece of my scrappy life, is my prize: My Epson R1800 Printer
In the buffet I’ve got some small stuff - Chatterbox tacks, a random assortment of Liquid-But-Non-Paint-Things, and of course the cardstock and patterned paper, sorted by manufacturer. I cut up some old Priority mail boxes while I assemble my collection of Cropper Hoppers. :D All my printing supplies are in the big drawer, and photo paper is in the bottom left shelf there. I think I have just about every kind imaginable, but my paper of the moment is Semi-Gloss. WOW does that stuff rock here, there, and everywhere! :D
So that’s it! A little tour of my scrap space and how I’ve got it organized. I re-used a lot of things I already had, purchasing only the scrap table, the four matching bins on the top shelf of the table, and a couple of easels to display work on. I don’t think it needs to cost thousands of dollars to make a space you love, as long as you know how you work and what you like. For me, I don’t like a lot of visual clutter, so the mantra here is “put it away, put it away, put it away” :D And you know, now that everything has a place, that is SO easy.
One recommendation if you’re starting and kind of overwhelmed: Think in terms of Big Buckets first. For example, decide whether you want to sort all your embellishments by color. If yes, sorting those becomes pretty easy. Decide if little embellishments like buttons or flowers should be part of that, or separate. You can see that I emptied all my Primas into one big bin that’s easy to sift through AND easy to just throw whatever unused things back in. Sure, I don’t keep my cute bottles out on display, but by darn, I USE those flowers more often, because they’re right there close at hand, easy to get out and easy to put away. That’s the key for cleanup for me. Chipboard all goes to one place, buttons to one, flowers to one. Patterned paper slips in to its labeled section by manufacturer, and cardstock in general color groups (I don’t worry whether this green is lighter than that green, etc.)
As for future stuff, I’m moving the left-hand glass-door cabinet (which holds albums) over to the other wall, and there’ll be two chairs by the window. And I’m still planning to get some decals for the angled ceiling above my head, but that kind of stuff takes time. :) If you have good suggestions for a quote that could stretch across there, let me know. :)
Tomorrow is a little tour of my digi scrap space and how I’ve got THAT organized, as we talk about brush (and other) organization for Photoshop Friday.
See you then. :D
p.s. A few comments have appeared that you can’t see the images. Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies? It may be that it’s still gummed up from a previous visit..
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Reader Comments (36)
ps - now you've told me how to make sure I can see your pictures... any chance you know what font is used when typing in the comments box? I've broken one of my system fonts and all I see are numbers in circles (obvioulsy overprinted it somehow) if I just knew which font was broken I could fix it! *lol*
-Erin :)
I've been waiting on this:-) I'm cleaning out my office (it is our favorite dumping spot in the house!) and can't wait to hit the organizing stage.
As I looked at your color system drawers (on my oh-so-small monitor), I was thinking, I wish she had taken photos of the inside of those drawers of most-often-used tools.
Ta-da: there they were. So appreciate your sharing.
oh--and I love the Clip-It-Up! Using things now that I can see them.
Donna
Now...um...can you come help me with mine!?! lol I have a big space, not as much stuff, but still a huge mess. I desperately need HELP!!! Actually, I just need time. Guess you can't help with that huh! lol.
Anyway, you're space is truely is awesome. Enjoy!
Patty