My Stamping Space

As promised, my re-jigged stamping space.  It's still quite obviously jam-packed and cluttered looking, but everything is pretty well organised and located for ease of access and use.  Both these factors are much more important than how much space you actually have!  When I rearrange, my first thoughts are these:

How often do I use this?
Would I use it more if I could reach it easier?
What do I use so infrequently that I don't mind getting the step stool to access?
How can I group like items together to make it easy to remember where stuff is?
Is there enough space in the designated spot to cater for the inevitable growth in my stash?

This room is not especially big,  3.5 x 2.7 metres, and has no built ins. We added some "as is" Ikea shelves (black and red) and wall cupboards (beech) back when it was the home office, and they are quite functional for storing stamping gear.  Along the wall you can't see in these pics is my Expedit 4x4 cube bookcase, where all my cardstock and uni paperwork is stored.

The top pic shows just the corner of the trolley in a post down below a bit.  It essentially gives me a work surface on all four sides of the room, and that's a good thing, as I have a habit of covering every possible horizontal surface when I am working.  My tables, from my gorgeous antique Singer Sewing Machine stand with marble top (restored by my clever dad), glass top Ikea desk with trestle legs, expensive but so worth it Best Craft Organiser desk, cheapy officeworks glass top desks and another as-is Ikea office cabinet form a continuous surface around the 3 remaining walls of the room.  There's even enough space on the floor for an inflatable bed, imagine the crafty dreams you could have!

An assignment assessing the relative merits of science websites for teaching calls, but first I'm going to post a card made recently...

Craft Room organisation - Die-cutting heaven

I've been busy again re-arranging my craft room, to try and make it as friendly for my uni/teaching work as well as my stamping.  So far,  I think I have managed to improve both!

When I tidy up a bit (cos I've already messed it up doing some assignments), I'll take a pic of the new layout, but for now I wanted to show you my new solution for all my die-cutting gear that came about because of the room reshuffle.  This is a bit of an epic story, but I hope it explains my thinking process about my room, and how you might apply the same principles to better arranging your own space.

A few years back, I bought a butcher's trolley from Aldi, and this same trolley was in last Saturday's catalogue too, $149, so if you like the idea it would be worth giving your local Aldi's a call to see if they have any left.  It was tucked in a corner before, and held all manner of bits and bobs on the shelves underneath, as well as the drawers and providing a handy worksurface to boot. But, it wasn't exactly mobile, and I could only access the shelves from the front side.

As part of the room reshuffle, I wanted to get an inexpensive glass top desk to fill in a 'dead corner' where all my bags and totes were stored, the bags would still be underneath it and visible, but there would be a work surface over the top that would effectively extend my desk into a U shape around three sides of the room..  At Officeworks, I found a glass desk that fitted the bill, just $55, but when I went to get it, I spied another variant, with twice the surface area, designed as a corner desk but able to be assembled as two individual desks as well.  At $68, it was a bit of a no-brainer to get that instead.    Because of this unexpected extra surface, something had to give, so I stripped the butcher's trolley bare and had it in the centre of the room waiting to be moved elsewhere.  While preparing for my Stampin' Crop day last Friday, I moved the various equipment onto the trolley to wheel it out and it dawned upon me that I could  free up quite a few of the cubes in my Ikea Expedit bookcase by having all my big shot, sizzix and other die cutting stuff stored on the butcher's trolley itself.  It also occurred to me that it would save a bit of setup time for my Stampin' Crops - just wheel the fully laden trolley out, ta da!  While not in use, it lives against my Expedit, and provides a work surface for my uni/teaching stuff, since the Big Shot fits underneath on the racks.

Phew!  Did you get that far?  Can you picture what I've done yet?
Here's the trolley:

On the bottom shelf are my Sizzix original dies and embossing folders, alphabets etc, and on the upper shelf are my gorgeous Stampin' Up! die storage boxes - a very neat fit for 2 x medium and 2 x large boxes.  In the drawers I have all the cutting plates and shims and my spare trimmer etc - things I use on the work surface.

Hope you find it inspiring, check back in a day or two to see the rest of my revamped space!

the BEST Stampin Studio is finished!

It has taken quite a while to sort everything out, but here is my new Stampin Studio! Ta Da!!
I moved all my stuff (well, most of it - there is still a fair chunk of other craft-type stuff left behind) from a small upstairs bedroom to the downstairs study. Andrew's computer gear and big workdesk units were somehow dissassembled and man+woman handled UP the stairs, where they fitted perfectly. Thank goodness for that, because I have no idea how we would have got them back out and down again if they didn't quite fit!!

The top photo shows my Ikea Expedit unit, which also survived the move downstairs intact. It houses my paper shelves, office/filing type stuff, sample card boxes, magazines and catalogues and some Trofast tubs with other bulky bits and bobs. This is pretty much the same as it was before (if you remember the original pics I posted a while back) but now I'm downstairs, my office stuff and craft stuff are together. The extra space was created in this shelf unit by...

My new BEST scrapbooking furniture!!! Woohoo!! I've been drooling over the ads in the mags and in various dream stamping studio blog posts for the last couple of years, and I finally have some of my own! I have started with the desk and a Double Mini unit. The desk is lovely and wide, and you have everything at your fingertips in the two side storage sections. The Double Mini fits a huge amount of storage into a compact space, and it is on castors, so you can move it around with ease. I decided to get just the drawers, in 1" and 2" sizes, rather than paper shelves, because I thought it would be more flexible. As it has turned out, 12x12 paper does fit inside the drawers in a neat yet snug fashion, so I have more options to move things around. My labelling machine went into overdrive as I found good homes for all sorts of bits and pieces that cluttered up my previous space, so it is nice and easy to find things.

My new, larger punch rack is up now too, and holds all except my small punches, which now fit neatly in a desk-side drawer. It's a great creating space, so I hope it gives you a little inspiration!

The Punch Rack

I thought I'd share a bit about how my great punch racks are made.

I have two now, but they are basically the same in construction. You can make them longer to take more rails too, or simply build another one when your collection grows!

The rails with the round bases are from Ikea, called Bygel, and retail for the astronomical price of $1.95 each! Rather than attach them directly to the wall, which means 4 holes per rail, my clever hubby decided to mount them on short lengths of pine timber , meaning only 4 holes in total. This also creates more depth between the wall behind and the rail for the large punches.

The rail with the white end caps is a piece of aluminium tubing from Bunnings Hardware, and this rail is attached to the timber with screw eyes. This rail is closer to the wall, so it's perfect for the small punches. The hooks are also from the Bygel range at Ikea, and are great for the ends of the rails to hold bits and pieces.

So, basically you only need to measure your biggest punch, and space the rails accordingly, screw them to the timber, then attach the timber to the wall with Wallmates or similar, to suit the type of your wall. Ta Da!

Organisational Ideas

I thought after posting some photos of my newly re-jigged craft room that I would share a few of the ideas that I have used to organise my stuff, especially since the layout and storage is working out so well in a practical sense.

For my stamps, I have them organised by the size of the clear clam shell box, and they are roughly stacked in groups eg backgrounds together-ish. They sit nicely in two rows in the cubes of the Expedit shelving unit, and there is room to move them about and sort within the shelf while looking for 'the one', without making a mess on my bench (which is what used to happen....) I have my Sale-a-bration sets for this year in a stack, so that makes grabbing them for samples and workshops fast. Same goes for the Summer Mini sets. Retired sets and past-mini sets (can't quite bring myself to say they are GONE yet!!) are in a cube of their own, so I don't torture my readers with too many unavailable sets. My Simply Sent Kits are also together.

For A4 cardstock, I collected 8 filing organisers from Officeworks- similar are available from KMart. Most have 5 drawers, but there are some with 3, which means there is more room for the neutrals etc. They do stack securely, and thats how I had them pre-shuffle. I have the colours organised in Colour Families, two colours to a drawer mostly. They are labelled with some printed cardstock labels that can be found on Ebay, and it makes finding the right colour so fast that I'd never be without them now! There are also drawers for patterned paper pieces, and long scraps that don't fit in my bench scrap dish. The bonus with the Expedit unit is that there is room above the filing box for an Ikea Trofast tray for various bits and bobs, as well as room on the side for plastic file cases with class notes etc inside. Excuse the slightly fuzzy image, I recropped the photo from the other post, but you get the idea!

Off for a swim now, I'll be back another time with more tips as I think of them!

A revamp and re-organise = refreshing!

It's done! Well, nearly! Handy Hubby is in the process of making me another punch rack to fill the gap between the metal note boards and the corner, hopefully it will be done tomorrow and I can then fill it up! (yes, I have a serious fondness for punches, no such thing as too many!!) The Ikea Expedit shelf unit is nicely filled, and the top is perfect for my 12x12 paper racks. I took some photos, both to show you, my visitors, and to remind myself what it should look like in a tidy state!! Although, I feel quite inspired to create now, so I don't have much hope of the floor looking that clean for long!

Still working on Valentines cards, but for now here is a card I made, from a design by Jayne Mercer for our team Charity, Camp Quality. I made some in blue, some in yellow, and some like this one in red and pink. It's a versatile design, simply change the occasion by stamping a different sentiment. I love the chunky sprinkles in the centres of the cut out flowers, very easy to do with the Tombow Multi glue.
It's also an easy one to do in batches, simply select 3 or 4 shades of the same colour, and stamp in sequence from lightest to darkest, overlapping them. The set used is the beautiful Eastern Blooms set from the Summer Mini catalogue, item 114275, just $39.95.

Enjoy a wonderful Australia Day, with plenty of relaxation and celebration!