Tinker Around

Welcome to my blog. It is full of basic projects and tutorials for things that I have done and feel like others out there would benefit from learning too. Be sure to take time to leave me a comment. Thanx, Pam

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Organization...Day One

Well, looks like I am gonna be posting early this week.  It is snowing here in Central Texas and if I have to be shut in and am on my computer...I am sure of you are too.  So...here we go!!!

We are going to be talking about organizing your art/craft room on and off for the next few weeks, as I am redoing mine!  It is clean enough and somewhat organized now, but I know it can be better.  My room is a 10'x13' bedroom that is located in the back of the house.  The walls are purple, the carpet is a paint spotted dirty cream color, and the walls are lined with bookcases.  See, it looks manageable.




But, the closet is a mess.  When a closet looks this bad, it doesn't get used, everything stays buried and you have to dig or purchase new stuff.  So, in the next few weeks, as the room gets cleaned and gone through, so of the stuff in the closet will come out.  I am sure if you have a closet like this, there are things in there that need to be trashed or given to your crafty friends.  I know my students are looking forward to our classes for the next month or so!  lol  (oh, there, see the purple wall!)



Let's look at one of my boxes of ribbon.  This is what it looked like on the shelf, there were two boxes full.  Inside, it was in rows and had a couple extras thrown on top.  By the way, watch your local craft stores, these photo storage boxes go on sale all the time!!  In fact, I just picked up four more this week for just over $2 each.  You will see in future posts how and where I have used them in this room.  Pretty and easily stacked.



It has all been wrapped and filed and now there is enough room for BOTH boxes of ribbon in the one box.  You would be surprised how much room those spools take up...anyone got a craft project for all these empty spools??  What to do with them for now??  Easy, thread them all together and hang them from the ceiling in the garage.


Now, on to the process and then I will reveal the final project.  Take and unroll the entire spool, start rolling it around the two of the inserts that come in the photo boxes.  You might have to cut down those pieces of cardboard depending on how much ribbon there is.  Here is a photo of where the ribbons are so long that they wrap around so many times that the ribbon roll is too tall for the box now.  See how it sticks up above the edge of the box?  See the second photo, I cut down the cardboard inserts and re-wrapped the ribbons.



You ready for this?  Let's go back and take a look at the before photo and then the after will be right below that one.  I love my new ribbon storage, and I have tried dowel rods and lots of other things.  Soooo....what do you think???



Isn't that AWESOME!!!!  Well, one of many boxes down, and now I even have an extra box to put more stuff into later!!!  Yippee!!!

Now, let me show you how I organized all my little Sizzix and Cricut cut out shapes.  This is really easy and it uses up a LOT of those little scraps of paper.  Don't have one of those machines that cut out the shapes that you can use in altered art or scrapbooking??  There are folks that sell them on ebay, yes, you can order pre-cut shapes and even tell them what color you want them in.  Do you have a friend that has a lot of punches that you like?  Borrow them for a couple days and spend an evening in front of the tv punching a few and slip them into snack bags until you get your organization container, and then just transfer them over.  I have even used a muffin tin to organize while I am between projects.  Ok, here they are.





Then, I got another one of these tool and hardware organizers and did the entire alphabet.  Be sure to keep the outside on the alphabet too, never know when you might want those pieces.  Oh, I just used a black permanent marker to draw the letter on the outside, and it looks like the actual letter shape (font).  You could even tape them to the inside and let them show through. 





Wow!!  I feel like I got a lot done.  Eventually, you are going to see the new paint, shelving, and floor.  This is going to have to do for now.  

What am I going to do next week??  To be honest with you, I am not quite sure yet.  I have so many ideas flowing in my brain, and so many projects in the works.  I do know that we all have one little area of wasted space in our homes, and so I will post a small section on that next week along with my regular post.  

Why don't you post some questions along with your comments and let me know what kinds of things you would like to read about.  You never know, I might pick your question to write the next blog about!!!  See ya in a week, Pam






1 comment:

  1. Fnished my ribbon box! I prefer boxes I can see thru; thus the shoebox. I chose not to unroll some spools because I have plans for those ribbons. I will put the leftover on a card when I finish that project. I don't have near as much ribbon as Pam but it sure makes even a small amount of ribbons easier to manage.

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