Hi everyone! Hope you are all having a creative week. Today I am not sharing a card. (What? no card? what is wrong with her?). Spring hit me… I can’t explain it either! ha ha ha!
I decided to make a couple of posts on how I organize my staff and what works for me, after receiving lots of emails.
When it comes to organizing, I am not a pro! I have tons of ideas on how to do things and I am neat enough to have a place for everything and I keep my room clean without clutter all around. But OCD is not in my vocabulary. When I have time to go to my craft room all I want to do is create than lose my valuable time on labeling.
But I had to do something with my inks. My ink collection is growing rapidly and since I keep everything in drawers it takes me ages to find the colors I want since they are all stack on top of each other. Now where is my “barn door” distress ink? …..
So here is the BEFORE photo:
Putting away my inks in drawers is no more a solution… since I have three drawers like the one above containing all the distress inks, tons of Archival, Staz’on, almost all Hero Arts, lots of Colorbox inks… the list is endless.
So I got my self a new label maker! Not that I didn’t have one… but this new one has a QWERTY keyboard and it’s awesome! It’s a DYMO 160 LabelManager. Here it is in all it’s glory!
And since I decided to finally organize my inks, I wanted a pretty outcome so I used my butterfly punch too.
I used my ink pads directly on a white scrap of paper to add a splash of color
and then I used the punch to cut out the butterflies
I printed the labels using my label maker
Those labels are self adhesive, so I adhered them together with the butterflies on the ink pad sides. Here they are on the shelf. This was super fast and easy. And guess what? It was fun too!
Here is the AFTER photo:
Aren’t those butterflies on the side cute?! LOVE THEM !!! They go together with the rest of my crafting room theme. Remember my butterfly wall clock here? I can now find the ink pad I want in a sec. I am not even half way there… still have tons of inks to label but it’s a start right?
And you can have a peek on how I store my stamps. I always keep my stamps on their original packaging. It’s easier than putting them in CD/DVD cases or any other kind of storage systems. This is the easiest, quick and efficient way I could find and it works for me. I use those SAMLA clear boxes from IKEA (only $1.49 per box) and I organize them by company (in the photo you can see just a few of the boxes from Penny Black, SimonSaysStamp and Hero Arts). I am a stamp collector so I have lots of full boxes from many companies including the above. I always keep my newest ones within reach.
Everything in my craft room is from IKEA. I have THESE ALEX drawers and THESE BILLY bookcases. I love IKEA, they are cheap, efficient and only 20 minutes drive from home!
I will come back with how I store my scraps. Until then, happy crafting 🙂
loooove your ink labels with the butterflies!! So awesome!! 🙂
You little genius, you!!! This is what I’m going to have to start doing with my ink collection as well as my clear stamp collection, because they’re growing by the minute!!! What a FABULOUS idea!!! I’ve been stealing my poor cousin’s label maker to label all my stuff… Thanks for linking your labeler–cheaper! SO getting it like as soon as I hit “post comment”. Thanks again for sharing your brilliant ideas!!! (;
woohoo! love it! the butterflies are so pretty. can’t wait to see more!
Love it, Vicky! Doesn’t it feel good to get more organized? Thank you for all the links too! 🙂
Brilliant! I bought a label maker 3 months ago. Still in the packaging! HA HA HA !
Superb post Vicky!! TFS
It does feel good to organize stuff, right?! 🙂 And I love IKEA, too! We live about 30 min away from one and there’s no sales tax in Oregon so I try to go as often as possible! 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration!
LOve the butterfly idea Vicky so easy to spot your inks!!
What a grand idea Vicky, and think of all the drawer space you can fill up now..lol..the butterflies look beautiful wih the labels, such a clever and tidy idea….my seven ink pads would look good too..lol..
Luv CHRISSYxx
Great post! Thanks for sharing these ideas. 😉
This is a clever idea and definitely “borrowable”.
Question: I was taught to store all of my ink pads upside down so that the ink remained at the top of the ink pad. Does anyone else do this? Is it necessary? Thanks for sharing your tips.
I never keep my ink pads upside down. I have them for years and I never had any problems. I also took a class by Tim Holtz and told us that there is no need to keep his distress inks upside down due to the material of the pad. So about those I am sure you don’t have to. For all the others I can only say it from personal experience. Thank you so much for visiting!
so in love with the butterfly idea!!
Thank you for recommending us. It is a pleasure to see how useful our machines are.
Wow! Thank you so much for the comment! It really is a great tool!
Yes, that is a GREAT start! I LOVE your idea!!!!
Great system, tfs Vicky!
Looks Great!! Awesome idea
I am ALSO a huge IKEA fan and LOVE my ALex drawers and my Expedit units. I also have many inks, like you and have them in my Alex draws, as you did in the first photo. Unfortunately, I don’t have any shelf space to put them on, but I did label each one and LOVE your little butterfly idea!!
As for my stamps, I went with binders and have been happy with that idea, again…no shelf space, but do LOVE this idea as well!
Organizing is almost…(yes almost) as much fun as creating!! I lvoe it when my room is neat, clean and everything is easy to find!!
Great idea, i don’t have my own craft room yet, but in the future I definetly gonna claim my own space so i can organize all my stuff. Thanks for sharing.xxxSara
Love your idea! So cute, and I love your butterfly clock too. TFS
Thanks for searing this great idea.
Labelling my distress inks is still on my to do list, but I think it’s a great idea to add those butterflies. I remember having seen someone use inked up butterflies to chart all the colours on a sheet of paper, but adding them as part of the label is even better!
Consider yourself lucky to be so close to an IKEA store. When we were still living in the Netherlands, we had 3 stores within easy travelling distance. Now I need to take the ferry or a plane to go visit the nearest shop (at Athens Airport), which has not happened yet. There are plans to open a shop in Heraklion, but it could take years before that happens…
Have a wonderful weekend!
wonderful idea for the name and matching colored butterfly….efficient and pretty both!
Looooooove them!
What a great idea for the ink pads, and the butterfly’s are such a wonderful idea also.
Love how you labeled your ink pads! I was about to start labeling my ink pads as well, but with the punched out swatch tags on a ring. I think this might be a better organization for me than the swatches as I too currently have my pads in the ikea draw systems. This will eliminate me looking for the swatch color, then searching for the ink pad. I just might get a Dymo because of this… I’ve been printing them out on full sheet avery labels and trimming them down, but to do that, I have to accumulate enough new ink pads to fill up a sheet. This makes it so much easier! TFS!
Hi Vicky….
Love love love that you have SOOOO many inks/stamps and everything. I wonder how long it will take me to build this kind of collection 🙂 (can’t wait, want everything NOW 🙂 ).
Anyway, I wanted to ask you what would you reconend the inkpads would be that i could start my Distress ink pads collection, I thought i would start with about 5-7 pads?
Thanks for replying 🙂
I just colored my labels but I sure like the touch of butterflies- very cute idea! Will I re-do mine? NO, but the bflies are awesome! 🙂