Sorting Saturday - Making a Scrapbooking Area

Sorting Saturday is a daily blogging prompt at Geneabloggers.com used by many genealogy bloggers to help them post content on their sites. Any tips on how to go about sorting through a closet or box of stuff, what to do with what you find, organizing, supplies and tools you might need, etc.

I do scrapbooking which goes hand-in-hand with my other passion, genealogy. I used to do all paper scrapbooking but now I've gone digital. If you do digital and paper on the same page layout, it's called hybrid scrapbooking. I now have a wide format printer that prints 12 x 12 scrapbook pages but you can also have them printed by companies online like Shutterfly.com. Our niece, Jenny, came up with funny things to the tune of Twelves Days of Christmas about little Brett. I had to scrap it. I did a hybrid page. I printed part of it as 8 x 8 on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and then put it on a 12 x 12 scrapbook paper and added embellishments around it.


Why did I change to digital? Because all my supplies are in the computer on a hard drive and I can do away with all the supplies and equipment I used to use. That opened up a lot of space in my study. But some people love handling the paper and will not go digital. For them...

...I searched the Internet for scrapbooking rooms. Scrapbook rooms have to be highly organized to be effective. There are just so many papers, embellishments, stickers, equipment, etc to keep up with. Some women only have little scrapbook areas like using a closet,their dining room table, or a corner. But serious scrappers have a dedicated room, or scrapbook studio. If you aren't organized then you forget what you have and duplicate. This is a waste of money. Some people get really too many supplies and equipment. Their inventory is too heavy. They end up with every new doodad and stuff gets shifted to the bottom or is no longer in fashion so it's a waste. If you have a local scrapbook store, let it be your warehouse. You don't have to keep 50 sheets of red cardstock on hand. But, if you don't have a scrapbook store near you, then you really might need to keep a good inventory. Also if you have scrapbook parties at your house or you are in the scrapbooking business, then you might need all that stuff. But try to keep a healthy balance... not too much and not too little. In a business they have to keep this balance and it's called on-time inventory. You don't want to get stuck with too much product, but you need enough to keep your work rolling along.

I did get into the rubberstamping craft but I kept it pretty reasonable. I never got into die cutting because I could see it leading to another avenue of spending money. Organzing rubberstamps, ink pads, die cuts and die cutting machines takes a lot of skill as you will see.

I surfed the Internet to find examples of scrapping rooms, scrapbook supplies organization, and just good ideas for the scrapper. Hope you enjoy it and may it motivate you to clean up, purge, organize!











Notice the diecuts in the white shelf on the left. Punches are in the black things hanging on the closet doors and rubber stamps arranged on narrow shelves under the window.








These shelves look like gutters but aren't. But you could use real gutters. Gutters are especially good for holding ribbon spools.












Punches are like mini-die cuts.




A nice way to stack rubberstamps. I think they are stored in some type of clear plastic boxes or clamshells. Maybe DVD cases?












Pegboard











An old drawer turned up on it's side makes a good narrow cabinet.








Alphabets




















Plastic shoe box holding ribbon spools.




Old jewelry box. Fishing tackle and tool boxes are handy too.






Notice how this lady fitted matching printed cardstock into the fronts of her plastic drawers so that it makes everything look matched. What a wonderful idea!