This one isn't so hard!
Think about the tools you use the most. Mine are a ruler, scissors, and my pens and lets not forget my crop a dile. How about my cutter punches, inks etc. Ok so you get the drift, we need most all our tools when we are scrapbooking. We also need these tools handy and ready for when we need them. I personally don't want to look around for them because that gets frustrating.
Here is how I organize my tools
Pens and pencils: I actually have all mine in a smaller flower pot. Yep I had a clay pot, brand new sitting on a shelf and I was going to give it away, but then I looked at my pile of pens and they fit perfectly in there. It sits on my desk
Inks: I was in my local discount store when I seen these plastic baskets. $1.00 each. So I picked up a couple. Now I store my inks in one and I actually store my adhesives in another. They sit on the back of my desk ready to go.
My scissors were a big problem. I used them. put them down and then I couldn't find them, grab another pair, same thing happens. I personally have a bunch of scisoors. I love the little ones, but then you might need a bigger pair etc. anyway I had another basket that I wasnt using and it worked great to store all those pairs of scissors. Now I just throw them back into the basket and pick them out when I need them.
My cutter sits on the end of my table. I have a big rotary cutter and I can't work without it. So its like my best Scrapbookig friend and it sits right next to me, adorning the end of the table.
One last thing. I have a wheeled drawer cart. You can get these at your local discount store pretty reasonable. Its work the money. In these cart drawers you can keep a lot of things. The best part about it is its on wheels and you just move it next to your table and you have your tools ready. In here I keep oval cutters, punches, rulers, Xyron, and the list goes on. Its probably the best tool organizer I have ever purchased.
Hopefully you find your way to organize. Remember it doesn't have to be expensive, it just has to be efficient.
As always organization is the key to success. Believe me it also helps with a lot of time and frustration!
Article by
Debbie Ruggles
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Organization Plan the room!
The rule is Organization must be done and kept done!
If you don’t organize your going to find your self using up to much precious scrapbooking time to find supplies. Don’t think yourself beyond a good organizing plan it not far fetched to set one up and keep it up.
The Room:
Here is your space, whether it’s a small piece of closet, a whole giant room, the basement, the spare bedroom, no matter it’s a scrapbook room! It need to be organized to give you the most for your time!
So now the plan needs to be worked out.
Maybe your room is already occupied with your scrapbooking supplies and tables. Take a good look around and see if it’s functional. Can you walk around that table, do you have to reach over to get the pile of stuff off the shelf. You want things within reach but you don’t want to have everything in reach! What you want to watch out for is not to knock things off of one place to get to things in another.
If you have a empty room, think about what you will need in your room and how can you start to keep it organized. Here are a few things
Peg board and hooks: This is a giant one to keep things you use right at hand. Remember scissors will hang on a hook, so will rulers and other packaged things you use like stickers. Also you can purchase containers and other things that will snap into the peg board to keep you organized. Peg board is inexpensive and a great way to get things in sight for use.
Shelves and storage: If you can put up a shelf or two go right ahead, believe me you will find some use for them. If you are like me and it’s a basement Scrap Room I can’t put shelves up in the cement blocks so I use bookcases. I have 3 in my room alone. I store all the larger things I need on them including my scrapbooks. I also make use of small baskets for my smaller things like inks and punches.
File Cabinet: This is worth mentioning if you have an old one laying around that you aren’t using. This is a great way to organize your paper scraps, stickers and other things in. So if you have one you don’t know what to do with, you might want to consider putting it in your scrap room
Work Area: Got to have a table. Maybe it’s a small one or perhaps it’s just a card table, but somewhere you have got to have one to work on. I have 2 in my scrap room. One just in case I have a scrapbooking friend over to work with me. It also comes in handy when I have my tools and cutters out. This way I can keep one table clear for my pages and one for my tools and cutting.
Paper Storage: This one is tough. If you got the big bucks and can afford a great paper rack, then there is no problem. When I was starting out I couldn’t afford that, so I had a terrific dad that created me some paper storage cabinets. They are absolutely fantastic, but sorry not for sale. Before that I used some trays and stacked them up and before that I used paper boxes. You can find something to store you papers in, just make sure you keep it in mind. If you visit one of your discount stores, they do have the nice 12x12 cases that you can put hanging folders in and store your papers. They are pretty reasonable and they will work for you until you have way to much and need to upgrade.
Trash: Keep those trash cans handy! You’re going to need them. I even have a containers for scraps on my tables. Don’t forget to include them in your room. I have 2 med sized ones and a small container on each table to keep them cleaned up.
Now take these things in consideration and draw out your scrapbooking room:
Things to include:
Pegboards
Table and a chair
Shelving and ShelvesTables
Trash Cans
Paper and supply storage
Who needs brand new things? Look for items people want to get rid of and take them off their hands. A coat of paint and you can have some descent in your room. I always see people trying to get rid of an old table. Your gonna need one and why not get it for a great price or better yet free!
Here is my scrap room layout!
If you don’t organize your going to find your self using up to much precious scrapbooking time to find supplies. Don’t think yourself beyond a good organizing plan it not far fetched to set one up and keep it up.
The Room:
Here is your space, whether it’s a small piece of closet, a whole giant room, the basement, the spare bedroom, no matter it’s a scrapbook room! It need to be organized to give you the most for your time!
So now the plan needs to be worked out.
Maybe your room is already occupied with your scrapbooking supplies and tables. Take a good look around and see if it’s functional. Can you walk around that table, do you have to reach over to get the pile of stuff off the shelf. You want things within reach but you don’t want to have everything in reach! What you want to watch out for is not to knock things off of one place to get to things in another.
If you have a empty room, think about what you will need in your room and how can you start to keep it organized. Here are a few things
Peg board and hooks: This is a giant one to keep things you use right at hand. Remember scissors will hang on a hook, so will rulers and other packaged things you use like stickers. Also you can purchase containers and other things that will snap into the peg board to keep you organized. Peg board is inexpensive and a great way to get things in sight for use.
Shelves and storage: If you can put up a shelf or two go right ahead, believe me you will find some use for them. If you are like me and it’s a basement Scrap Room I can’t put shelves up in the cement blocks so I use bookcases. I have 3 in my room alone. I store all the larger things I need on them including my scrapbooks. I also make use of small baskets for my smaller things like inks and punches.
File Cabinet: This is worth mentioning if you have an old one laying around that you aren’t using. This is a great way to organize your paper scraps, stickers and other things in. So if you have one you don’t know what to do with, you might want to consider putting it in your scrap room
Work Area: Got to have a table. Maybe it’s a small one or perhaps it’s just a card table, but somewhere you have got to have one to work on. I have 2 in my scrap room. One just in case I have a scrapbooking friend over to work with me. It also comes in handy when I have my tools and cutters out. This way I can keep one table clear for my pages and one for my tools and cutting.
Paper Storage: This one is tough. If you got the big bucks and can afford a great paper rack, then there is no problem. When I was starting out I couldn’t afford that, so I had a terrific dad that created me some paper storage cabinets. They are absolutely fantastic, but sorry not for sale. Before that I used some trays and stacked them up and before that I used paper boxes. You can find something to store you papers in, just make sure you keep it in mind. If you visit one of your discount stores, they do have the nice 12x12 cases that you can put hanging folders in and store your papers. They are pretty reasonable and they will work for you until you have way to much and need to upgrade.
Trash: Keep those trash cans handy! You’re going to need them. I even have a containers for scraps on my tables. Don’t forget to include them in your room. I have 2 med sized ones and a small container on each table to keep them cleaned up.
Now take these things in consideration and draw out your scrapbooking room:
Things to include:
Pegboards
Table and a chair
Shelving and ShelvesTables
Trash Cans
Paper and supply storage
Who needs brand new things? Look for items people want to get rid of and take them off their hands. A coat of paint and you can have some descent in your room. I always see people trying to get rid of an old table. Your gonna need one and why not get it for a great price or better yet free!
Here is my scrap room layout!
Go ahead and give it a try. Just think about what you need then draw it up, organize and get your room the way you want it to be. Be sure to arrange it so that it will be efficient and you don't do to much walking back and forth. Remember eye catching and within a small amount of distance. Your goal is to look up and see the tool or know where to get it and then use it and put it back after you are done.
Good luck and we would love to see some of your rooms! Email us a picture to
debbie@accents2scrapbooking.com
Article by:
Debbie Ruggles
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Digital Scrapbooking Organization
By Nancy KeithleyOnce you discover all the wonders of digitally manipulating your pictures and finding digi elements to add to and enhance your layouts, you may quickly be overwhelmed by the daunting task of finding the *right* thing when you need it. One tool that has really helped me with this issue as an amateur digital photographer; as well as paper, digi and hybrid scrapper, is a free download from Google called Picasa 2.
Picasa 2 will seek out all the picture files on your computer - be they jpg, png, tif, bmp, raw, gif, psd and movies (you pick which). It may also be set to actively seek new pictures in particular folders every time you launch it. Mine is searching for png files as I type this, since I forgot to check that when I set it up on my new laptop.
When you launch Picasa 2, it begins looking in the folders you have designated for new pictures and organizes as instructed - by folder name, creation date, size or recent changes. You can customize the Tree structure shown (amount of detail presented on screen) in the folder view.
Picasa not only makes it easy to search visually or by name for items, but it also allows you to make some changes to your digital or scanned photos, such as printing them in Black & White, Focused B&W or Focused color, and Sepia. You may also upload pictures to a web album to share or print. These and other features make Picasa 2 not only a great organizational tool, but also a handy tool to have on your machine if you work with digitally stored pictures.
System requirements are listed below, and Picasa 2 works well with Vista, too, although it is not listed. It *will* take some time the first time you launch it as it will be searching your system for pictures to manage, so I recommend starting it and going off to fix dinner :)
System Requirements
Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XPMicrosoft Internet Explorer 5.0+ Picasa 2 is available in English only.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Organize those Stickers By Anita
It is that time of year again, when our thoughts turn to spring cleaning. So while we are making plans to clean our windows, air out our house, and wash those dreaded walls, let’s take a few moments to make a few plans for our scrapbook supplies.
Beginning with this month’s newsletter, we will tackle one area a month to clean out and organize. This month it is stickers.
The first step: Be brutally honest. Are you going to use those cute stickers again? Do you need them anymore? Take 15 minutes and sort your stickers in three piles – keep, donate or sale, and throw away.
Step 2: Immediately throw away or bag up those you are not going to keep (out of sight, out of mind – they won’t trickle back into your keep pile if you do this).
Step 3: Now take another 15 minutes and sort your keep stickers. I sorted mine in the following way: Alphabets, Animals, Biblical and Quotes, Children and School, Cooking and Food, fall, Family and Home, Floral and Gardening, Frames and sticker strips, Heritage and Victorian, Love and Party, Sports, spring and summer, and winter. (NOTE: In the season sections are any holidays which fall in those seasons).
This system works well for me, but you may find you have so many Christmas stickers that they need their own section, separate from winter, or Halloween separate from fall. Sort your stickers in a way that is good for you, not someone else.
Step 4: Now it is time to store our stickers for ease of use. There are several methods for storing stickers. Once again, you need to find the one that easiest for you. I chose to use hanging 12 x 12 file folders. This works for me as I can sit the file box next to me and just grab the file I need when I am working on a layout.
Another option is the Paper and Sticker Binder from Crop-In-style. This binder lays flat for ease of use and many options are available to protect the size of stickers you use.
Both the 12 x 12 file folders and the Paper Sticker Binder are available in our store.
Step 5: Now you are ready to scrap.
Drop us an email and let us know how you organize. We would love to hear your great tips.
Beginning with this month’s newsletter, we will tackle one area a month to clean out and organize. This month it is stickers.
The first step: Be brutally honest. Are you going to use those cute stickers again? Do you need them anymore? Take 15 minutes and sort your stickers in three piles – keep, donate or sale, and throw away.
Step 2: Immediately throw away or bag up those you are not going to keep (out of sight, out of mind – they won’t trickle back into your keep pile if you do this).
Step 3: Now take another 15 minutes and sort your keep stickers. I sorted mine in the following way: Alphabets, Animals, Biblical and Quotes, Children and School, Cooking and Food, fall, Family and Home, Floral and Gardening, Frames and sticker strips, Heritage and Victorian, Love and Party, Sports, spring and summer, and winter. (NOTE: In the season sections are any holidays which fall in those seasons).
This system works well for me, but you may find you have so many Christmas stickers that they need their own section, separate from winter, or Halloween separate from fall. Sort your stickers in a way that is good for you, not someone else.
Step 4: Now it is time to store our stickers for ease of use. There are several methods for storing stickers. Once again, you need to find the one that easiest for you. I chose to use hanging 12 x 12 file folders. This works for me as I can sit the file box next to me and just grab the file I need when I am working on a layout.
Another option is the Paper and Sticker Binder from Crop-In-style. This binder lays flat for ease of use and many options are available to protect the size of stickers you use.
Both the 12 x 12 file folders and the Paper Sticker Binder are available in our store.
Step 5: Now you are ready to scrap.
Drop us an email and let us know how you organize. We would love to hear your great tips.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Organize and Use your paper Scraps
Organize and Use Your Paper Scraps
It’s only inevitable that if you are a scrapper than you will have tons of scraps!
Now for my story. When I first started out I didn’t see any point in keeping those scraps and usually when I ended my scrapping session those scraps went right into the trash. I finally seen how I was using up tons of new cardstock and paper and decided that I should try and keep my scraps and see if I could save me a few more bucks. For a while it was great, and I just kept them in a gallon zip lock baggie. Then the one baggie turned into 2 and then the baggies finally turned into folders and then it was throw them in the big box. Now it was such a mess to just find one piece of paper I wanted that I turned back to my old habits of just getting another sheet of paper out, hence the cycle continues, more paper, more scraps. Finally it was inevitable that something be done with all those scraps, so I turned to organization ideas for scraps and came out with some great ideas that I would definitely like to pass along to all of you. Basically its sort, store and use, use and use. If you have organization and find them readily you will use your scraps. So here are a few ideas to get you started at using up your scraps by making them readily available for just that.
How to Sort and Organize Your ScrapsThe first step is to set aside a block of time so that you can finish your paper scraps organization project and have everything cleaned up and put away in one sitting. If you walk away, you'll end up with little pieces of paper flying around the room, and scraps of paper all over the floor.
Begin the process by sorting your paper scraps into piles. Create a pile for each color, and separate colors into piles of solids and patterns. Also separate textured and specialty papers into their own piles by color, as these are often used for different purposes and you'll want to find them easily. I usually just sit on the floor and create different piles for each colors. I don’t separate light colors and darks, such as like pink and dark pink, I just put them all in one category.
How to Store Your ScrapsIf you are a scrapper that doesn't have a lot of scraps, then an accordion file will probably work best for you. Find one that has index tabs so that you can easily identify at a glance where each color is stored. You can either write the color on a tab or simply cut a piece of paper in each color to place in the tabs.
For a larger scrap collection, try vertical hanging files in a file drawer. With this method you can have multiple files for each color and expand your storage files as your scrap collection grows. Another handy solution is to use poly envelopes for each color and store them on a shelf.
There are other ways to store your scraps. Those nice little clear colored storage trays work great. Or some people do shoe boxes. These are all fine; just make sure you label it somehow with the colors for easy choosing.
***For Shoe boxes try decorating the fronts with the color of your papers. Makes a great and easy way to store paper scraps.
Organization of all those scraps can be very trying, but I am here to tell you if you start with some kind of organization and keep up with it, you will be scrapping much more easily than just throwing them in a big box. Take it from me with that kind of storage all you do is cut up more paper or fumble through the whole mess looking for a certain piece of cardstock. Remember like everything organiztion is the key to success and believe me one less headache!
It’s only inevitable that if you are a scrapper than you will have tons of scraps!
Now for my story. When I first started out I didn’t see any point in keeping those scraps and usually when I ended my scrapping session those scraps went right into the trash. I finally seen how I was using up tons of new cardstock and paper and decided that I should try and keep my scraps and see if I could save me a few more bucks. For a while it was great, and I just kept them in a gallon zip lock baggie. Then the one baggie turned into 2 and then the baggies finally turned into folders and then it was throw them in the big box. Now it was such a mess to just find one piece of paper I wanted that I turned back to my old habits of just getting another sheet of paper out, hence the cycle continues, more paper, more scraps. Finally it was inevitable that something be done with all those scraps, so I turned to organization ideas for scraps and came out with some great ideas that I would definitely like to pass along to all of you. Basically its sort, store and use, use and use. If you have organization and find them readily you will use your scraps. So here are a few ideas to get you started at using up your scraps by making them readily available for just that.
How to Sort and Organize Your ScrapsThe first step is to set aside a block of time so that you can finish your paper scraps organization project and have everything cleaned up and put away in one sitting. If you walk away, you'll end up with little pieces of paper flying around the room, and scraps of paper all over the floor.
Begin the process by sorting your paper scraps into piles. Create a pile for each color, and separate colors into piles of solids and patterns. Also separate textured and specialty papers into their own piles by color, as these are often used for different purposes and you'll want to find them easily. I usually just sit on the floor and create different piles for each colors. I don’t separate light colors and darks, such as like pink and dark pink, I just put them all in one category.
How to Store Your ScrapsIf you are a scrapper that doesn't have a lot of scraps, then an accordion file will probably work best for you. Find one that has index tabs so that you can easily identify at a glance where each color is stored. You can either write the color on a tab or simply cut a piece of paper in each color to place in the tabs.
For a larger scrap collection, try vertical hanging files in a file drawer. With this method you can have multiple files for each color and expand your storage files as your scrap collection grows. Another handy solution is to use poly envelopes for each color and store them on a shelf.
There are other ways to store your scraps. Those nice little clear colored storage trays work great. Or some people do shoe boxes. These are all fine; just make sure you label it somehow with the colors for easy choosing.
***For Shoe boxes try decorating the fronts with the color of your papers. Makes a great and easy way to store paper scraps.
Organization of all those scraps can be very trying, but I am here to tell you if you start with some kind of organization and keep up with it, you will be scrapping much more easily than just throwing them in a big box. Take it from me with that kind of storage all you do is cut up more paper or fumble through the whole mess looking for a certain piece of cardstock. Remember like everything organiztion is the key to success and believe me one less headache!
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