scrapbook organization

See all of Martha Stewart’s craft room HERE.

What I like:
~ The pretty apple green cabinetry that’s all built in, and maximizes an awkward loft space.
~ The buckets and jars of goodies that you can SEE, because see = use.
~ The plexi slice-and-fit acrylic dividers inside the scissor drawer. I assume you can really personalize those to fit any drawer and type/size of item.
~ The large, shallow drafting-type drawers where she stores all her fabrics – nice and easy to see.
~ The sewing machine hooked up to the laptop. Wowza. I’m don’t sew but that’s kewl. Is that how all of you who sew do it now?
~ The large counters – I would LOVE to have that much counter space.

I notice she has shelves that accomodate her 18×18 scrapbooks and papers. Hmm…a Martha Stewart scrapbook furniture line in the works, perhaps?? As always when I see these rooms, I’m jealous of such a pretty, organized, and fresh looking craft space. Do you like? What ideas do you take away from Martha’s room?

YOWZA!

According to the YOUR PICTURED MEMORIES BLOG, these lovelies will “arrive in mid September and will retail for 19.99.” I found the Pull-Ez through a message board, where they discussed whether the ribbon would tangle inside (it seems like it would, doesn’t it?). But those that had seen the item at CHA tested it and said the ribbons DON’T tangle. But keep in mind, it’s meant for use with 1-3 yard lengths, i.e. don’t throw a huge roll in there. Another poster brought up how you could maybe make your own using a clear makeup case and a long-reach hole punch. I think I’m going to stick with my RIBBON JARS for now.

But for those of you still looking for a good ribbon storage system, this just might be it.

Here is a LINK to a VERY beautiful and organized scrapbook room. You should really check it out. It belongs to Mellette Berezoski, who is a frequent contributor to various sites and magazines. You can see how she is able to create such great layouts in a fabulous studio like hers! (I do realize it also takes loads of talent, LOL). Take a tour of her room and let me know your thoughts. My favorites were:

How she mixed modern and vintage, like all the Ikea shelves with the old locker bins.

The groupings of like items – ribbons, stamps, magazine bins, etc – which makes it look even more organized.

The very efficient use of the shorter walls. Also, the labels! I, too, am label crazy.

All of the work space on the L-shaped desk and the computer desk. She has really made the most of that room!

The only elements I didn’t care for were: The horizontal paper storage – I think vertical is clearly the way to go for less dust, less wrinkles, and more space efficient; and the open tops on a lot of things like the locker baskets – in my experience, those are dust collectors.

Those are just tiny negatives. I absolutely adore this room. I think it’s full of great storage, organization, and decorating ideas. I would just love to own this studio, wouldn’t you? Thank you to Kelliannie on CKMB for showing me this room :)

Finally, someone thought to create a magazine about organizing and home organization. Wouldn’t you know that Lisa Bearnson, our favorite lady from Creating Keepsakes magazine, is somehow involved? Two of my favorite things together: scrapbooking and organization. Click HERE to see the article I found!

Edited 6/11/07 to add:
So I e-mailed them over at the Organize Magazine website. I said how much I was looking forward to the magazine (being the organizational freak that I am). And that I was doubly excited because my favorite scrapbook gal, Lisa Bearnson, was involved. I received a quick response from Joyce Dorny, the Founder and Editor in Chief. She thanked me for writing and said that I “will LOVE the
Nov/Dec issue because Lisa is our FEATURE!!!”. She said some other nice things too. Whoo hoo, I’ll definitely be subscribing now!

In this post, I included photos of my re-organized scrapbook area. Reader Crafter727 noticed the white storage cubes I have and asked about them – if they were the ones sold by Oriental Trading Company and how the quality is.

The organizational cubes are sold in the Oriental Trading catalog. They are made by Crop In Style/Store In Style. However, I got mine one by one at Michaels using 40% and 50% off coupons and think that is the way to go. I just looked on Oriental Trading website and the plain cube sells for $28 plus shipping. At Mike’s with the coupon, I paid $15-18 and no shipping of course. As for the quality, it is very good, just make sure to line things up well and tighten the screws when you assemble them. Then they will be very sturdy. They also give you stabilizer brackets you can screw into the back to keep the entire unit safe from toppling over.. I recommend the cubes and plan to get more. Btw, Target sells similar cubes but the dimensions are different and no coupons, so they cost more. I’ve seen the Target cubes and feel they aren’t as good quality but others who have them say they are just as good at the Store in Style cubes.

I use the 1-Drawer Cube to store all my adhesives. I have the Drawer Divider inside. It’s perfect for all those boxes of sticky dots, vellum tape, and random glue sticks. I have one cube with a door where I put a bunch of mini albums and little projects I’ve made at CKUs. The Filer Cube has my non-themed paper by color. As you can see in the photo, I use the other cubes just plain or with the Inserts to store albums, projects in progress, page refills, etc. Thanks for posting all these great questions – you give me ideas what to write about!

I purchased a ScrapRack about 3 years ago and really love it. It helped me to get organized in a way that was logical to me. This made me very happy because the system I had before this was not working. I used to keep my papers filed by subject in Scrapfolios (the 12×12 accordian folders with handles that you can get at Michaels).

My theme stickers and embellishments were first kept in a Creative Memories binder…

…then in “PSB’s” (Paper Sticker Binders) by Crop in Style. Themed ribbons, beads, metal, buttons, etc were kept in other separate places. The problem was when I went to choose items for a page, I was looking in 10 different places for what fit the theme I was working on. It would get very tiring and frustrating. I also had outgrown the capacity of my old system, with 3 paper takers and 3 PSBs bursting at the seams. It was time for a change…

Then one day I was at a Scrapbook Expo event and they were demonstrating this product called the ScrapRack and I fell in love! I knew on the spot it was right for me.

An Empty ScrapRack:

This is how it looks without any pages in it. It consists of a metal Base and 7 Spinders, which are like the spine in a 3-ring binder. The Spinders are attached to the Base with velcro and you can add, remove and configure them as you like. You can use the huge variety of 12×12 pages sold by ScrapRack or you can improvise. I purchased a kit which came with the ScrapRack and a variety of pages, and I’ve supplemented them with my old PSB pages (which I just moved right from the PSB to the SR) and with 12×12 page protectors for full sheets of paper.

The ScrapRack website is full of helpful information on how to best utilize it. There are organizational steps, category suggestions, room makeovers, testimonials, and FAQs. They have excellent customer service and are happy to answer any questions. They’ve really done a great job with their website.

This is how I’ve utilized my SR system:
– It’s on my desk right in front of me when I scrap, within easy reach.
– I have it divided into the categories that made the most sense to me, but you are of course free to make it your own. First, I have a kind of ‘through the year’ half which goes January through December with all the months, holidays and events. For example: New Years, Winter, Valentines, St Patricks Day, Spring, Easter, Mothers Day, Summer, July 4, etc.
– The other half is by topic in alphabetical order, for example: Birthday, Camping/Outdoors, Cowboy, Dog, Family, Graduation, Ocean, School, etc.

Here is a filled page showing how you can also use the ScrapRack to file your items by color:

I have lots of stuff and getting it all into the ScrapRack was not a quick process. I think it took about a week of evenings to gather things from their various places and get them into the pages. I took most things out of their packaging which helped them fit better into the pocket pages. The only paper I put in the ScrapRack was themed paper. So my cardstock and more generic patterned paper is elsewhere; otherwise, I would need another ScrapRack! What I love about this system is that everything from a given theme is all in one place. I just turn the pages til I get to that theme and everything I have is right in front of me. No more searching all those other places and taking 30 minutes just to see what I have. For instance, the other day I was working on an Easter page. I turned to the Spring/Easter section and found some cute Easter-themed paper, some 3-D bunny stickers, and a card of pastel self-adhesive ribbons. All I had to do then was get cardstock from the vertical holders on my bookshelf, and I was ready to scrap!

The only disadvantage to this system is that some would consider it pricey. I know I did, and asked for $$ for my birthday that year so I could afford it :). But when I considered how much I had invested in 3 PSBs, 3 Scrapfolios, and the other storage I could get rid of, it was more than worth the cost. I wish they could get the ScrapRack on QVC – then you could get a good deal for sure! As you can tell, I highly recommend this product (no, they are not paying me to say that, LOL). Feel free to ask me any questions you have about the ScrapRack.

I’ve done a few posts now regarding scrapbook organization and I truly thank you for all the nice comments and questions. I wanted to share links to some of the organizational items I’ve found very useful in my scrapbooking area:

Julie asked about the Iris project sorter, which is actually called the Scrapbook Chest by Iris.

Becca/BS asked about how to sort all those beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous papers we have. This is what I use – Cropper Hopper Vertical Paper Holders. They are the best thing since peanut butter and banana sandwiches! They hold the paper much like a magazine holder stores magazines, so you can thumb through and pull out what you need without messing up the rest of the stack. I truly love these and think anything by Cropper Hopper is genius!

Also for Becca – don’t we love ALL kinds of paper?? I recently reorganized this aspect of my house too. I have tons of gift bags, tissue paper, wrap, etc. It used to be in a large flat Rubbermaid container under the bed. But when my collection outgrew the box and I realized how hard it was to find anything, I moved it all to this. It’s the wire cubes you can find at Target or Walmart for under $20. I have a couple plastic bins on top for mini-gift bags, bows and ribbons. It’s been a good system so far. I’ll post a photo of mine soon…
Edited: Here ’tis:

While I was writing this, I received an e-mail about another cool organization tool and this one you can take with you to crops! It’s the Catchall by Croppin Cutie and MarthasChoice.com has them on sale for $16 right now. I don’t have one, have never seen it til now, but boy it’s cute. Gotta love the pink! I think this would be great to use at crops or just keep on your desktop to keep all those tools and little pieces contained.

Feel free to ask any more scrapbooking organizational questions and I’ll be glad to help!

As I’ve written about here and here, I’m on a kick to organize my scrapbook area. I’ve made a lot of progress in organizing scrapbook supplies, but to say I was dreading the photo organization part is a drastic understatement. I finally buckled down and got it started last night…and I couldn’t stop! I was up until 1am even though I had to get up at 6. I was in such a groove, man. Wow, watch out for Ms. Organizer Geek over here!

Here is the old way I organized photos and memorabilia:

Here is the new way I organize photos and memorabilia:

The old way: When I first started scrapbooking – like many of you – my photo “organization” was a hodge podge. Yes, I did have some that were nicely chronological in magnetic albums and in mismatched photo boxes. I had some in 2-up or 3-up photo albums. And the rest were still in photo envelopes and stored in various places around the house – the kitchen junk drawer, my nightstand, the office, etc. When I went to my first crop, my friend told me how she organized her photos and it sounded good, so I adopted it. This is it: Buy a bunch of manila envelopes from Walmart; they are cheap and come in various sizes (6×9″, 9×12″ and 10×13″). File photos by event in an envelope and use the larger size if you have memorabilia to go with it. In the upper right corner, write the Event and the Date. Write any journaling notes or page idea notes on the front of the envelope. Then when it’s time to scrap, just grab the envelope and you’re good to go. In addition to photos, I keep everything else too – ticket stubs, flyers, invitations, art, portraits, letters. These are things that don’t fit nicely into your average photo box or album. That’s why her system sounded great to me, and it worked very well for most of the 6 years I’ve been scrapping. But it’s time for a change because…there are flaws in the system. The 2 main problems I’ve discovered are storage area and convenience factor. By storage, I mean that I’m running out of room to store things this way. I have 6 of these white plastic bins full of photos and the leg area under my desk is full with them. I have nowhere to expand with this system and looking ahead, I can see it’s not something I can do forever. The envelopes would file easily in a standard filing cabinet, but I don’t have room to put one anywhere. (Side note: If I would scrap more and blog less, more of these photos would be in albums, but that’s not the point!). Because I ran out of room about a year ago, I’ve virtually stopped filing new photos. I wanted to file older photos too, but there was nowhere to put them. The other factor was convenience, i.e. how difficult was it to keep up this system? I felt like I was constantly buying envelopes and spending lots of time sorting things by event. I rarely ‘pre-flighted’ the envelopes for upcoming events so as time went by, ticket stubs and photos kept accumulating in piles on my desk. In other words, it’s not an easy thing to keep up day by day; it’s a project every time to sit down and do it. Well, who has time for that?!?! In the meantime, Creative Memories came out with the Power Sort Box and it was love at first sight. I like how you can store so many photos in one place, yet pull out smaller portions of the box at a time. I know my photos will be archivally safe in PS Boxes, whereas I was always doubtful of the manila envelopes (the box doesn’t indicate if they’re archival safe or not). So, the only hold up to changing my photo organizing system (other than my dread) was purchasing some PS Boxes…and them babies ain’t cheap! They usually go for $35 each but – patience IS a virtue – I just found 2 of them on CraigsList for $28 each. Consider it my Mothers Day present, yeah? Last night after all were in bed, I plopped down in front of Desparate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters, and sorted photos into my new Power Sort Box. Every time I finished a stack, I went back into my scrap room for more. It was so satisfying to get my photos in order! I worked on 2000 through 2006 and set aside any other random ones that turned up. I used the label maker to label the 12 new dividers with ‘Jan 2007’, ‘Feb 2007′, etc. so I will be inspired to sort this year’s photos as I go along through the rest of the year. For all the other years, I used the small index cards (vertically) and labeled them the same way for each year. It’s so easy to find things at a glance now and that’s why I want to keep going. There have been so many projects that have flashed in my mind over the years and then the next thought has been, “But I don’t know where those photos are”. Well, now I will. I will eventually re-sort all those photos in the manila envelopes into the PS Boxes. Now, I have just one envelope per month which is easier to maintain. I can just keep the current one handy and not feel so pressured to label them event by event. If I have journaling notes, I’ll just jot ’em down on scrap paper and put them in the monthly envelope also. This is actually fun (am I sick in the head?) and I’ll be working on it again tonight – can’t wait :) There are still other big photo projects to do: getting all my photos on computer, organizing them into files, and backing them up; and what to do with all those index sheets, CDs and APS cartridges? Oy, a worry for another day.