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22 September 2010

A tiny bit of organization (in a world of chaos)

First, a disclaimer: organization is not my best trait. In fact, I suck at it. Especially when it comes to all my crafting goodies. You probably won't ever see any lovely "here's my beautiful studio" photos -- unless you ask really nicely anyway.

But, inspired by a combo of frustration and Dawn McVey, along with a little help from Meg (who has also done some organizing lately!), one category of craft madness is now orderly: my dies! Specifically, my Nesties and my PTI dies. Here's what my nesties used to look like:



Um, that's a dollar-bin 4x6 photo album. This actually worked well, until I had more than, oh, two sets of nesties. In short order, it looked like this:



Not pretty. A big jumbled mess. And I don't have many sets, even! So, I took some advice from organized types over at Splitcoast, combined with Dawn's post, and decided I'd use a loaf pan and some vent covers. MacGyver, here I come!  

Luckily, Meg found her vent covers first, and gave me some Home Depot aisle-searching tips. Logical: they're near the vents. Not logical: the vents share space with water heaters in my HD, bathroom stuff in Meg's. Anyway, they were there! The package looks like this "placemat":


I didn't intend for Dexter to drink out of my glass. She has water-dar. Anyway, a pack of three goes for about $4.50. I only needed one pack, but I got two in case they disappear from the Depot.

Next, I cut some cardstock into A2-sized pieces, and cut the vent covers (which are very thin magnets) into 4x4.5" pieces. Some tacky glue brought the two together, and then I dug through my mess of dies to arrange them all in their newly magnetic, labeled homes:


Nice. My new "files" fit perfectly in a standard-sized loaf pan (got mine at a thrift store for 80 cents). For the PTI dies, which are solid and light-ish, I used smaller cardstock sheets and about an inch of self-adhesive magnet-on-a-roll for each. Like this:



These went into a smaller loaf pan (another 80 cents). Now the two loaf pans sit neatly, side-by-side, right next to my Big Shot:


I used my SU treat cup boxes as bookends. Oh, and Cuttlebug/Quickcutz embossing folders fit in a standard loaf pan too, so those went in with the nesties (the only die that sticks up are the long rectangles -- the rest fit!). Sizzix embossing folders are a tad too wide, so they're in a little basket (it's in the corner of the photo), along with the larger 5x7 folders. Whew! That took awhile to figure out, but  man does it work!! 

(PS: sorry for the cruddy nighttime/shiny flash photos!)
Now, for the rest of the studio....Oy.

3 comments:

Emily Leiphart said...

Oohhhh, great post, Ang! Dexter has water-dar. Too cute!! Pit'r does that with our glasses all the time.

At first it didn't look like you had a lot of nesties when they were all jumbled together BUT after you organized them I thought, "Who is she kidding?" You have WAY more nesties than I have! Your new loaf pans look amazing with all the goodies in them.

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU in about two hours and twenty minutes! :D

Meg said...

Yeah for organization! I love your loaf pans. I'm glad you found the vent covers. The water heater aisle would have been my first guess.

Do you people not allow your kitties water or is it like toilet water for dogs that tastes so much better than stupid cat or dog water? :)

Liz Michaud said...

A little behind on my blog reading :) Love this idea... I may have to do this with the two sets I have!! The loaf pans are so cute too!