Stickle Storage

As soon as I used stickles the first time, I knew they were fabulous! I loved the way it sparkled, and added another dimension to my projects. I started to colect them, and I used them on almost every project. I put them in a little box for awhile, but soon I had too many for the box. One afternoon I was surfing ebay for stickles and I found this really cool stickle storage holder that someone had made. It was shaped kinda like an octogon, and there were holes drilled into the top of it to hold the stickles. The stickles were to be stored upside down, so that they would always be ready to use. I loved it, bid on it and WON! The seller even asked me what colors I wanted and she painted it pink with blue polka dots. It was wonderful! I put this organizer on top of my Close To My Heart ink and marker turnaround so that I could grab the color I wanted to use easily. It worked great, and I was in a group that did buy-ins and on one of the buy ins they did stickles and I got a whole bunch more, including the new ones from Tim Holtz and Suze Weinberg! I couldn't fit all of them into my stickle holder, and tried to think of another way to store them, upside down, to keep them easily ready to use.

I found a cardboard box with a hinged lid, and I started to put the bottles of stickles into it. Each bottle is about an inch wide, and I was able to fit 18 bottles in each row. I didn't have enough to fill the entire box, so I added some crumpled paper towels to help hold them into place, and then taped up a piece of styrofoam and put it over the top of the bottles (at this point they were sitting upright in the box) and closed the lid. I turned the entire box upside down so that the stickles could drain towards the lid of each bottle. I opened it back up after a while and checked on them, a few of them had moved, but for the most part it worked really well and I could easily store over 70+ bottles in this one box.

I decorated the outside of the box with some colored paper and then I covered the paper with clear tape to reinforce the box and keep it strong.

Handmade Clip-It Up System

I was so thrilled to see the comments left about my ribbon organization, especially about the rain gutters! When I was teaching, I used the rain gutters to store children's books, and loved it, so now that I'm on disability (because of my foot) I just recycled them for my ribbon. I love to reuse stuff in new ways!

A few years ago, the Clip It Up system came out, which was a round, three-tiered rotating embellishment organizer. The idea was to clip up your embellishments and make them easier to access. It looked really cool, but it was soooo expensive! I never got one. My embellishments seem to be multiplying like rabbits and I am finding that Out of Sight is NEVER USED, at my house. So I was desperate to find a way to display some of my embellishments, so that I could see them, but also keep them out of the way.

One afternoon I was at Craft Warehouse and I saw the clip it up clips on clearance! I bought a bag to try them out. I did NOT have the clip it up organizer and I was stumped about how to use them. I thought and thought and finally decided to hang a ribbon under one of my shelves and hang the clips off of that. It worked! I could see and access my embellishments so easily! Unfortunately there were drawbacks to my creation....
1.) I had more embellishments than clips
2.) The embellishments were heavier than the ribbon and the ribbon started to sag.
3.) Craft Warehouse had sold out of the clips, so I couldn't get anymore

What to do? I left it as it was for a while, and thought and thought some more. One afternoon, I went to meet a friend of mine from one of my online scrapbooking groups. I went to see her scrapbooking room and found a solution to my problem! My clever friend had bought a wall shelf about 2 feet wide and her husband had drilled a hole in each end underneath the shelf and bolted an all-thread wire through it. She used paperclips and metal washers to create hooks where she hung up her embellishments. Immediately my mind started reeling and I took a picture and then hollered at my husband to come and see what my friend had made. I am very blessed to have a husband who can make and/or fix ANYTHING!
He looked at the system and said he could easily make one for me.

The next day I went to the Goodwill to look for a shelf. I am a NINJA SHOPPER according to my kids, and I found not one, but TWO shelves for a total of $3.95!! I was so excited, I called my husband to tell him the good news. He praised my frugal shopping and then told me that he found something at his work that he was going to rig up to hold my all-thread and embellishments. He is very creative when making stuff to help me out, so I knew it would be awesome. I couldn't let the shelves go to waste, so I put them up on the wall and put some of my Disney toys on them. My scrapboom is decorated with Disney toys which keeps it kid and scrapbooker friendly! I have 5 kids + 1 more who is living with us right now and so I need things as kid friendly as possible!

Later that week my wonderful husband came home with this stand-up frame that had 3 rows of the all thread on it! WOW! It was incredible! It also had room to add at least one more strip of the all-thread! I was so excited that I started working on adding my embellishments to it!

My friend had shown me how to take pliers and open up the paperclip, hang the washer on the paperclip and then wind it around itself using the pliers to hold it together. Then she took a mini clothespin and wound the other end of the paperclip around the threading on the paperclip. Then she slid the washer onto the all-thread and clipped her embellishment on the clothespin. Time consuming, but incredible! I am so blessed to have such clever family and friends!

I started to open up paperclips and hook the washers on them. It was a lot of work and if the paperclip was old, it would break, which started to make me frustrated. I found that by opening up the paperclip slightly, I could slide the washer onto it without opening the paperclip completely. This saved me a lot of time and frustration! I didn't have mini clothespins, but I did have the clip it up clips, so I just hung the clips onto the closed paperclip and WALLAH, I had my own clip it up hangar! It didn't take long to run out of the clips, so I started looking around for something else to use. I found those plastic clips that you use to hold reports and other thick documents together. I had a bunch, so I tried them...without much effort I slid each clip onto the other end of the paperclip! I slid the washers onto the all-thread and hung my embellishments on them! I LOVE IT! My wonderful husband is going to add some wheels to the bottom of it so that I can wheel it around which will make it even more perfect! I can see my embellishments a lot easier and am using them more frequently now! Another organizational idea discovered and implemented!

Please leave me a comment (I love comments), and let me know what you think about this idea~ Thanks for stopping by and come back soon! You never know what you might discover! Have a scrappy day!

Thanks for coming to the BLOG HOP!!

WOW! The blog hop was fantastic! I LOVED all the comments! Keep 'em coming! I will be choosing one commenter on April 30th, to receive new ribbon!

I have to apologize to Ramona because I couldn't get her link to upload to my blog yesterday. So sorry Ramona. I did add it to my Ribbon Organization Blog Post and here it is again.....http://create-with-joy.blogspot.com

Be sure to check it out! Thanks to all the participants in the Blog Hop too! So much new information! Off to keep organizing! I went to a fabulous scrap retreat April 8 and my Scraproom is still a mess! I have had trouble with my left big toe for 5 years and yesterday my doc said that my bone is collapsing again! So I HAVE TO clean up, or I could break it! Have a scrappy day! Come back again soon, you never know what you might find!

Organizational Blog Hop!! TODAY!

Hi and welcome to the organizational blog hop! I am so excited that you took the time to stop by and see how I have organized my ribbons and fibers. Please take a minute and leave me a comment so that I know you stopped by. I am going to send some new ribbon to one of the reader's drawn at random, on April 30, 2010 from one of the comments left between now and then on my section of the blog hop. If you would like to check out some other SCRAPTASTIC ideas for organizing your scrapbooking supplies, please hop to the all of the other blogs and be sure to leave a comment for them too!

Organizational Blog Hop April 19, 2010

Photograph Storage by Leanne - http://scrappingamma.blogspot.com/

Embellishment Storage by Jo - http://buckeyejo.blogspot.com/

YOU ARE HERE!! Ribbon & Fiber Storage by Shellie: http://clearlythemostcreativescrapbookers.blogspot.com/

Stamp Storage by Wendy - http://www.myscrapbookingblog.com/

Ink Pad Storage by Ramona - http://create-with-joy.blogspot.com

Pen & Pencil Storage by Jeanne Marie - http://missjeannemania.blogspot.com/

Sticker, Die Cuts and Rub-On Storage by Amanda - http://notimecrafting.wordpress.com/

Tools Storage and Paper Storage by Mary - http://mbryt1.blogspot.com/

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Ribbon and Fiber Storage

When I began scapbooking I was very limited on money and supplies (hey, I'm still limited on money and supplies) and stickers were my main embellishments. Slowly my embellishments grew the more I scrapped and the more I became involved in Close To My Heart, card making, and scrapbooking. I bought those tiny ribbon rolls first and then moved on to the bigger rolls as my skills grew. I joined the Personal Scrapper and went to some card workshops and slowly I started accumulating several different random varying lenghts of ribbon. I just stuck them into a ziploc bag. Soon my ribbon scraps outgrew the bag and I started to put them in a huge glass jar. It looks pretty, with all the ribbon swirling around the glass like a delicious lollipop! The ribbons and fibers mingled and soon tangled and it was very frustrating to find that Just Right piece of ribbon. My arm was swallowed up by the rainbow of ribbon when I began a new project. I had to do something, so I took one of the free priority mail boxes from the post office and I started to cut. I cut dozens and dozen of little cardboard strips about 2" x 3". Before long I was surrounded by a thin brown sea of cardboard. I called my girls up to help me start the daunting task of organizing that rainbow! We sat for a few hours, pulling one ribbon from the jar at a time and winding it around it's placard. Finally I took each ribbon, sorted them according to their color and placed them into clear shoe boxes from the Dollar Tree. Now I could clearly see each color and easily match it to the project I was working on. I grew frustrated with this whenever I would reach for the ribbon box and go to pull out a ribbon, several others would tag along and I was constantly straightening up my boxes.

Take Two on Ribbon and Fiber Organization....
One day I was at Craft Warehouse and I found some 3x3 plastic ribbon organizers. These were 3x3 pieces of plastic that you could wind your ribbon around on them. Ok, but that is what I was already doing with cardboard, so that wasn't much progress. Then, my sister, who has tons and tons and oodles upon oodles of scrapping embellishments, told be about her idea to use the 3x3 cards, cut them in half and then cut slits in each side to hold several ribbons at once. Sounds great! Unfortunately I am a very visual learner and I could not for the life of me, figure7e out what she was talking about. Then I went over to her house and saw what she meant. That helped a lot! She has an entire wall of ribbon and has each roll carefully placed on rows upon rows of dowels. She then showed me her ribbon scraps, beautifully organized onto the plastic, now 1 1/2" x 3" piece of ribbon card. She cut the ribbon csrd in half along the zig zagged line that runs up the middle of the card. Next she cut lines on each side of the card diagonally opposite each other, to hold each individual piece of ribbon. Finally she punched a hole into the top of each card so that she could put them together on a hinged ring! Genius! So I went to work making my own ribbon cards. I cut 4 slits in my cards whereas my sister only cut 3. Personal preference. Once my ribbons were put onto the cards, I slid each card onto a hinged ring, according to colors. I have 3 rings right now, full of varying lengths of ribbon. Recently I went to a crop and I took a paper towel tube and punched out six holes (3 on each side of the tube). I took my rings off of my storage unit and slid them onto the paper towel tube and took them to the crop! At the crop I noticed other people had taken those pants hangars and slid their ribbons onto the hangars and then hung them up on the wall. Super Cool!!!

I still use my other methods too...as much as I love the card method, it does not work well with fibers,they snag too much. I still organize my fibers on the cardboard according to color.

I keep a much smaller ribbon jar on top of my desk and when I finish with my ribbon, if I have some leftover, I put it in the jar and then once a week I hang the loose ribbons onto my hanging ribbon cards.

I store my little ribbon spools in a Close To My Heart Ribbon Organizer. My medium ribbon spools are kept on a spice rack that I found at the Goodwill and painted to match my scraproom. I store my larger ribbon spools on a rain gutter! It is awesome! We bought a small section of a plastic rain gutter and I put it on my shelf. It holds the spools and you can easily pull the ribbon off of the spool because the gutter is wide enough to let the spool turn around so you can pull off as much as you need.

Well, that's how I store my ribbons and fibers (sorry there is not too much on fibers, I don't use them very much). Thanks for taking the time to stop by my blog! Be sure to leave a comment so that you can have a chance to win some new ribbons from me! Please leave your contact information so that I can contact you if you win! Have a scrappy day and come back soon!