Scrapbook Room- Scrappy Tour

After moving in August 2011, I had to downsize from an entire 3rd bedroom to just a small section of my laundry/pantry room to get my scrapbook supplies to fit and be functional. Luckily, this smaller space has actually helped me get more organized and make better use of my space. :)))) I am not completely “done” with my entire scrappy room but it’s nearly there, so I can finally share a million some pictures of the main section of my scrap space. :)

I love that I found these super adorable Jetmax modular cubes at Michaels and that they come in so many different varieties (I think AC Moore and perhaps Hobby Lobby sells something similar). Make sure you find them on sale or bring a coupon too! I collected a few of these months ago and have never looked back, organization wise. :) As soon as I set one up, I realize how many more I could use! I just added the last 5 cubes to my space a few days ago (as a graduation present to me!). :)

Luckily, I think I have all of my storage needs for now taken care of, so I can just reorganize my stash if things start to get crazy. For now, this space is a dream. I can find anything in seconds and I know exactly where everything is. If we end up moving in a few years again and I need to condense the space again, I can just stack the cubes into sets of 4, versus 3. :)

In the rest of this post, I’ll give you a small picture tour into my scrap space now.

I display little knick-knacks that I like at the tops of the cubes, including some of my college textbooks, smaller most-used items drawers, photo frames, candles, an altered Pampered Chef Tool Turn-About for holding my favorite pens/scissors/tools, and Crop-A-Dile.

Above my cubes you can see I stick my most recently finished layout on display. I think this keeps me motivated and it’s nice to look at too. :) I just use two pieces of tape behind the layouts to hold them in place as I have a small built-in coat rack that can support the weight of my layouts.

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Close-ups from Left to Right of Room

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My corner cubes are the first thing you see of my storage when you step into the room from the door. On these shelves you’ll find any altered projects I’ve made in the past. Some of the ones on display now are my DIY Rolodex, my altered paper cupcake, my Craft picture frame, and my Live Out Loud mini-album. Some of the other DIY projects in the room not included in this photo are, my DIY wedding money box (on top of my album cabinet), and fan wreath door sign.

 

I have labeled and organized all the drawers of my cubes by sort and then color, ie. “Alphabets- Pink or Red,” or “Stickers/Embellishments- Black, White, or Gray.” Below are some close-ups of my alphabet and sticker drawers. I tried to keep all of colors in stacks within the same drawer for easier finding and sorting.

   

Ok, so my Sticker drawers aren’t nearly as neat as the alphabet drawers, but even still, it is way easy to go into the appropriate drawer and pick out coordinating goodies for whatever layout I am working on.

After the row of cubes for my alphabets and stickers, the next row has slots for 8x12 sized paper, magazines, finished layouts, and drawers below for specialized “technique tools,” such as my embossing plates, paper quilling patterns, and my collection of mini-albums.

Moving on down the rows is my mini supplies, flower/button drawers, and big flower drawers. I put my buttons all sorted by colors (reds, pinks, and purples in one jar, blues and greens in another jar) and likewise for my mini or handmade flowers. Below these cubes (not pictured) are my ink and ribbon drawers, which need to be reorganized soon, but I have a plan for that! ;)

I organize my stamps and templates/masks in binders, and I keep them all in one cube at the bottom. I have them sorted by word stamps, image stamps, and clear stamps. The binders with the word and image stamps contain mostly all cling-foam backed stamps (I unmount any wooden block stamps for easier storage in the binders).

My clear stamps storage was non-existent before I put my handmade 4 inch stamp binder to use again. I used a glue dot or two (two or three glue dots for the bigger stamp sets) on each backing of my clear stamps and arranged the stamp sheet on an 8x11 sheet of cardstock and inserted that into a page protector (no more stamps falling out or getting lost if they un-cling!).

I used a sheet of cardstock for each page of my binder, so I could pull one entire sheet out and not have to be careful with the stamps on the back of the binder page. This allowed me to fit similar stamp sets right on the same pages of the binders (flowers/flourishes with flowers/flourishes). This worked especially well with the mini stamp sets.

Eventually, I will invest in transparency paper to stick the stamps onto instead of cardstock, because it just makes sense that the stamps would cling best to transparency paper. That’s on my “to do” as well.

My last set of cubes is the row of 4 drawers, where I keep my pens, pencils, punches, scissors, adhesives, misc. fiber, and the bottom cube contains all of my card drawers (finished greeting cards, stationary/paper, envelopes, and scrap paper packs).

 

My wire paper rack just so happens to be the same height as 3 Jetmax cubes stacked so that works out well in the grand scheme. :) I have labeled my paper rack shelves by color, as you can see a majority of my supplies are in this rainbow/color coordinated fashion. Rainbow makes me happy. :)

I take all of the papers out of any paper stacks that I buy and I organize the paper by basic color family, which I separate into two categories for my most commonly used colors (dark pink and light or bright pink , or dark green and light and bright green papers have their own shelves). I don’t mind getting the paper brands mixed up because I hardly scrap by brand anyhow. :) If I have a double sides sheet of paper, I categorize by the side of the sheet I like best (so if I could see myself using a pink polka-dot over the opposite side of green floral, I put that sheet of paper in the pink stash). Whatever color family I need is easy to find. Works for me. :)

The tallest structure on my scrappy wall is actually a cabinet that we used to use for canned good storage, but we no longer used since the move. Luckily, it was perfect for my scrappy needs and best of all it has adjustable shelves so I can reorganize as often as I’d like! :)

I chose to use this cabinet to hold my boxes of photos, finished albums or books, hold my “finished but not yet placed into albums” layouts, and at the bottom two shelves I have my 12x12 albums arranged by year (Pre-2000’s, 2000-2006, 2007, 2008… ect) and the rest of the albums are for specialty albums (Book of Me, Ally’s Baby Book, Scrap Therapy album).

The last little thing I will share is from the other side of my laundry/craft/pantry room. This side of the room isn’t “done” so I won’t share a photo of the whole room, but I must share my filing cube system. O:)

After years of struggling with scrap paper storage, it finally addresses my needs, so it gets the most use! :)) I forgot to label the outside cubes and place tabs on the inside contents but this is so functional for now!

  

I found some filing cabinet cubes by Recollections at Michaels one day and I HAD to buy two cubes as I didn’t know they existed! I bought a pack of 12x12 hanging files and I organized my scrap paper as I do on my paper rack above (by light/dark color), but I sort the papers by size too, so the smallest papers in the color group go up front, and the larger papers sit in the back of my hanging files. This saves me OODLES of time in flipping through my scraps and even helps greatly with putting my scraps away! It literally takes me seconds to find any piece of scrap paper to use or to put away all of my papers after a scrap session! I LOVE my filing system!

I think that wraps up my scrap room tour for now. When it is all finalized, I think I will post my first video of the “done” room. :)

Do you organize anything like my organization? What is your biggest organizational issue?

I hope you got an idea that you hadn’t considered before in this post.

Thanks for looking! God bless!