Caly Person

I’ve never had a designated craft area before. In our last house, Stephen and I shared an office even though he was only home during the weekends. It was my occupational work space and that was the only purpose the room served. Since moving to our new house, I’ve claimed a room for work and crafting. During working hours, I face a two computer screens at a desk with my back against all my crafting supplies (which is a good thing otherwise I’d want to craft or make cards all day).  I wanted to share with how how I store my supplies and how Stampin’ Up paper, stamp sets and ink come. I’ve spent far too much money building this collection, but I’m sooo happy with it!

During a neighborhood garage sale, I went to a lady’s house to see what she had as far as crafting supplies. Her entire basement was converted into a crafting space. I had never seen anything like it. Her walls were lined with shelves to hold paper, punches, stamp sets and ribbon. On one of her walls, she had a mounted stamp set holder and I WANTED IT! So I took a photo, came home and googled other shelves like it and saw one from Stamp N’ Storage that I replicated. I drew out plans and my awesome husband built this for me – to hold all my Stampin’ Up ink pads, markers and refills. I have yet to invest in refill bottles, but one day very soon, it will be done! The nifty ribbon holder is just a rod that goes through some wooden plaques that my husband drilled holes in for me.

On a shelf, I store all my stamp sets. I make an effort to only get clear-mounted or photopolymer (clear) sets because they come packaged nicely in a thin clear dvd-sized case and don’t take up much space at all. As you can see, I have a few sets that are not sold by Stampin’ Up which I have made labels for in the bottom right hand corner. I had a little collection before I started heavily into my addiction for Stampin’ Up products. Oh, in case I haven’t shared yet – I LOVE Stampin’ Up. I was buying sooo much that I finally agreed to sign up to become a Stampin’ Up demonstrator so I can get rewards for buying so much. If you’re interested in any of Stampin’ Up’s products, please let me know and I will be happy to place orders for you.

To view their products, visit this site: http://www.stampinup.com/ECWeb/default.aspx

Before I decided to invest in paper, I stored a sample pack of all the Stampin’ Up paper in a file folder (which is now being used to house all my scrap paper). I don’t have the space for a fancy shelf to hold paper, so I decided to make these vertical boxes that are similar to magazine holders out of USPS boxes. This project was practically free and so easy to do. I cut them all the same size and wrapped them with packing paper and labeled them with some tags that I had on hand. The pot to the left was purchased from a Dollar General store and it holds all my sharpies, miscellaneous pens, punches, some heavy duty scissors, and a ruler :D. Stampin’ Up has their colors in 4 categories – Neutrals, Subtles, Regals and Brights. I have a whole box of white paper since it goes the fastest when making cards. There are little tags at the top of each box to flag colors. At some point, I’m going to have to make something more durable to separate the colors.

My punches used to be stored with my ink pads where I had extra slots. But my husband soon realized that wasn’t going to do it – my collection was growing too fast. So he built me this awesome punch holder. As you can see, he’s going to have to build me another one soon…it’s almost completely filled up! My punches are a mixture of EK Tools and Stampin’ Up punches (which I think are manufactured by EK Tools since they are so similar in design). I like to save money where I can with this stuff – it’s so expensive!

I have some plastic sterilite drawer units and a little white dresser that used to belong to the kids that I store my other supplies in. All my eyelits, inks, glues, embellishments are all in separated baskets purchased from the dollar store.

So that’s it – the space is small, but it works.  I’d love to have a designated craft table one of these days that isn’t holding a shelf or other tools so I can work in one space instead of three when I’m creating a card. I’m going to try to go back and post each of the cards I’ve made and try to write a little something about each. You don’t realize how many you’ve made until you’ve uploaded over 70 photos of cards!

Thanks for reading a long and taking an interest! Your support means everything to me!