Wednesday 16 March 2011

Don't touch my craft room....

Hallo everyone! Hope you are all doing good. No cards this week to show you, I've been finishing my craft organizer! This has been in the making (in my head!) for quite a few months now and I've been making notes as to what I wanted to put in here for sooo long. If you're anything like me, you're pretty disorganised and I end up spending time on searching for stuff cos I write things down on scrappy bits of paper rather than doing the fun bit of crafting.

So here is my organizer. I know it's going to be super useful as I've spent so much time thinking about what I need but I hope you will all find some ideas here maybe for doing your own. I'm really pleased with it as I haven't seen anything like it on blogs or You Tube so I hope you will find it interesting.

So basically I wanted my organizer to be 1) practical and 2) reusable ie from year to year. Oh, and purely for vanity's sake, I wanted it to match my colour guide so I've used the same templates but just adapted them!

So here is the front cover. If you click on the pic you can see the sentiment a bit better, it really made me laugh and is totally appropriate for an organizer! The image and sentiment are by Elzybells. I used my website fonts to create a PC generated organizer label cut out with nesties. The organizer is 9 x 10" in size and I used some recycled cardboard to create the covers and bound the whole thing with my Bind-It-All.

As you can see, I divided up my organizer into 7 sections- Calender, Christmas, Ideas, Shopping, Websites, Books and Honey Bootique (ie my website). I created tabs using the PC and then punched them out with my Stampin Up tab punch. This page is the divider for the Calender page and is done using Billboardabella.

The Calender section is where I do my planning for cards, gifts and projects I make during the year (aside from Christmas). As you can see from the template, there is a page for each month of the year. I've created a table containing lists of usual birthdays/events I create for, then a section for a description of what stamps I'm going to use and a check box for whether I've coloured the image and then made the card. This is useful as I often colour a series of images in one go and like to plan ahead what stamps I'm going to use. This way I can easily see what I've done and not done. The table below is a section for additional orders that I need to do or that people have asked me to make during that month. I sell my cards for Macmillan so I have added a "paid" check box so I know I should have the money in my fund.I think this will also be useful from year to year so I can see whether I've used a particular stamp before on a person's card so they don't get the same one twice! The great reusable feature of this is that the tables are held in place by photo corners so each year, I can easily take the old ones out and print out a new table which is saved on my PC.

The next section is Christmas. I used Snowbunnybella for this divider. Pretty self explanatory really- this is for any Christmas makes!

As you can see, this is similar to my Calender section in that I have the names already typed out ready for details to be added.

I have a separate page for Christmas card orders as I usually get a few! Note again, I have the paid check box.

And one for Christmas gifts. "Prep" stands for any preparation that needs doing as I often make things in stages.

The third section is for Ideas and I've used Daydreamabella and a sentiment from Elzybells. This section just contains some page protectors. Here I will file any ideas I have for projects I want to make in the future- I always have lots of things I'd like to make!!

And next we have the Shopping section with the Shopabellas. This section has two functions really- a place to file details of essential stock items and "wish list" items to be stored in page protectors.

I have some templates for storing the details of the essential items. This is items that I regularly need to buy that I use a regular stockist for ie because of price/quality of that item. Normally I can't remember where I bought something! I have filled out a couple of examples for you.

Next up is the Website section with Clickabella on the divider. Self explanatory really- page protectors to file websites I like that I come across in my surfing. I normally end up bookmarking everything on my PC before I have really checked something out so this will help with that.

Next up is the Books section as decorated by Bookwormabella. Again this just contains page protectors. I am a big sucker for reading and buying craft books so this will help me easily store anything that takes my fancy.

Last up is the Honey Bootique section ie my website. Recognise the image??!!! lol. This again contains page protectors for notes of stuff I need to do on my website or useful things like what fonts I've used, colours etc.

And finally this is the back cover. I love this cute crafting image by Elzybells.

I really hope you've seen something useful and maybe can think of adaptions you can make to your own organizer. Do le me know if you do, I'd love to see it!

Here are a couple of challenges I'd like to enter into:
Papertake Weekly- use 3 of something (buttons)
Sassy Studio Designs- use something recycled (cardboard on covers)
Craft Your Passion- anything goes
Cutie Sunday- your fav colour combo- anything with pink!!
Crafty Pad- buttons
Secret Crafter- something for a female featuring flowers (for me!)

Have a great week! Thanks for stopping by xxx

11 comments:

Karen said...

Oh organisation perfection!!! I love this idea, I have a simpler version on my PC, but when (if?!?!?) I get the time apart from making charity cards and gifts/cards for friends/relatives, I'd love to have a go at something like this. I love the fonts too, are they freebies or purchased ones?? A good job well done!

cardmaking bird said...

Wow, this is fab!!! I sooooo need something like this, it's just getting around to making it! Hugs, Marie xxx

Marushy said...

Hi
wow wow wow

It's grandios.

Thanks for joining Cutie Sunday this week.

Hugs
Marushy

http://marushy.blogspot.com/
http://marushysmagnoliablog.blogspot.com/

Kelly - Peace Love Lacquer said...

This is adorable!! What a great way to organize things... Would make an amazing gift too :)

Thanks for joining us at Secret Crafter! Hope to see you again soon!

~Kelly

Jane (Carroll's Creations) said...

So pretty!

Thanks for joining us on our "Flowers for Mum" challenge on SECRET CRAFTER SATURDAY CHALLENGE :)

Hugs Jane x

Maria Moorhouse said...

Great project, thanks for playing along at Sassy Studio Designs!

Maria x

Kathy said...

Fun project, you are so organized! Thanks for joining the SSD challenge this week.

Barbara said...

What a perfect idea for those of us who need some help in organizing. Hope it helps. I can tell you have put a lot of thought ito this project and it shows. Thanks for joining us this week at The Crafty Pad for our "button" challenge. We hope you will stop again on Sunday for our next challenge. XX

Lexxie said...

OMG Steph, this is just fantastic, what a fab fab project,
Love Sarita xx

Bella´s Bastelecke said...

WOWZER!! This is simply gorgeous I really love the design.. very lovely work...............
So happy that you have joined us at Cutie Sunday.....

Hugs
Bella

~♥~The Navy Wife~♥~ said...

This is so cool and such a great idea. I love how organized you are that I might just have to case you on this one. Thank you for playing along in The Crafty Pad button challenge this week. Good luck in the prize draw and be sure check out our new challenge on Sunday. The Navy Wife