Organizing with Recyclables: Part 1

Over the last few weeks we've been discussing embellishments, quotes and sayings. Your first endeavor was to collect items around the house for embellishing your projects. I can imagine your surprise when you started looking at the "stuff" around your home and said, "Wow, I can use that and this for an embellishment. Wouldn't that make a nice addition for my card to Aunt Sally or cute add-on for a bag tag." The next step in getting ready for our projects is organization.

A lot of people aren't blessed with large craft rooms, storage carts, bookshelves and all the other gadgets available to make organizing easier. In part one of my series on organizing I am going to discuss using items that you may have around the home to make storage containers. Part two will go into more depth of inexpensive items that you can purchase to make organizing easier. The third part in the series will be on using what space you have to the best advantage.

Which brings me to a dilemma that a lot of crafters face. That is space; and the slow accumulation of crafting supplies that others may classify as "junk." To crafters of any genre it is almost an insult to call our perspective collections of paper, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, egg cartons, food storage cups from the deli, Styrofoam meat trays and our other growing list of supplies junk. These are the tools of our trade. They assist us in making creations that people swoon over.

Now in my house any flat space is up for grabs. If it isn't covered with an assortment of software, manuals, paper and embellishments it doesn't feel like home. I have a firm belief that crafters of most nature have piles of paper, embellishing supplies, glues, books, instruction sheets and many other supplies needed to finish that project surrounding them. I know I do.

What can we do to organize this chaotic mess that only we know where every thing is and if someone moves it we are totally devastated. There are several things that we can do. I am going to suggest a few ideas and if you have others that you'd like to add in the discussion list, please feel free to do so. I feel that others' input on this topic will be invaluable.

For storing brushes, glue pens, glue sticks, Exacto™ Knives, special markers or anything tall and skinny, frozen juice cans are excellent. You can measure your can and add those dimensions into Print Artist or make a template that will work in your current program of choice. You can choose appropriate clip-art, border, and text then print it out. To keep the ink from running if it gets wet, I recommend laminating with a laminating machine (we will go into more depth about laminating machines and book binders in a future article). Don't worry if you don't have one, you can use clear contact paper to cover your label. I recommend leaving approximately an 1/8 of an inch border around the label to ensure proper sealing. You can use glue to adhere the label to the juice can with one of several types of glues, my favorite is Yes Glue®, which can be purchased through Wacky Wagon Web Site or at a local rubber-stamp store. Also there are other glues available. After you have three or four of these cans decorated you can put them together to form a unit to store your goods in. I have found a few ways to do this. One, I have taken a rubber band and wrapped around the cans. I've found this method works better with three cans. Then you can take some ribbon, raffia or a piece of wallpaper and cover up the rubber band. This method works good if the cans aren't going to be moved around too much. Another way to keep them together is to glue them. I recommend a stronger glue, such as Super Glue™ or something a long those lines. Then you can embellish the cans any way you'd like.

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