A Different Kind of Challenge...

I have a confession - I'm a messy stamper, and yup, I might be a bit of a hoarder. I keep lots of paper scraps, knowing I'll use them with punches or die cuts or for paper piecing. I make a terrible mess whenever I craft, then have almost as much fun putting everything away, ready for next time. There's something so inspiring about a clean workspace isn't there? It just calls to be messed up!

The problem is.....I had a ever growing stack of one kind of supply - cardstock. Toward the end of last week I finally got sick of the cluttered piles littering my craft room. Seriously, I had a stack of paper scraps that was approaching Leaning Tower proportions. I felt guilty every time I looked at it, knowing there were almost full sheets of cardstock being bent or bashed around the corners. I have a system for my cardstock that works perfectly for me - the problem? the system was WAY out of date! So I finally did myself a favor, pulled out the label maker and updated my filing system.

It took awhile. I hadn't updated it since BEFORE last years In Colours! With all the recent colour changes and additions I needed to prep quite a few folders. But, oh, just look at it now! All those gorgeous colours (this is one of four drawers) the scraps right where they belong, waiting to be used.

So that's my challenge to you. Identify the "problem area" or zone in your room, on your desk, or just in the cupboard you keep your supplies. Work out a solution - then DO IT! You'll feel SO much better, so inspired, and you may just find something you completely forgot you had!

This is how I store all those pretty little lengths of ribbon and trim that might otherwise sit tangled in a drawer, forgotten and unused. Pretty, functional, and it's easy to grab a ribbon or two for a project I'm working on.

Larger rolls of ribbon? Longer popsicle sticks and a hurricane vase! These storage solutions cost me nothing, I used things I had around the house already and most of my non Stampin' Up! ribbon is stored this way. I definitely use it more now I can see it.

If you have a fun organisation idea I'd love to hear it! Or, tell me YOUR hoarding horror stories so I feel better about mine!

My Stamp Room

Hi everyone! Hope your day is going great so far. Yesterday was a busy day here in the Gough house, we finally got around to our spring cleaning, which, even after being here for only three months was well overdue! Isn't it a great feeling when the place you live is all in order?

I love seeing photos of other peoples craft rooms or spaces. I've picked up a lot of ideas for my "dream room" that I'll have one day! There are some amazing custom designed spaces out there.

Because my room is currently as tidy as it ever gets, I thought now was a good time to share some photos! You won't see an all white masterpiece, but you will see my very functional "Stampin' Space on a Budget"! Shanan and I are currently renting, and we move reasonably often, so it didn't make sense to me to spend a lot of money on outfitting a room, not knowing what kind of space I'll have in the future. Plus, less money on furniture meant more money on supplies!

Overtime my room has been furnished almost entirely in kit set furniture from The Warehouse (a bit like Walmart for my international visitors!) and a couple of purpose designed pieces from Kmart. You'll also see almost everything is on the floor - landlords don't take kindly to rails and shelves screwed into the wall for punch and stamp storage! Watch out for those $10 bookcases you can pick up sometimes....I use quite a few of them in a couple of different ways! My room also features a couple of cat beds - if I don't have a place for my cats to sleep they inevitably end up in the middle of whatever I'm stamping...so the trade off of taking up space vs. happy kitties is worth it!

Happy Stampin'

Organisation is Key!

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I've gone a week in between posts! I do have an excuse though - I've been reorganising. I realised I've been in a constant state of tidying for awhile now, it was time to completely resort, throw out and rehouse a lot of my stamping goodies! I was finding it impossible to create in the midst of the chaos that was my stamp room, so hopefully things will be back to normal now!

Because organising and the need for a tidy workspace was a big topic during the UStamp chat last night, I thought I'd show you a couple of the ways I keep my space tidy and my goodies at my finger tips!
The first is a wee project that is so fun to do, and so useful as well! This is my designer paper ring. Now, I have a confession to make - I have all the double sided papers in the catalogue! Who can blame me though, they are so gorgeous! But with such an abundance of paper, it was hard to remember what patterns I had (and the photos in the catty can't do these papers justice, they are so much more beautiful in real life!)

So I made this ring. It's really simple - the dividers are squares of Very Vanilla Card stock with the corners rounded. The stamped label is from the Totally Tabs set - I like that this design has three lines, I can mark any papers "retired" on the third line when I need too. You just stamp it, punch it out with the round tab punch and fold it over to make your tab. Love it!

I just punched out 6 scalloped circles for each paper pack, one from each different sheet. I used the Crop-a-dile to punch the holes, so I could do all of them at once - so much faster and easier than doing them one by one!
I also have one for all the card stock colours. For this one I chose a shade of yellow from each colour family for the dividers and tabs. It's so useful having these rings on my desk at all times, they take up very little space and I have all my colours right there for mixing and matching.

While we're talking about card stock, here's how I store mine...

I have some cheapee file cabinets from Kmart that take A4 hanging files. Each colour has it's own folder, and I keep scraps in the front of the folder, full sheets at the back. I have four drawers, one for Soft Subtles and Rich Regals, one for Bold Brights and Earth Elements, one for Neutrals and specialty card and one for In Colours, current and retired.

I made labels from each colour card and I've got them stored in catalogue order (my card stock is probably the most well organised thing in this room!) My label maker is instrumental in keeping everything in it's place, as you 'll see here....

These are my sponge daubers. I love these little guys! They are in a drawer beside my ink pads - and I use my label maker on the smallest setting to label each one with a colour as I first use it. The "waiting to be used" ones are in the bag at the back.

You can have one sponge dauber for each overall colour - one for pinks, reds, blues etc - but over time your colours will start to get muddy when you sponge, not a good look! I won't have a dauber for every colour - if it's one I think I'll rarely sponge with I just use a wedge of Stampin' Sponge. But for my most used colours, I wouldn't be without these!

While we're talking about rearranging things....I was wondering...am I the only person that saves the "greenery" from wilted bouquets and uses it to make a new arrangment? I like making flowers last longer this way, and often with the gorgeous "fillers" in bouquets today you can make something just as pretty. This is the leftovers from my birthday flowers from my family and Shanan, I don't know what those feathery looking things are...but I love them!

I'll have more organisation tips and photos of how I keep my stampin' stash stored (try saying that five times fast!) for you soon. For now, dinner is in the crockpot simmering away (picture me at 7am this morning, tears streaming down my face from cutting onions!) and I have the whole day to stamp! I haven't forgotten my new fav mystery product promise, details soon!

New Navigation Features

If you're a regular visitor here at thINKingstamps (and I hope you are!) you may have noticed a few changes to the navigation system I'm using. Firstly, I used to list every stamp set used on a card, but with well over 100 sets, the list was just becoming too long! So here's how to find just what you're looking for...

I've removed all the stamp set names from the topic list, but you can still find the posts using your favourite set! Just use the Search box to the right hand side of the page. You can search by stamp set, technique, or a keyword - useful if you want to see lots of examples of a particular product, e.g. the word window punch!

The topic list is now a lot more meaningful. Techniques are labelled as such and I've added a few new categories:

Happy Hardware will take you to posts where Hodgepodge Hardware, Jumbo Eyelets or other metal embellishments play a key role.

Perfectly Pretty will take you to projects using the Pretties kit.

Lots of Layers are those cards just bursting with dimension, while Simple Cards are often quick, one or two layer designs.

Pretty Punches will probably become the largest category...I love punches! Pretty Punches are those projects that feature lots of punches, a punch used in a new way or a project that shows how well the punches layer together.

From time to time I will add a new category, but hopefully these changes will help you find what you need quickly and easily!

New SU! and Stamp Indexing

Bright and early this morning, my new courier (who is already surprised how often he has to come to my house!) bought me two big boxes, jammed packed full of Stampin' Up! goodies! I still have a couple of things on back order, but today I'll have lots of sorting and arranging to do. Included in my parcels are lots of brand new products from the upcoming Mini Catalogue so expect to see lots of sneak peaks starting from today!

I have 17 new sets to mount (12 of them I got for FREE from Stampin' Up! email me if you'd like info on how you could get freebies too!) which you might think would take forever....but here's the GREAT news....all the sets in the new mini catalogue are DIE-CUT! That means Stampin' Up! have cut them out for us, all you have to do is pop them on the blocks and you're ready to stamp!

Regular readers will know I have a lot of sets. So many that I haven't even counted (I think it would be a scary number!) With so many stamps, it's vital to have a good index of what you have. So I thought I'd show you mine. It's not pretty, but it's very functional.

I have a plain lever arch file (I've been meaning to pretty it up for awhile now!) and every time I get a new stamp set, I photocopy the sticker sheet before I do anything else. I also usually update my spreadsheet at this time.

It's very important for my system that I photocopy only one stamp set per page and that each and every set has it's own page protector for this reason: At the moment my sets are organised alphabetically, that means that every time a new one comes in (which is often) I need to be able to quickly slot it in to the correct position. It also means that if I ever decide to use a different method of organising my index, perhaps by subject or theme, I can easily do so because I don't have to separate sets from the same page.

If I don't know what set I want to use when I sit down to create, I can easily flick through until something inspires me. The stamp set shown is a new one, available August 1st, called Always. Isn't it gorgeous?!? I can't wait to use it. If you don't have a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and would like to order this beautiful set (or anything else you see on my site for that matter!) please email me.

Usually, it only takes me a second to photocopy each sticker sheet - but this morning was a bit different! I decided to use Shanan's laser printer as it's faster than mine, but forgot to allow for the "cat curiosity" factor!

This is Gabriel, he's a Lilac Point Balinese and is three years old. Balinese (a longer coat Siamese) are very well known for being mischievous, playful and above all curious. Gabriel loves my printer, and always wants to watch when I use it, but the laser printer seems to hold a special fascination. I think it's because the paper shoots out all of a sudden, unlike my ink jet which does it bit by bit. So every time I wanted to do a new sticker sheet this morning, it meant lifting him down and trying to get it positioned on the scanner before he wanted to jump back up! Of course, I could have just locked him out of the room - but there's one other thing Balinese are known for...their meow!

I'll be back later today with a few wee sneak peeks and will also update the UStamp class kit page with photos of the kit. Until then, Happy Stampin'!