Craft Room, Part 2

Since I can't possibly follow yesterday's delicious CASness with anything close to that perfect, today we're looking at my work area. This way, when you see my Ode to Holly card, you won't think, "Awwww, poor thing! She's really lost her touch." Instead, you will think, "Thank god she's posting a card!"

I'm a strategic blogger that way.

As you might suspect, I have a lot of ink, all of which is stored in Sterilite drawers in two towers on either side of my very large plastic folding table. Here's the left tower.

I store my frequently used supplies (glues and tapes, scrap paper, cut card bases, post-its and masks) here. The bottom drawer is a place to put projects when I get stuck. I put them away and will go back to them later and either throw them away, recycle them, or finish them.

Memories and Ancient Page inks are stored in the middle three drawers. These inks are sort of weird but I bought a bunch of them very early in my stamping career, before I knew better, and virtually all of them are still juicy seven years later, so I can't complain. They are archival, waterproof dye inks, which makes them perfect for stamping on scrapbook pages. But I CANNOT watercolor with them...the whole waterproof thing gets in the way for me. They also don't work with clear stamps very well.

The right tower is totally dedicated to inks. Stacked on top are Colorbox pigment inks (barely visible). The next three drawers are VersaColor, VersaMagic, Brilliance, and Colorbox chalk inks. These are all great inks for stamping with clear stamps, and all but the Colorbox chalk inks are archival and thus safe for scrapping. I have a lot of these in small pads (dew drops, cubes, cat eyes) which are great for rocking and rolling.

The next five drawers down are StampinUp inks. I have most of the 48 colors, some neutrals and in colors, and a pad of craft white. SU classic ink isn't archival or waterproof, but it is great for watercoloring and coordinating with the SU paper. The bottom drawer holds black and chocolate inks (Palette, StazOn, VersaColor, Memento), spectrum pads, and odd-ball inks that don't belong anyplace else.

I counted once. I have close to three hundred pads, large and small. I'm not going to think about that fact. Ever.

The rest of my workspace looks like this:

The shelf has my ribbon jars (which lately haven't seen much use but will come around again, I assure you). I don't wrap my ribbon around clothespins or anything. I just wrap it neatly around my fingers and shove it in. It's never tangled (I do clean them out a couple times a year), I can see what I have at a glance, and it looks so pretty, doesn't it?

The two photo boxes behind the ribbon hold narrow satin rolls, sheer rolls, and miscellaneous "specialty" ribbon, as well as needles for sewing buttons and book binding and such.

I stack my quilting rulers on the left, along with a little index of all my inks and punches. The yellow, orange, and green flower pots hold pens, small tools, and scissors. Aren't they the cutest! Those colors will cheer me up this winter for sure, and the pots were only 50 cents a piece on sale at Hobby Lobby. I couldn't NOT buy them.

The white tray holds my acrylic blocks and Making Memories magnetic stamp handles. Those MM magnetic stamps seemed like such a good idea at the time, but in truth, they are a pain in my tookus. Don't buy them unless you are really, really patient. I really should move those off my desk. Haven't used them in a couple of years.

The baby wipe tote holds a damp washcloth for cleaning stamps, and under it is my Ultra clean stamp cleaning pad for stubborn stains.

That sounds like a laundry detergent commercial.

The small stack of six drawers on the right holds archival pens for scrapbooking, such as Zig writers and Micron pens, sorted by color. Of course, my SU markers are on top of that, along side a flower pot that holds...drum roll please...deco scissors. Yes, I've kept them and am not afraid to use them!

Please feel free to ask questions about anything you see in these pictures that I've not covered or that you want to see more closely. I've been stamping for close to eight years now, and that's a lot of time to collect and develop quirky ways to do things. Next time we visit my craft room, I show you what all's under the desk. Woohoo! Bet you can't wait!