Organize Your Scrapbooking Space

So, you've started the wonderful hobby of scrapbooking, but you have no idea how to organize yourself? Here are some cool tips you can use to get organized.

• Get a long desk. It doesn't have to be extravagant with lots of drawers and things, but you do want to make sure you have enough workspace to spread out everything you need for your layouts. You might want to have a separate smaller desk for your computer, printer and scanner. A must for all of you scrapbooking fanatics!
• Organize your cardstock by color vertically in a shelf. The best thing to use is a cropper hopper paper holder so you can stand your paper up. You can organize your patterned paper either by company or type. I have the following categories:

- Vellum

- Flowered

- Embossed

- Themes

- Patterns

- Transparencies

• Keep the items you need most frequently close to you on your working desk, such as adhesives, markers, pens, cutters, scissors, etc. Place these items in a kitchen silverware caddy so they're always handy. It's also a good idea to purchase a large cutting mat to place on your desk for general working purposes so you don't ruin your desk.
• For all the little bitty embellishments, use organizers from your local hardware store that have lots of little pull out drawers in small compartments that you may also label. What's great about these is that most of them are transparent, so you can see what's inside. They come in a variety of sizes. My first one had about 18 compartments and now I've expanded to 36, plus a few cube organizers from artbin.
• To store items such as ribbons and fibers, I use a clear organizing box that has a drawer I can pull out. My ribbons are sorted by color and are all on the ribbons cards from when I originally bought them. You can also make your own using some cardboard and making some notches.
• You can also use these types of drawer containers for punches (they are about 12 inches deep), stamps, chalks, scissors, sewing utensils, tags, etc.
• It's a good idea to purchase some adequate shelving to put all of these items into or a wall mount.
• To store stickers and other embellishments that do not fit into the small embellishments category, you can use an expandable file folder with labeling.
• What to do with your leftover cardstock and patterned paper? Take one layout protector for each color and put cardstock on one side and the patterned paper of the same facing the other side. Put all of the protectors into a vertical paper holder and viola! You have your leftovers sorted out!
• Paint brushed go into a fabulously redecorated coffee can and you can put your paint either into a clear container with a lid or line them up on a shelf by color.

Hope this helped you somewhat to get organized and ready to scrap away! Have fun!

Jacqueline M. Schimmel is a Professional Scrapbook Designer who designs custom and premade scrapbooks, cards, frames and teaches scrapbooking courses in Germany. The name of her business is Memories Artwork™ located at http://memoriesartwork.typepad.com.