Organising the Studio - Papers

It's not that I have been intentionally ignoring you... I've just been busy working (I had a week's temping work and travel to and from work - up to 3 hours a day!!!) and I've been cleaning, rearranging and organising my craft studio in preparation for some upcoming classes and crops.
A couple of weeks ago I managed to pick up a real bargain through an auction website here in New Zealand called TradeMe. You can buy and sell just about anything on there and from time to time I've been known to sell the odd scrap booking product or two myself.
I haven't been on there for a while, not having a great deal of the old folding stuff means you don't really want to look at temptation too much but I went for a nosy just to see what was happening.
Someone had listed some paper racks for sale at a really good price... including a really good "Buy Now" price. The bargain was so good that I bought now.
I contacted the seller and arranged to pick up the one paper rack and somewhere amongst all our correspondence, she mentioned that she had a few paper racks for sale though at the time she had only listed one. I said I would interested in maybe getting a few more from her.
Long story short... I have now ended up with six times the paper displaying/storing capacity I previously had at less than what I paid (wholesale) for the original four racks I had.
The bad news was that I then had to find somewhere to put them all.
After a couple of weeks of deep thought and contemplation I made up my mind what I wanted to do and so over the past week (though mainly this weekend) I've started to rearrange the studio to fit everything in.
I'm not going to show you the before shots quite yet... they will just have to wait until it's all completed and you can see the full effect; but I will show you some part-way through shots as I complete the various areas of the studio.
So here are the paper racks and the cubby unit that they now back onto.

I've created a little paper alcove in the corner by my desk. I wanted somewhere out of the way of the laundry area (reduce the chance of any accidental water damage) and out of the general traffic area as these are just wire racks stacked on top of each other. I have two solid concrete block walls and I have created a third wall by using the back of the cubby unit to provide some support - just in case.
The cubby unit previously housed a huge pile of scrap booking magazines and other scrapping junk that to be honest I had really just forgotten about and totally ignored but it is soon going to gain a new lease of life... coming up in a future blog!!!
I've stacked up all the paper racks and tied them together with cable ties for a little more stability as well, and then rearranged them all this morning before stacking them with paper. That was easier said than done as each wall of racks has to be moved as one due to being cable tied together... yes I admit I should have thought about the design aspects first... but we all learn from our mistakes.
Then once I was happy with their placement (and having added another two stacks to the end of the cubby so all the racks now had a home) I then filled them in with all my cardstock and patterned paper.

The end racks and just a hint of the cubby unit behind and the racks that back onto the cubby unit. The racks to the right are less than a third full, so plenty of room here for more cardstock. (I'm slowly building up my Bazzill holding).

 The racks backed onto the cubby unit and one of the end racks.

The racks underneath the window. I intend to give the window a good clean inside and out and then add a net curtain to reduce any chances of fading. Still a few racks free for more paper!!

And the final racks on the far side of the alcove. At the moment these are full of bargain and discounted papers, so some great deals to be had on these shelves alone!!
My perfectionist self already wants to rearrange all the papers and colour coordinate or do something with them, but I've told myself to behave and just leave them as they are for now. I have a lot more cleaning and rearranging still be done and as they are at least now in paper racks I can live with things as they are for now.
It feels great to be able to cross this off my project list!!

Recycled Rubbish - Desk Organiser

I'd forgotten about the down side of buying a new laptop... not the reloading of all the software, I knew that was going to take a bit of time, but the updating of all the software especially the operating system. 

The downloading bit quite happily happens in the background, you don't even notice it most of the time. It's when you go to shutdown and it tells you that the laptop needs to install all the updates that the boring bit REALLY begins!! 

In case you didn't know... your laptop, or computer, will not complete the shutdown process until it has installed all the updates. All very well in theory until you realise that the mere 70 odd updates it needs to install are actually going to take OVER NIGHT to complete. And during this installation process, you can't do anything with your laptop... at all, other than keep checking to see if it's done!

And if you are really unlucky, then the same thing happens the following night as well... I must have been really unlucky to have this happen two nights in a row. 

The good news... is that not having access to my new laptop, meant I didn't spend all night on it updating and downloading software or playing games on Facebook or googling tutorials or Pinterest.

Instead... I got to spend two fun-filled nights cleaning up the studio. Slow progress I will admit and I still have a long way to go, though I did make considerable progress and I was happy with what I achieved.

When the aforementioned cleaning got a bit boring (as it does), I did squeeze in some crafting to complement the cleaning process.

I'm not a coffee drinker... and my apologies to all of you who are, but I hate the stuff. I don't like the taste or the smell and have been told (to my face) that I actually make a horrible coffee. Of course it may have been that I was making sure I didn't get asked to make any ever again, but you never heard that from me.

I drink, when I'm cold, hot chocolate, chai lattes or soup.

Which means I have managed to accumulate quite a collection of used hot chocolate containers as well as various other containers... like Pringles tins.

I've seen some really cool samples where crafters have recycled tins into desk organisers, so I figured why couldn't I use my stash of chocolate and Pringles tins... same thing really.

I decided upon a collection of three chocolate tins and two small Pringles tins as I figured these would all be a great size for pens, scissors, tools etc on my scrap desk instead of them lying in a pile as they were at the time.

I selected patterned paper from the Basic Grey Eva Collection which I had in my stash. I covered each tin in a different patterned paper.

I then adhered a coloured raffia ribbon around the top and bottom of each tin to hide the silver edges and give the collection of tins a unifying element.

Finally I adhered the tins to each other in the position I wanted them, using double sided foam adhesive. This filled in the slight gaps between the tins. (Each tin had a slight lip top and bottom so there was a thin gap between the sides of the various tins even though the top and bottom were touching.)

Then I filled them up with all the stuff from my desk. I was surprised at how much "stuff" I was able to fit in the tins.

I grouped like things together - for instance all my scissors in one tin with some other bulky tools, pens in another tin, my most frequently used liquid adhesives in another tin.

And then the extra things I added were a selection of small bulldog clips onto some of the tins. I frequently end up with notes on small pieces of paper, layout ideas and I need one place to put them all until I decide what to do with them.

Here are pictures to show you the finished desk organiser: 

Organiser from the front

Organiser from the back

Organiser looking down on angle

Organiser looking straight down

All filled up with my tools and bits and pieces - front

All filled up from the back

Doesn't that look smart and so much neater and tidier and it's much easier for me to find what I'm looking for.

Missing Blogs

I have a really good excuse honest...


Thursday night I sorted and packed to go to crop on Friday night. I haven't been for so long so it took a wee bit to get organised... I'm out of practice.
Tried to print some photos to find my printer still won't print 4x6 pages - it just won't pick up the paper - anyone got any suggestions on what to try??


Friday night - I went to crop straight from work and wasn't home until after midnight. I did make some progress on an Off-The-Page project you will see later this week and some layouts including an un-finished one which has been sitting around for a couple of years. Still a bit to go on it but at least I made progress.


Saturday was just spent scrapping as well as some family time. I also spent some time cleaning my studio - which it was in major need of doing. Still a lot to be done but at least I made progress and did well and truly more than my daily allowance of 15 minutes de-cluttering... though as I haven't done any for a few weeks I'm probably still behind in my rations.


Sunday - sleep in though not that long considering the late night (early this morning) when I went to bed. I managed to finished 2 layouts which you will see over the next two weeks. I also did some de-cluttering in my bedroom and sorted out the washing from yesterday so maybe I am back ahead again now... JUST!!! Major achievement was finishing my OTP project which is great as it is hubbie's Valentine's present, well one of them. Don't tell him, but I'm sending him flowers as well... TO WORK!!! I will post a pic of the flowers tomorrow after we get back from dinner.