Organizing Embellishments

 As a scrapbooker, the biggest challenge I face is finding space for my hobby. I need space to work and space to store my growing collection of supplies. Previously, most of my embellishments were in tool storage bins and that was working pretty well. But, now I think I found something better. Not only does this new system save space, But I can see quickly all my embellishments and they are already packed to head to a crop. I found this idea in Creating Keepsakes Scrapbooking Tips & Tricks 20/10. This is a special issue magazine. This system consists of cardboard, or chipboard, I used black foamcore board, Cut to the size that fits in your crop tote. 3 sizes of jewelry bags are stapled to the front and the bags are filled with your accents. Each board contains one color.

  Visually, I love these boards. I can see everything in a color family all at once. I think this is going to make my shopping list easier because I can see what I'm running short on. Also, I can pull out just the colors that I'm using for a particular layout or album and this should make clean-up much better.

My adaptations.. Foamcore borad is to thick for the staples, So on the larger bags I used a brad. I'm going to change this to velcro. That will make the bags easy to take off and put back on the board.  I also added a large ziploc with two brads on the back of the board. This is great for keeping scraps.  I'm going to paint the top edge with the color of the items on the board. One of the bags I am using to keep spools of thread. Though I don't usually use these for scrapbooking, It's one of those items I'm always having to dig through to find, Now I can just go to my green board for my green thread!

I'm still putting these all together, But I think this is going to definitely speed up the embellishing and clean-up processes.