Craft Room reorganisation 1: Embrace the alphabet

For the longest time I was in denial, believing that I was the sort of person that didn't really buy stickers, alphabet or otherwise, and certainly couldn't justify the cost of Thickers, no matter how great they looked on a finished page.
Meanwhile the pizza box I stored all my stickers in slowly filled and eventually overflowed.  Mostly the ones you get in collection packs, but also the odd sheet (even, yes! Thickers) that I bought on special. Always on special. Not a lot, but over time it starts to add up.

I was finding I was reluctant to rifle through the box, and that when I did, I ended up with random letter stickers coming off their sheets and turning up in odd places.


Something Had to Be Done.

 I came across a Craft Room Tour on Youtube which mentioned Tiffany Spaulding, AKA "Totally Tiffany" and her organisation process. (If you've not heard of her before, you can find her Youtube channel here). Tiffany has live challenges running periodically, but if you're like me and just want to start when you want to start, you can just dive right into the videos and work at your own pace. 

Tiffany has what she calls a "four section system" which works throughout the whole craft room, the four sections being:

1. alpha-numeric
2. themes A-Z
3. Calendar year
4. the rainbow.

Today I'm just looking at her first section, alpha-numeric. So here's what my before looked like: letter stickers and Thickers shoved into a pizza box in a random order with all other sticker sheets.  A few old chipboard alphas in a drawer designated for chipboard.  Some rub-on alphas in a totally different drawer.  And a bunch of alphabet stamps stored with all my other stamps.
This is my after:

Now, I know this is not a lot of supplies compared to many of you, but the same principles would work whether you have one box of alphabets or ten.

Some tips from Tiffany:

•  Store all your alphabets together, whether they be Thickers, rub-ons or whatever. That way, when you think "I need to make a title", you've only got to go to one place to see all your suplies.
• Store your alphabets by size.  As she points out, when you're working on  a title, you've got a finite space  to work within. (You can always sort by colour within each size category)
• Stamp out an impression of each set of alphabet stamps that you own, and then store that impression in the appropriately sized section of your alphabet storage.  That way you'll literally be reminded of every alphabet option you have as you flick through, even though you'll probably have your stamps stored in a different location.

Some tips from me:

• Store all your stickers in plastic sleeves. (I've used A4 sheet protectors.  If I had less options, I coud literally put the whole lot in an A4 folder).  This is easier to pull your stickers in and out of than their original packaging, as well as providing protection.
• Cut your sticker sheets apart! You know the 12" ones that might have 2 or 3 different sizes/colours/fonts?  And maybe some words, tabs and images as well? Separate each alphabet out and store it according to size.  Trust me, it makes it easier!

I hope this is helpful to someone.  Of course, you can go and check out Tiffany's Youtube channel above, or go to her website if joining in her challenge is something you think you'd like to do.
For my part, I'll be back soon with at least 2 more posts in this series.
Bye for now!