Organizing your craft items

Well every once in a while I go through a phase where I need to organize my craft room in order to make it easier and faster for me to create projects. Lately I have been on a kick to organize my Cricut Cartridges, my stamps and all of my images that I have for my Silhouette machine and I found a couple of solutions that worked for me and thought I would pass them onto you.

Found this great website for Cricut Users to check out. Cricut Creations by AMKscrap. On her blog you will find a great ways to keep track of all your Cricut Cartridges using an excel sheet. LOVE this!!! Here is her website.
http://amkscrap.blogspot.com. Look for her post on April 6 2009 for updated version of her Cricut cartridge inventory sheets.

I was looking on the Internet lately for a good way to organize all of my stamps (rubber and cling). I wasn't looking for storage but just a way to keep track of all my stamps. I've seen sites with programs called Rubber stamp wizard which is kind of like a data base(like a inventory of stamps). I seen where some people just built shelves to accommodate all their stamps and they can see what they have in one quick glance. After thinking about all the above listed ways to organizing stamps I came to the conclusion none of them were meant for me. I am a visual person and I don't have the space to build shelves for all my stamps to be visible.

So I have came up with my own idea based on my favorite Hero Arts catalog. I made my very own catalog of all the stamps that I own. I divided my stamps similar to the way Hero Arts categorize their stamps in their catalog. Made an impression of each stamp and placed it in a three ring binder. I can't begin to tell you how helpful this was. Now when I am stump on what stamp to use on a project I just sit down with my binder and look through all my impressions. It's like having my very own idea book. Now I'm not going to lie to you. This process did take time to complete it but the end results has made it worth all the hard work I did in the beginning. Also, its no more laborious than if you sat down and did an inventory of your stamps. Now I know what I have and I don't get duplicates and it helps in the creative process just to look through my binder. I have also add in my binder the excel sheets that I found on the above website for my all my Cricut cartridges in the binder along with a copy of my Silhouette library contents. I love having this binder I don't know what I would do with out it now.

Hope some of these tips help you out. Leave me a comment on ways you organize your stamps and cartridges.