studio organization: felt stash and ornament storage

I'm often asked how I organize my felt and store my wool felt ornaments, so I thought I'd show you! I posted short reels of this on my IG and FB feeds also if you'd like to check those out. (After watching the reel and hearing me speak, one commenter was surprised to learn I'm not British! Yes, I'm American and have lived in the southeast US for most of my life, so I have a bit of a twang. But I'm also a huge anglophile, so maybe that bleeds through in my posts. Ha!) 

In the photos you can see how I manage my stash of wool and wool-blend felts: sorted in closet shoe organizers by color/kind. It was years ago when I purchased them, and I think they are from the Container Store. They are part of a system of modular closet organizers and are designed to stack either horizontally or vertically. The size of the cubbies and the depth of the boxes make them ideal for felt storage.

I usually buy felts in either 12 x 18 inch or 9 x 12 inch pieces, so I always roll them toward the 12 inch side and slide them in the shoe compartment, which is the perfect depth. 

In the photos, you can see most are sorted by color but there are a couple cubbies that contain glitter and metallic wool felts of different colors, so those are by kind and not color. You can see I've also got stacks of felt on top of the cubbies that are not sorted yet. And you can't see the scattered pieces of felt all over the rest of my messy studio.

As I work, I pull rolls of felt and stash them in a Raskog cart (I love those things) near my desk, then after I’m done with the project they get rolled back up and tidied away into the cubbies again. Eventually.

I'm also asked if I always soak/air dry the felt first before storing the rolls. The answer is yes and no. Many times I put shipments of felt straight into a bucket of water to soak and air dry before sorting it into the cubbies, just so I have that out of the way. But I also have a lot of felt in my stash that hasn't been pre-soaked, so I indicate the difference by tying the roll with string.

I do not bother separating the 100% wools from the blend wools. I can usually tell by size/feel/appearance what is blend and what isn't, so that hasn't been an issue thus far.

If the scraps are too small to tuck back inside of the roll, I stuff them into this old wooden Coke crate. I always keep usable felt scraps! As you know, many of my patterns have very small pieces, so small scraps come in handy.

OK, on to ornament storage:

Nothing fancy, y'all. I just use these white plastic Sterilite drawer units from Wal-Mart. Pretty simple. My studio is climate controlled, of course, and the drawers are located in a part of the studio which is protected from direct sunlight. 

I have the drawers organized by series. They are deep enough to accommodate the ornaments so they can lay flat in one layer, protecting all the details and fragile bits. Six of the drawers are dedicated to the Twelve Days series because I have lots of samples of those, but my other two ornament series are ever expanding. I also store my Snow Birds and Flora Needle Books here.

Getting a little crowded in some of the drawers. These are samples of All Through The House and Not Even A Mouse. My Ebenezer drawers are pretty empty at the moment, because I'm in the midst of a new pattern. So I have most of my Ebenezer samples hanging from a bulletin board and OttLite near my train wreck work area, seen below. I use them for design/color inspiration while I'm working on the new design and samples.

And you can see the LodeStar Tree Topper samples sticking out of a pencil holder on the shelf over my work table. They are too large to go in the Sterilite drawers, so I need to figure out a great way to store them. Probably will end up hanging them inside my studio closet. 

So that's how I manage my felt stash and ornament samples! I hope this post is useful to you in your own organizing. :-)

clean slate needed

#aftermath After months of piling supplies willy nilly around my work area, I'm afraid it's time to pay the piper. I need a clean slate on my desk and in my brain as I organize this train wreck so I can get going on the design of Ghost of Christmas Present for my Ebenezer Ornament Series.

So I'll be unsnarling the pile of floss, sorting and putting away the card stocks and felts, clearing away the accumulated paints, glues, and glitters, and finding a home with various family members for the little house reject samples all lined up in a row. (Rejected for minor reasons, like the innards or outsides do not match the final version of the pattern in some way, so will still make great Christmas gifts! All made with love.)

#mmmcrafts #sendhelp #coffeehelps #mariekondodoesnotlivehere #icouldusemarypoppinsthough

what I'm up to

Doors going in. That's Dave, possibly the
best person in the whole wide world.

Was my last blog post really in April? All May I've been in a vortex. Here's almost half of June gone and we are still digging out from our remodel, house move and an unplanned kidney stone surgery for my Schmoopie. (doh!)

May is always completely crazy every year because of:
- ending the homeschool school year
- our anniversary
- couple of family birthdays including my daughter's (13!)
- standardized testing
- Mother's Day
Sooo adding in the remodeling, packing, moving and the surgery just made this May extra action-packed*. Honestly, I was feeling a little desperate on a few of those days. Some hysterical tears were shed (by me). Balls were dropped. Spinning plates crashed to the ground. Hamsters fell out of their wheels. The surgery happened the day after we moved our furniture to the new house. Aaaand I felt like the worst mother in the world when I wasn't present to see my freshman in high school get several awards at the year-end celebration. ("Wait...you got awards tonight??") Gahhhh. She'll tell it all to her therapist in future years I guess. Gotta let it go. -whoosh- (there it goes)

*most positive wording I can think of.

But it's all good. All of it.
The remodel was finished. Mostly. We are moved. Schmoopie feels better! Thank the Lord! We love the new house. No one got hurt (except a few pieces of furniture were winged).

More memories from the remodel:

All the new doors and wainscoting were compliments of Dave.

Banisters were painted.

Carpet was replaced.

The entire interior of the house was repainted, ceilings, walls and trim. I painted the upstairs bedrooms but left the rest to professionals. I chose grays and whites. No pictures yet of the pretty new paint. Forgot to take pre-move shots! I went with Titanium for the main area, with some White Dove, Simply White, Sedate Gray and Revere Pewter thrown in. You can see a tiny wedge of Titanium on the wall in this next photo.

Oh, and we also had to replace the hardwood floors. Didn't expect that. But loving the new floor! It's hickory. The color is called Prairie Dust. 

We still need to replace the lighting. This evil, tentacled pendant in the kitchen (Feed me, Seymore!) has stabbed all of us in the head at least once. It's going. There's also a dark, aggressive looking Viking fixture in the dining room whose days are numbered. That stuff had to jump down the list for later along with the cabinet repainting.

Presently I'm buried in an avalanche of 20 years worth of stuff thrown into the new house. Squaring it all away will have to wait as we are in the middle of coordinating some improvements to the old house to get it listed:

You might remember the old color. Now the entire house has been painted Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray, which my realtor and her designer assure me is the perfect, appealing shade of greige for house lookers. And it really is! Not too dark either. I think it looks so fresh.

And this carpet is just about to go in. The color is called Mink and I think it will look really spiffing with the new paint. Soooo close to listing the house. Feeling excited to get that going!

And feeling the pull to get back to my craft life -- Mr Drummer has been waiting and the last three of the Twelve Days patterns too, all tapping their tiny felt feet to be brought to life.

I hope your school break is going swimmingly!

the paper cart delivers

Well, the Sterilite carts arrived. In cardboard boxes that could have easily housed largish zoo animals (and which are currently occupied by my kids). I love the carts. LOVE THEM. As much as someone can love ugly plastic furniture, I love them. Because they work.

I always feel a bit hesitant to show pictures taken in my studio. I think I have an inferiority complex from all the stunning, color coordinated and neat-as-a-pin studio tours I've seen on blogs. Let me just be clear: my studio will never win any beauty awards. It's more about function than form. I'm trying to own that. I feel very lucky to even have a dedicated space to create, no matter how crowded and mismatched it is. That in itself is a huge blessing. Huge. But I digress.

The drawers had these nice, hinged lids on them. Which I spent a few minutes popping off with a flathead screwdriver. It seemed a shame. But I wanted easy access and didn't want to have to take the drawers completely out in order to get to the paper.

I stacked the two units together and installed the casters on the bottom unit. Which are a really nice feature because it's helpful to move the cart out of the way when I'm not doing a paper project.

Each drawer can hold 12x12 inch pieces (I discovered a lot of my 12x12s are actually bigger than that but if I turn them the right way they stay flat) and I keep all my scraps on top of the whole pieces. It's very easy to take a drawer out to rummage through it. And I like that I can see the color of the paper through the plastic so I can zero in on the drawer I want quickly.

Organizing all the small paper in the new carts has left my big ol' wooden flat file to do what it does best: House large sheets. I've just rediscovered a stack of expensive Arches papers from college. Bonus.

And that solves my dilemma with the ridiculous pile of solid colored art papers. (I am not going to worry about the ludicrous pile of patterned art papers for now. Or the preposterous piles of fabric. One thing at a time.)

Having the paper organized so nicely has put me in a card making mood! See, I even purchased a new X-ACTO knife. If you've ever seen a picture of my old one with the grimy, 20 year old masking tape around the grip, you'll be thankful. (I still have it though.)

what I'm up to

Gah. Martha would not approve. No one is going to be pinning beauty shots of my studio anytime soon. Unless it is a 'hoarders' board. Just keepin it real. I'm trying to organize. Feeling down in the dumps is not helping.

One of the things that would help: marshaling my ludicrous pile of art papers. Way back when, my Schmoopie bought me this great vintage wooden flat file. It's so huge. I love it for my large sheets that need to lay flat, plus portfolio pieces and tissue paper, cardboard, mat board and bristol etc... But the bulk of my paper stash is smaller sheets and it is getting crazy out of control. Every time I open the drawer I can hear some sheets at the back becoming freeform origami. I've got to do something.

I have so many 12 x 12 inch and letter sized pieces (plus tons of small scraps) and I can't find anything without just emptying the huge drawer. That's when it starts looking like a paper explosion  (first photo). I'm trying to figure out a good way to:

1. keep it all easily accessible and separated into colors
2. while at the same time be visible at a glance 
3. arranged so that small scraps do not get lost from view
4. it must fit easily in my space-poor craft disaster area

 

I haven't seen anything yet that seems to answer all those problems without knocking out a wall. But I think this Sterilite cart might mostly do the job (image courtesy a screen capture from Target.com). I like that I can roll it out for my project, then roll it back out of the way into a corner when I don't need it, and that the drawers lift out and have lids. I just ordered two of them and I'm hoping I can stack them.

I looked at a bunch of stores online and this is the best price I have found. Have you noticed that if you add the word "scrap" to a storage item the price doubles?

and here's the follow through

To this. I bought it at Target in their closet organizing section, and I'm really happy with it. No more felt being trampled underfoot or piled in corners and laundry baskets, where I can't see what I have. The smaller scraps that I couldn't bear to throw away got squirreled away in an old coke bottle crate which sits on top of the organizer. There are cubby holes left empty, so clearly that indicates I need to buy more felt. Yes.

Try to ignore the beige walls, the clutter, the dust and the very non-craft-bloggy look of my crafting studio. One day I will have a prettied up space to create in. Not today.