Storing Those Scraps!

Hi there

I think anyone that is a crafter will agree that no matter how hard we try, we end up with countless off-cuts and scraps left from our projects.  

I am certainly guilty of nearly always reaching for a fresh piece of cardstock from my organised stash instead of using up the perfectly good smaller pieces, and the mountain of these leftovers was starting to grow.

So I gathered together the box and carrier bag that these were living in and spent a couple of hours sorting through them and organising them into some logical and easy to grab storage.

I had some A5 plastic zip wallets which I had picked up previously from a couple of stores as I thought they would prove to be useful at some point, and they were perfect for this.  Any off-cuts which were larger than A5 I placed back in my main cardstock storage.

I had four of these reinforced plastic zip wallets which I picked up some time ago at The Range (I can't see them on the website but they were in store in the office stationery section).

So I used these four wallets for: Blues, Greens, Purples/Lilacs and Reds/Pinks

And so that each can be identified easily from my cupboard I tied co-ordinating pieces of ribbon to the tabs already on these...

I also had some different plastic wallets, with plastic slide-type zips, which I had previously bought from WH Smith (a stationery/book store here in the UK).  These aren't as sturdy and probably not as hardwearing so I used these for the colours of which I have fewer scraps.

So in these I am storing: Yellow/Oranges, Metallic/Glitter, Black/Neutrals, Vellum/Acetate

These don't have ribbon tabs so I punched holes in the side and tied the identifying ribbons to those...

I had tonnes of white and cream cardstock scraps so these are now altogether in a larger A4 zip wallet...

I also had countless strips of white trimmings so these now live in a spare tin so whenever I need a sentiment strip I don't need to even go to my white scraps wallet, I'll just use these....and it appears these could last a lifetime!

I feel so much better for sorting all these out, it's a job that needed doing for a couple of years, and I hope you find this useful.