Organization Tips » Judy Nolan

More ways to modify vinyl sleeves for your papercrafting tools

Organization Tips, Paper Crafts, Tool Talk

Feb 152013

In the last couple of weeks I have been organizing my paper crafting tools, moving them from plastic shoe boxes to three-ring binders to make them more visible and accessible. In previous posts I discussed how I used a variety of vinyl sleeves to store acrylic and rubber cling stamps, as well as cutting dies. These sleeves can be purchased at office supply stores.

This last week I transferred all of my embossing folders and Fiskars Texture Plates into binders. I used a standard-sized three ring binder for Cuttlebug™, Lifestyle Crafts™ (formerly QuicKutz) and Sizzix® embossing folders, and a smaller 7-1/2 inch x 9 inch binder for Fiskars Texture Plates.

Because I already had an unused box of vinyl sheet protectors, I decided to use them for the embossing folders. However, they had to be subdivided into 2 sections to hold two embossing folders, side by side. Ahead of time, I sliced a sheet of 8-1/2 inch x 11 inch card stock in half, cutting it 1/16th of an inch shy of a half-sheet. Then I inserted it into the sheet protector, and used the edge of the card stock as my sewing guide. In almost no time at all, I had a thick stack of pages ready to insert in my binder. Instead of labeling the embossing folders, I stuck labels to half-sheets of card stock. Why? Sometimes I apply paint or embossing powder to the plastic embossing folders. You don’t want to adhere paper labels to something that will get washed later.

Some of my embossing folders come in varied sizes, particular when I have bought them as a set. I had to sew customized pockets for them, which was surprisingly easy to do. I took a sheet of thin chipboard (the kind you find in a package of sheet protectors—no big surprise there!) and slid it inside the sheet protector. Then I used a metal ruler as a cutting guide, and sliced through the vinyl with a Slice™ ceramic cutting blade. You can use any blade that is handy, to be honest, but use a light touch. You don’t want to cut through your chipboard to the back side of the sheet protector! Then I sewed the open sides of the pockets. The sheet protector shown below has four pockets.

I discovered that the lightweight pages in the binder have a tendency to droop, and was afraid this would result in torn pages where the binder rings went through the pages. To remedy this difficulty, I just wrapped an elastic hair band around the binder. This worked nicely.

My next challenge was customizing the sheet protectors to fit 5-3/4 inch x 7 inch Fiskars Texture Plates. This took more work. Initially I sliced off 1-7/8 inches from both the top and bottom of a sheet protector, and 2-7/8 inches from the right side. Then I took what was left and tried to stitch the bottom and right edges to form a pocket. This didn’t work because the two layers of vinyl were too slippery. You can’t pin vinyl, and I didn’t want to take the time to stabilize the two layers by “pinning” them with paper clips. Instead, I sliced off part of the bottom, then stitched it closed right away. Then I sliced off the right side of the page, and stitched it closed, too. Doing it in stages seemed to keep the vinyl from slipping. You’ll notice that I used a permanent marker to dot where holes need to be punched to fit the page inside the binder.

Left photo: Trim bottom edge of sheet protector and stitch it.
Right photo: Trim right edge of sheet protector and stitch it.

The finished pocket holds a Fiskars Texture Plate snugly. I hole-punched the left side of the page to fit inside the binder.

As I was punching holes in the customized pockets, I learned that if I was even slightly off in my measurements, the page didn’t line up with the binder rings. My choices were to be more careful, or use a more accommodating punch. I used my McGill Badge/Slot Punch, and that worked much better.

I know it sounds like a lot of work to customize vinyl sheet protectors for your embossing folders and texture plates, but I got the job done in one evening—not too bad!

Modifying a vinyl pocket to store long, narrow & thin cutting dies

Organization Tips, Paper Crafts, Tool Talk

Feb 032013

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and my secret’s out. I’m not watching the game, but instead am completing the labeling of my cutting dies. This last week was very productive in terms of paper crafts organization.

I stopped at my local scrapbooking store this afternoon, and asked the manager there if she had heard of any clever solutions for storing thin cutting dies, the kind that measure about 12 inches long and are about 1-3/4 inch to 2-3/8 inches wide. I actually had a plan in mind before I asked this question, but was hoping there might already be a convenient product out there that would make my job easier. The store manager told me that a friend of hers stored her long, thin cutting dies in a three-ring binder inside 12-inch-long negative sleeves. Sadly, these negative sleeves had been discontinued in her store.

Well, that was pretty close to the solution I had in mind. I had already put my smaller thin cutting dies in trading card, photo and CD/DVD pocket sleeves—the same solution I’ve been using all week for acrylic stamps, rubber cling stamps, stencils and templates—but I suspected there wasn’t a readymade sleeve for long, thin cutting dies. Since the negative sleeves weren’t available, I had an alternate plan that involved the use of my sewing machine and legal size clear vinyl pockets. The ones I found were punched for 3-ring or 4-ring binders, and were 5 millimeters thick—durable, in other words.

Because the pocket was just a little too long and would have extended both above and below the top and bottom of my binder, I had to slice off 1-3/8 inches. I took this off the bottom of the pocket, since I needed the extra length at the top, and it really didn’t matter if the pocket extended past the top of my binder.

Then I stitched the bottom of the pocket closed, using a machine stitch length of 3.5 on my Pfaff sewing machine (8 stitches per inch). No special Teflon presser foot was necessary; I just used my standard multi-purpose foot and stitched across the bottom of the pocket.

Next step was to cut myself a sewing guide from scrap card stock, 2-3/4 inches wide, that I would be able to insert in the pocket and stitch beside it to form a narrow pocket for each cutting die. It didn’t really matter that the guide was “scrappy” itself; you can eyeball a straight stitching line pretty easily.

I stitched down the length of the pocket twice more, each time inserting my card stock sewing guide into the pocket for the next compartment.

As you can see, the pocket holds my cutting dies perfectly. I have both QuicKutz® dies from Lifestyle Crafts, as well as Tim Holtz ones, and the 2-3/4 inch width seems to accommodate both types of dies.

On the reverse side of the pocket, you can see the paper inserts that accompany the cutting dies. This makes it easy to remember what results to expect from your dies.

As I did last week, once more I recycled some old calendar pages for the front and back cover of my three-ring binder that holds my cutting dies. You can see how the long, thin dies extend past the top of the binder. This doesn’t affect the way the binder sits on the shelf, so I don’t mind.

Have you discovered an alternate method for storing long, thin cutting dies? If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Getting organized when the chill is on

Organization Tips, Paper Crafts, Tool Talk

Jan 312013

I’m not sure who determined that spring is when deep cleaning takes place, but in January, when wind chill temperatures dip to -14 degrees, I feel more like cleaning than when the daffodils are poking up their heads and the walking path has my name scribed in chalk. If this is the image that greeted you when you woke up in the morning, my guess is you’d dive back under the blankets, or you’d definitely decide to stay indoors and be productive. I did both, but not at the same time.

No, my camera is not out of focus. This is what fog and drifting snow look like together. And yes! It is definitely freezing.

Really cold temperatures motivate me to get organized. My earlier posts this week showed how I reorganized my acrylic and rubber cling stamps. I applied the notebook system to my brass stencils and plastic templates yesterday, and am well on my way to finishing this project. Temporarily, I have adhered sticky notes to the pages to identify the categories. You’ll notice that some of the stencils are over-sized and extend beyond the top of my notebook. Is there such a thing as a legal-sized three-ring binder? It probably doesn’t matter, though. I simply raised the shelf on my bookcase to accommodate the height needed. Who would have guessed that I had collected so many of these?!

In an exchange of e-mails this week, I whined to Edi, one of my fellow Blogging Business Artisans teammates, that I need more space in my studio. She shared with me a blog post in which she shows how she hung shoe organizers on both sides of the entry door to her work space. Of course, Edi doesn’t have shoes in them, but instead some of her supplies. I thought this was an excellent way to reclaim some space! If you visit Bed, Bath & Beyond, they sell clear vinyl shoe organizers for $14.99, complete with door hangers. I hung one up and filled it with Tim Holtz cutting dies, border punches, specialty hole punches and decorative-edge scissors. This worked so well, in fact, that today I returned to the store and picked up another one to hang on the opposite side of my closet door. Now, if I could just figure out where to put my clothes, I’d be able to use this narrow closet for my paper. A girl can dream, can’t she?

The best part of using a shoe organizer is that I was able to empty some boxes that had been sitting on a bookshelf, giving me a nice, open space for the three-ring notebooks I’ve been working on all week.

I love it when a plan comes together!

How to store your unmounted rubber stamps

Organization Tips, Paper Crafts, Tool Talk

Jan 292013

Yesterday I shared with everyone the acrylic stamp storage solution I implemented—a three-ring binder system with vinyl sleeves for every stamp. At the same time, I promised to share my storage solution for rubber cling stamps, anticipating that a similar system would work. Rubber clings are unmounted rubber stamps, or stamps that are not attached to a wooden block.

I discovered that the binder system I used for my acrylic stamps worked pretty well for the rubber clings, but there were a few additional challenges:

Rubber clings are thicker than clear acrylic stamps, so you cannot fit as many pages in a binder.
The thickness of the rubber clings means they do not slide in and out of CD/DVD pocket pages, trading card pages or photo sleeves as easily as thinner, clear acrylic stamps do.
Because rubber clings are not see-through and because the image that faces you in a binder is a reverse image, sometimes it is difficult to interpret what you are seeing.
The heavier weight of rubber clings means that each page needs to be backed with something stiff to keep pages from sagging or buckling in a binder.

Here’s how I solved each one of the above challenges:

I limited myself to 10 pages of rubber cling stamps per binder.
Instead of using CD/DVD pocket pages, trading card pages or photo pages, I simply used full-sized (8-1/2 x 11-inch) vinyl page protectors, which have more slack, allowing rubber cling stamps to slide in and out more easily.
On the front side of each page, you’ll see the rubber clings. On the back side, you’ll see a sheet of white card stock. I stamped the images so that I’d know what the rubber cling impressions look like, and also so that I can return the stamp to the appropriate location when I’m finished with it.
Each vinyl protector page of rubber cling stamps contains a sandwich of three sheets, giving the page stiffness: an overhead transparency to which I adhered the clings, and two sheets of white card stock, one of which is stamped with the rubber cling’s images.

Please pardon the glare! This is the front side of a sample page.

This is the back side of a typical page, on which the images are stamped.

As I did for yesterday’s three-ring binders, I used two-inch-wide adhesive tabs to divide the stamps into categories. Obviously your system of organization might be different from mine, but my binder sections include Animal Kingdom, Borders & Embellishments, Backgrounds, Botanical, Christmas, Journaling, Miscellaneous and Sentiments. I did use D-ring binders instead of O-ring ones because this type of notebook is a little sturdier and I thought it might handle better the weight of the rubber cling stamps. You can see below that once more I recycled some old calendar pages for the covers of the binders.

There are other effective ways to store unmounted rubber stamps. In her post, Organization {Friday} Unmounted Stamp Storage, Patter Cross describes the clear plastic boxes she uses, UniKeep™ 1.25″ View Case Binder™, which will store 3 to 4 pages of unmounted stamps. Patter inserts three-hole-punched GKD binder sheets in these boxes.

Another way to store unmounted rubber clings is to create your own pages. Megan Bush, a paper crafter who blogs at Life in Paper, uses a three-ring binder for her rubber clings, but her pages are very different from mine. In her YouTube video, DIY Rubber Stamp Storage Sheet, she shares how she laminates card stock and adheres her stamps to it. She points out that if you are concerned about the stamps falling off, you can insert them in sheet protectors, just as I do with my transparency sheets. Megan stamps the reverse side of her card stock with images before she laminates it. My guess is that either method works and costs about the same, so my recommendation is that you choose whichever method seems to be the least amount of work for you! If you add sheet protectors to Megan’s method, however, the costs increase.

Organizing your acrylic stamps

Organization Tips, Paper Crafts, Tool Talk

Jan 282013

Do you sometimes squeeze a lot of your supplies into a small space, only to realize that because your items are so tightly packed, you’re not able to view them easily, and thus don’t use them very often? It’s like that old adage says, “Out of sight, out of mind.” That’s how I have been feeling about my collection of clear acrylic stamps. I’ve been storing them in one of those inexpensive clear plastic shoe boxes you can buy at Target or Walmart, and though it looks nice stacked on top of other boxes just like it, I pretty much don’t even know the stamps are there.

In an effort to come up with a better and more visible storage solution, I began combing the Web for ideas. Finally, I discovered Jennifer Wilson’s post, How to Organize Clear Stamps, which is a wonderful summary of the various methods that are out there for organizing your clear acrylic stamps. You can store them in a notebook or binder, clip them to a spinning rack, stand them up vertically in a box or basket inside their original wrappers, or put them inside plastic CD cases (minus the case’s guts) and stack them in a container or on a shelf. All of these methods have their pros and cons, which Jennifer lays out very clearly for you. I highly recommend you check out her post if you’re not sure which storage idea will work for you. Meanwhile, here’s what I came up with, since I have a fairly large collection of stamps.

I decided to store my stamps inside three-hole punched vinyl sleeves which fit nicely into heavy duty, three-ring notebooks. Although this may sound like a commercial for Office Depot or Office Max, I located most of the supplies I needed at these two stores, with one stop at Archiver’s for adhesive dots. I discovered that vinyl sleeves come in many different varieties that seem to fit whatever size acrylic stamp you own. The ones I deemed most helpful included 2-count CD/DVD binder pages, 3-1/2 x 5-inch photo binder pages, trading card binder pages, and 8-1/2 x 11-inch clear sheet protectors.

Most stamps, when you purchase them, are sandwiched between two rectangles of clear plastic inside a flimsy cello envelope. The clear plastic rectangles serves a double purpose, keeping the stamp clean while making the design visible. Usually the design is printed in black on one side of the stamp, or it is printed on the plastic protector sheet to which the stamp is adhered. The design shows up especially well against a white background, so I cut rectangles of white card stock to fit inside all of the vinyl sleeve pages (or their pockets) that I had purchased. Some of the stamps were missing their plastic backing sheet, so I replaced it with a rectangle cut out from an overhead transparency. Once upon a time I used transparencies for training presentations I conducted, but the days of the overhead projector are nearly past and the leftover transparencies have since found their way into my paper crafting supplies. This is what one of the binder pages looks like, when you combine card stock and stamp inside the pockets or full-sized pages. You’ll notice I am storing stamps on one side of each page only.

Some of the stamps were too big to fit inside the specialized pocket pages, so I used full-sized sheet protectors. I stuck adhesive dots to the back corners of the stamp backing sheet, and pressed them onto card stock. Then I slid them into the sheet protectors. You can find these adhesive dots at a scrapbooking store like Archiver’s, or in the scrapbooking aisles of a department store such as Target or Walmart.

If you’ve been reading my posts, then you know that I prefer Corel WordPerfect software. I was introduced to it back in 1984 and am quite comfortable with it, so that’s the software I use most often. I utilized its Tables feature to create labels I could print, cut out with scissors, and slide inside two-inch-wide adhesive tabs. I bought Office Depot brand adhesive tabs, but you’ll find that Avery and other brands work equally well.

On each tab I typed the name of each section I wanted to have in my binders, according to the way I intended to use them. There are two columns so that I can fold each label in half, thus producing double-sided tabs.You may prefer to organize your stamps by manufacturer’s brand or according to the frequency you use them. There is not really a right or wrong way to do this, but this is what works for me. You can use Microsoft Word to accomplish the same task I did with Corel WordPerfect. The adhesive tab package, in fact, comes with perforated card stock that you can slide in your printer and then tear apart into individual tabs; the package usually contains instructions for how to set up and enter your labels using Microsoft Word software. I used color card stock instead because that made the tabs more visible inside my binder.

If you decide to store your acrylic stamps this way, make sure you use a heavy duty binder, since you don’t want the metal hardware to separate from the binder cover. I used Wilson Jones® Heavy Duty binders with their “Extra Durable Hinge.”

I needed labels for the binders’ spines, so I returned to the Tables feature in Corel WordPerfect, and created a one-column, two-row table that stretched across my page in a landscape orientation. Since my binders were two inches thick, each row in my table was two inches high.

Finally, it was time to put everything together. I slid the spine labels into the binder, and decided the binder cover needed some spiffing up. I had just put away in a drawer my 2012 Susan Winget calendar, which was filled with images of birds, butterflies, dragonflies and flowers. I can never bear to throw away these beautiful calendars, so cutting some pages to the right size for my stamp binders seemed like the perfect opportunity to give new life to an old calendar.

I cut the front cover so that it measured 11 inches x 11 inches. The easiest way to insert card stock into the clear vinyl pocket attached to your cover is to open up your binder face down. This gives you some slack so that you can slip your card stock without difficulty into the vinyl pocket.

I cut the back cover so that it measured 11 inches tall x 9-3/4 inches wide. Two rivets punched into the back cover prevented me from completely covering it, but I think it looks fine, just the same.

It took me a few days to get all of my stamps organized, but now I’m ready to tackle my rubber cling stamps the same way. Because they are thicker, I will likely use only full-size page protectors. I’ll share the results here when I’m done. What acrylic stamp storage method have you found useful?

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