Tips from my scrap area

I wanted to share with you today a few simple tricks that I've learned to make working in my scrap area a little easier. I work in a fairly small space, and I have small children, so I have to work around those issues to make things easy and accessible!
The first trick I have for you is to use small magnets to keep all your needles and straight pins up and within reach. I love having them on my metal organizing tins, or even on top of the metal lid on my button jar. They stick there very well and are easy to find!

The next thing I want to show you is where I keep my flowers! I have a 12x12 piece of cork hanging on my wall, and I store some of my flowers on there... I stack them together and stick a push pin through them, and voila! A pretty way to display them and keep them where I remember to use them.













I also keep a few of my favorite flowers in glass mason jars where they are easy to grab for crops & such.











I really like the idea of a Clip-it-Up, but I knew that if I had one sitting on my desk, sooner or later one of my littles (my kids are 3, 2, and 1) wouldn't be able to resist all those lovely dangly stickers.

I saw this on several websites, and created it for myself in just a few minutes! It's just a simple curtain rod, curtain hangers, and clips. It's not pretty, but it's very easy to use!




For some of my more frequent letter stickers that I use, I store them in an old napkin holder I found in my Grams' garage. If you don't have a grams that has cool vintage napkin holders just laying around, check your local thrift store or yard sales. Even a new napkin holder would work well for this storage!

















I keep all my kits in one of these wonderful 12x12 plastic drawer sets. I made little labels for each drawer, so I can keep the current kit in an easy to access place. Once I'm done with that kit, then I break up any remaining items and store them with other like items in the rest of my stash.




When I first get the kit, I lay all the bigger pieces down in the drawer, then I use one of these plastic trays (found at Walmart for .99!) to store all the smaller pieces. It's easy to just grab the whole drawer and take it into the tv room, and not worry about losing any of the small pieces.








The last little tip I wanted to show you is one my friend Brittney recently told me about. You know how Staz-On ink comes with that little plastic thing inside to keep the ink protected and juicy? Well, it's always a pain to me to lift the lid off, and that thing, and then get it back on... I know, I'm lazy. :) Put a couple of foam adhesive squares in the lid, then stick that plastic tray onto it. It still covers the inkpad perfectly, but then you don't have two loose lids! Ingenius!

I'd love to hear what sort of little solutions you've found to things around your scrap room!