Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Working Wednesday: Figuring Out Product Storage

I've been struggling to figure out how to best store my kanzashi dragonfly magnets.

Because the beaded-wire bodies are perched atop the fabric wings, I'm always a little worried about them. And their antennae and tail wire have a bad habit of getting twisted up together if I leave them in a jumble.

My latest batch of dragonflies, completed last week. See the set of wings without a body? I took a bunch of photos while these guys were in process, and somehow never noticed it, even though it was captured in all the pics. My 7-year-old, however, looked at them with a brief glance and said, "You missed one." :)


Scott's an engineer, and engineers are really good at figuring out design issues. So while I'd been imagining something along the lines of egg cartons (too small of cubbies) or Christmas ornament storage with little square places for each piece (way larger than I need so too much wasted space), Scott approached it from a completely different angle: The dragonflies are magnets, so if I store them in a metal container, they'll pretty much stay separate as long as I'm not juggling the container. Brilliant!

About 40 dragonflies fit into a huge holiday cookie tin that I saved years ago, sure that someday I'd find a use for it. Isn't it awesome?
I'm especially pleased that it will make it way easier to transport them to craft fairs with far less likelihood that I'll waste time having to untangle antennae during setup.

Meanwhile, Scott has been very busy in the woodshop, too. His batch of Chai Variations has officially entered finishing stages, as well as some other pieces. Check it out:

Aren't they gorgeous? And each of the eight Variations is different from the others, either in wood choices or tweaking dimensions of some of the design elements, like wider or narrower stripes.


And last but not least, apologies for last week's post's poor photographs. I was trying to get it posted before I headed out for a busy afternoon, and really should have figured out a better way to shoot my new mini-bolt organization system than shooting through the plastic containers. So here's a view inside the large box of felt:


It's so much easier to see at a glance what colors I have, both in regular felt and glitter felt!


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