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!

Working Wednesday: Organization

I knew there had to be a better way to keep my fabric organized and accessible. I just didn't know how.

Then my favorite crafty blog, Diane Gilleland's Craftypod.com, had a post and podcast about The Art of Stash Keeping. And I learned so much from the podcast with Jeni Baker and the links to Jeni's posts about stash keeping.

Jeni had an entire series she calls The Art of Choosing, which I found fascinating reading.

But the tip that's making a real difference for me involved storing my fabric on "mini bolts" using comic book storage boards to wrap the fabric around. Wow!

So now I'm deep into organizing my fabric, and I've already used up my first package of 100 comic book storage boards! It will make a huge difference in being able to see all my fabric easily and being able to get it out of a stack without messing all the other fabric up.

Here are my first two bins:

The bin on the bottom is storing fleece, the one on top has all my felt.

Meanwhile, I picked up one of those wide-drawer plastic thingies at a garage sale ($5, which is awesome since I never see them for less than $25 on sale):

The bottom drawer has my satins and chiffons, the next one up holds my organzas. Soooo much better than the large shopping bag I'd had them in before!

Next up, will be tackling my many, many cottons that I accumulated during my quilting days. :-)

Want to see what I hope to someday have?

Check out the glass-doored bookcases in this post. I definitely have studio envy! :-)