In My Studio - Mists/Paints Storage

Hi friends!  This month the GraceBox Team (along with a few friends from the Creative Team!)  are sharing how they store their paints/mists!

Oh how I love using paint and getting messy while creating something colorful - but unfortunately my paint storage is equally as messy! Being a former art teacher my basement is exploding with tubs, buckets, & shelves of paint in every shape, size & color. Instead of scaring you with those pictures, I'll show you my smaller collections of specific paints for my Bible Journaling Art.  I keep it close to my desk so I always have access to it.  

First of all, I don’t have a craft room or table for that matter, I just have a cart. On a normal day, I craft on my desk that doesn’t have any drawers but only has a tiny space/shelf for me to stack some supplies in boxes.

I love these medium-sized acrylic boxes. It’s clear so you can see everything but what I love most about it is that it has these lids which doubles as a tray. I don’t have a ton of paint but these are the ones that I have and on the tray is where I put the colors that I’m reaching for the most for the month or for when I’m working through a certain kit. 

I might be the least mixed media inclined member of the creative team, but it doesn’t stop me from buying mixed media supplies! My stash is relatively small, so it makes it easy to contain. I have a few of these refrigerator bins in my room for multiple purposes, and think they work perfectly for my paints and mists since they’re really easy to clean. I have a slightly larger fabric bin to hold my remaining supplies and the plastic refrigerator bin fits right inside. 

I keep my color sprays and paints along with some other mixed media supplies in a drawer cabinet which is placed right beneath my desk, so I can have easy access to the supplies whenever I need them.

I keep the ones I use a lot (it changes from time to time) on my desk though to have them handy. 

I've got all my paints/mists (i.e. all the messy stuff!) in one of the drawers of my Alex drawer.   I've used a couple clear plastic baskets to hold the mists and the paints just  fit in the gap perfectly!  Everything is super easy to find and I just take them out as I need (and I have to admit the rainbow colours are just pretty to look at this way, haha).

Hi dear CTK friends! I store my Color Mist's easy to reach on and in my Ikea Råskog. I use them quite often so I like that I easily can view them and just reach out my arm and grab the cart to get what I need :) 

We always love seeing how our Creative Team members store their goodies!  How do your store your journaling cards? We would love to see/hear (just share a post on the Facebook Fanpage!).

Is there anything you would like to see from our "In My Studio" posts? Please leave a comment below and we'll be sure to include it in the future!

Meet our Creative Team!

We are so excited to share a little about each of the designers for our brand new July-December 2018 Creative Team. The talented mix of women hail from all over the world and a couple come from our subscriber base. (We were WOW'ed by all of the super talented ladies - many from our subscriber base - who applied for the team this time around. You made our job very hard and narrowing the field down to these designers was one of those fun things/hard things as we easily wanted to make the team even bigger to include so many more.)

The projects from these creatives will begin appearing on our blog, Facebook fan page and on social media on July 1st (if you haven't already seen some of their sneaks!) Our July "Skyland" kits reveal at midnight PST on June 30 (or July 1, as the case may be).

We welcome you to meet the team!

- Trina

We thought we would have fun with the introductions of these creatives and have them answer a few questions. You may just see some of their personalities emerge as you read their answers!

1. Never Been Kissed, 17 Again and Inside Man...a strange assortment indeed!
2. Europe! I have always wished to visit there and fingers crossed that one day I am able too. I would love to experience the great variety of culture throughout Europe. 
3. The ability to teleport, it would make traveling so much easier and stress free!
4. Oooo this is very tough!! I’d have to say heart stickers, I can always change the size, colour and pattern to suit my project. 
5. Definitely gloss. 
6. Love square corners. 

1. I love the detectives of Agatha Christie.
2. I dream to go to New York.
3. I would like to stop time sometimes.
4. My favorite is – chipboard
5. More often I work with glossy photos.
6. Of course square.

1. 3 movies I love: The Hunger Games trilogy, Harry Potter and The Notebook.  
2. Travel to: Hawaii 
3. Superpower: Ability to heal others
4. One embellishment: Die Cut Ephemera 
5. Glossy photos 
6. Square or round corners - either but only one type per project (no mixing n matching or my OCD will kick in 😂) 

1. Dirty Dancing, Any book by Karen Kingsbury, The Crown (a Netflix series)
2. To Australia to meet a few of my scrappy friends :)
3. I don't know if it's a super power but it super hard for me though,lol! To be more PATIENT.
4. So hard...maybe puffy stickers? Or enamels?
5. Glossy 
6. Square

1. The Greatest Showman, sucker for Disney movies, The Red Queen Book Series 
2. Italy. Ciao. 
3. To look at a room & make it clean with my mind!
4. Ephemera!  
5. Glossy - wait, have I been missing out on a matte photos in my life?  I need to try Matte next time! 
6. Square - i love clean lines. 

1. The Notebook, any Marvel Movies, any feel good chick flicks ;)
2. Australia 
3. To instantly transport somewhere.
4. Chipboard elements
5. Glossy
6. Square 1000%!!!

1. Beauty & the Beast (Live Action), The Sound of Music, and anything Disney
2. Europe
3. To be invisible
4. Ephemeras
5. Matte
6. Round

1. Three books I've loved this year are Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman and First, We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson
2. I've been desperate to go to Japan since I was 16 years old and it's finally made it onto our long-term goal list!
3. Superpower? I'm not sure but I'd love to be able to cure headaches!
4. Stamps for sure, if I was only allowed one crafty thing for the rest of time it would be stamps. SO versatile.
5. Glossy photos please!
6. I switched to square corners a couple of years ago and I'm never going back! I can't even mixed them up, it has to be all square, all the time!

1. I love books and I tend to follow authors who write series  – some favourites:  Patricia Cornwell/Kay Scrapetta series (crime), Matthew Reilly/Scrarecrow series (thriller) and Cassandra Clare/Mortal Instruments (I know technically classed as young adult fiction and I’m way above that, but I really enjoyed them lol).
2. Egypt and see the pyramids firsthand.
3. Flight! 
4. Die-cuts, always and forever.
5. Recently converted to matte finish and I have to say I really kind of like it 😉
6. Square!

1. The World According To Garp, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter
2. Italy
3. Hmmmm....to be able to teleport!
4. Die cuts
5. Matte
6. Square

1. Harry Potter series (#4 is my favorite), Princess Bride (the book, the movie is slightly “meh” to me) and any book by David Sedaris. 
2. There’s so many places! But number one on my list is Italy. 
3. Telepathy
4. Stickers! 
5. I don’t know that I have a preference, but I use glossy. 
6. Square, for sure. 

1. The Time Travelers Wife (book & movie) , Benjamin Button (movie) and Circle of Friends (book)! 
2. Scotland!! We have a Scottish heritage, I would love to see that beautiful country! 
3. I would love to slow down time because some moments go by way too quickly for my liking! 
4. Stamps!!!! I’m on a serious stamping kick at the moment!
5. Matte!! Better for stamping directly on pictures! 
6. Square!! 

1. Me before you, loved the audiobook and the movie -  Wonder Woman (movie) - Hidden Figures, one of my favorites (movie)
2. Alaska, the temperatures during summertime sound very tempting to me and I love nature!
3. Super speed, so I could travel anywhere in a blink of an eye!
4. puffy stickers
5. glossy 
6. square

1. A Man Called Ove (a book by Fredrik Backman),  El Hijo de la Novia (Argentinian movie),  The Harry Potter series (I have read these at least 20 times)
2. My dream has always been to go to Australia/New Zealand  ( one day soon, I hope!)
3. I would love to be able to read minds.
4. This one is hard, but I think it would have to be die cuts.
5. Glossy of course
6. I will say square corners (but round corners are also nice).

1. I’m not big reader, but I love movies: Titanic, This Is 40 and The Great Gatsby.
2. Paris, France... but who’s kidding, all of Europe.
3. Literally, cause I’m this lazy, elasticity.
4. Patterned paper! I could fussycut everything.
5. Glossy.
6. Square is fine with me.

1. So many to choose from(!), but Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (book), The Light Between Oceans (book), and The Notebook (book and movie!) are somewhere at the top of my list :)
2. Alaska! I'll probably freeze, but it'll be worth it :)
3. To be able to fly.  Imagine all the places we could see if we had the ability to fly!
4. Stamping.  I love that you can reuse stamps as much as you want and they are versatile enough for any project.
5. I'm not super particular about this (surprisingly!), but I usually end up printing on glossy photo paper.
6. Square all the way!

1. P.S. I Love You. My favorite book (series) is Diana Gabaldon's The Outlander. With so many great books and movies to choose from, I'll list a movie I just watched again, The Hundred Foot Journey (mix culinary magic with romance [in France!] and it was a winner for me!).
2. Scotland - my Scottish roots have called to me all my life.
3. Time travel, for sure (with the ability to change outcomes, of course)!
4. Die-cut ephemera over and over and over again.
5. Glossy (not high-gloss), for sure.
6. Square. Is there any other way? Well, at least not in my albums. :)

In My Studio with the GraceBox Team

Welcome back for another installment of "In My Studio" and this month the GraceBox Team are sharing how they share their die-cuts/ephemera in their creative spaces!

Hello everyone! It's so good to be back to share a little tip on how I store my die-cuts. Each month after going through at the GraceBox kit I received, I will try to arrange all the products in one corner so I can keep grabbing them when I'm doing my projects. I enjoy having all the products I will be working for that particular month right in front of me. 

It is true that when I look at them, not only inspiration will pour but I'll actually use them on my project. Once that month is done, I'll put all aside and prepare for the new kit to arrive.

I love die cuts so much - I even have some collections I have been hoarding that I'm finally putting to use! I interchange using the word "ephemera" and "die cuts" since they fall into the same category for me. I like to have all of my die cuts in one place so they are easily accessible. I use a small container to house plastic CD sleeves I purchased online. To keep them organized, I cut off the back part of the packaging and place it in the sleeve to help me quickly see what pieces are in the collection. 

I love this system because it limits how many die cuts I can store at a time (although I do have one more of these containers but it doesn't have anything in it yet!). I also love that I can grab one or even a few of the CD sleeves to pack up with me if I want to craft on the go.

Xxo, Tara

Hey This is Jennie! My Die Cut Storage system is pretty simple. For my Citrus Twist Kits Die Cuts I use a plastic organizer I got at Dollar Tree. Every month I get my kit and divide the die cuts into labels, words and phrases, little sprinkle shapes like hearts or stars, tags and other not so common shapes. This way I can find the die cut I want easily! 

Once I am done with my kit that month I move my leftovers to a bigger organizer. In that box, I have more specific categories. I have 3 spaces for words: fancier words, single words or small phrases and regular size phrases. I also have 3 spaces for labels: CTK style label, small labels and long labels. In that bigger box I have tags, script words, circles, stars and other shapes. For collection die cuts I use CD plastic sleeves. I have some random die cuts that go into my embellishments drawers that are divided by colors. I hope this helps you get organized! 

When it comes to die cut or ephemera storage my approach is a bit scattered! Typically I like to keep sets together—not organize them by design, theme or color.  Most time die cuts come in nice resealable baggies that I can just label, if not, I just put them in one. 

I tend to have a paper kit or collection that I am working with for the week. I leave that out on my desk so I can find everything easily. I love putting the ephemera in trays so I can see what I have. For example, the Grace Box kit for June is bursting with bright colors, florals and the cutest flamingos! 

I have a few ceramic containers in different sizes. I love using the colored trays as props for photos too. The pink tray is a cupcake pan  that I found at a garage sale for .25 cents and spray painted it pink!  The heart tin is vintage from my antique kitchen collection. Finding fun pieces at thrift stores & auctions is one of my things to do!  

Many times I have one or two pieces left from a collection or set and they don’t have a home—they end up in here. A little box that I can quickly pull something out random and use. If I write a little thank you note or need to make a card quick– I look here. You never know what treasures are still hiding. My crafty five year old also loves to dig through it. She knows not to touch any other supplies, but the box is fair game! 

I used to keep the sets of ephemera in a binder but it was too full and hard to pull out. I have recently switched to putting them in this 2 foot tall organizer from Hobby Lobby. It has 12 sections that I can stack packets of die cuts and have some loose too. I love it. I just spin it around and find what I need. It is helpful to have the pieces out so you don’t forget what you have. I do need to purge it soon, I have tooooo many!

I recently saw a sign that said, “I have come to the conclusion that buying craft supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies.”  I love that! My goal this summer should be to be better organized and start using more of my beautiful papers & pieces. I hope this has given you an idea or two that you could use. Try different things and find the perfect thing for you space & your style of crafting!

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It's always so fun setting how the Design Team stores all their goodies!  How do your store your die-cuts? We would love to see/hear (leave a post on the Facebook Fanpage!).

Is there anything in particular you would like to see from our "In My Studio" posts? Please leave a comment below and we'll make sure to include it in future!