The Organization Begins

My dear, sweet hubby offered to build me a studio - Creative Dreams. His offer came just before Christmas when he decided I needed out of the 'dungeon' (as he has dubbed the basement office) and into a more creative space. I probably won't sit at the desk and create in the studio for another year or so, but lots of other things can come in advance.

The floor plan is formulating, the colors are chosen and the organization process begins.
I've spent the past week cruising the 'creative space' gallery at Splitcoaststampers (sww.splitcoaststampers.com). 5, 967 photos of people's amazingly organized (and not so organized- but works for them) creative spaces. I've amassed a wide variety of pictures of things I'm thinking of implementing into the new studio.

To start with, while I have only a few stamps (one gal on SCS has over 6000!) my first project is to compile a index and image sheet for all of my stamps. I am using a 3-ring binder as my Stamp Binder. There will be five categories:

* SU Stamp Sets
SU unmounted Sets
Clear $ and misc. unmounted
Misc. block sets
Misc. block stamps

*SU indicates Stampin UP (www.stampinup.com)

The SU Sets will be indexed according to theme. At the top of each 8.5x11 sheet I have the Name of the set, catalog #, price and will stamp a Capital R if it is a retired set. Then I've stamped each image from that set in Night of Navy.

SU unmounted (new product) will be cataloged the same way and stored in photo pocket or baseball card sleeves

Clear $ and misc. unmounted are stored the same way

Misc. block sets will be stamped on an 8.5x11 sheet with their category (i.e. Christmas) stamped at the top of the page and filed in calendar appearance order.

Misc block stamps will be included in the 'block sets' category in the same manner.

This way... when I'm creating, I only have to pull out the binder and flip through the pages (upon pages) of images to get an idea of what I want to play with. Once I've decided on the project, I only need to pull those stamps - not several taking up work surface space.

As soon as I've finished doing the cataloging this weekend, I'll post some pics. For now... I have a few images left to catalog.

How do you organize your inventory? Do you know EVERY stamp you own? Are there any you purchased but NEVER used? Tell us your story.