Overview

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  If tangles of ribbon, a random scattering of buttons, and plastic bins full of this and that are clouding your scrapbooking space, then all that inspiration you hunt for will be useless. Clean up your space and clear your mind with organization ideas that recycle items that would otherwise end up in the trash. Build your own storage systems instead of using the expensive storage options available at craft stores. Get everything tucked away in its own place so you can be productive in your scrapbooking room.
  
  

Ribbon

• Ribbon storage boxes from a craft store are quite costly, especially if you have a considerable amount of ribbon to store. Save yourself a lot of money by creating your own expandable ribbon storage system. Purchase 3/8-inch wooden dowels and thread your ribbon spools onto the dowels. Arrange the ribbon by color to make it easier to find what you are looking for later. Screw large screw hooks into the wall, one for each end of the dowel, and hang the dowels on the hooks. Hang the dowels one above the other if multiple dowels are necessary. Fix a dowel that sags in the middle under the weight of the ribbon with an extra screw hook in the middle.
  
  

Jars

• Jars, both recycled and newly purchased, are handy storage tools for scrapbook materials because you can easily see what is inside them. Most jars can also be stacked, making them space-efficient. Store small items such as buttons and rhinestones sorted by color in baby food jars. Use larger jars to store paper flowers and loose ribbon. Organize your desktop by storing pens, scissors, rulers and other small tools in jars.
  
  

Inspiration

• Keep your sources of inspiration from turning your work space into a cluttered mess by organizing it with a few different tools. Keep magazines in magazine holders along the top of a shelf or tucked away in a cupboard. Use bookends to keep scrapbooking books held up on a shelf. Organize photos you take of inspirational objects and things you clip from magazines on a magnetic board, cork board or a French memo board. Once the board starts to overflow, put the items into clear page protectors organized in a binder into different categories such as color or type of project.
  
  

Stamps

• Stamps are a convenient tool for making scrapbooks and are inexpensive when you consider the fact that they can be used repeatedly. Because stamps are so convenient and they come in so many different themes, scrapbookers tend to have a lot of them. You can keep them all in their original packaging in a plastic bin somewhere in your scrapbooking room, or you can organize them in a more functional way. Store your stamps in clear CD jewel cases organized by theme and stored in a CD tower. Create a binder that shows every stamp you own and which labeled CD each one is stored in for easy use.