You can find the Magnetic Die Storage books here at this link. These books will work beautifully with all your metal low-profile dies made by Impression Obsession, Lifestyle Crafts, Memory Box, My Favorite Things, Poppystamps, Savvy and Sizzix Framelits.
Thus far all of our posts have been technique driven, but one of the things that I appreciate so much is seeing how it is that others figure out storage solutions. As well I want to be able to share the different tools that I have discovered through my years of crafting and share the reason behind my choice in tools. So today I am going to begin by sharing my first "Storage and Organization" post.
I don't know about you, but it absolutely drives me crazy when I can't find the tools I need, or have to flip through pages and pages before I arriving at what I was looking for. Frankly it is pretty funny but sometimes in my search I get sidetracked and then I have to start all over again - arrgh!
In the early days when I first received my Nestability prototypes I discovered a way to keep my dies organized that I thought would work well. You can see the pictures of my first solution here. It is a fairly reasonable solution, but I found that I was spending so much time flipping through this album, with the dies sliding out of the pockets as I would do so, that I just wasn't happy with this solution.
At Summer CHA I was browsing for a solution to this problem and discovered these beauties made by Lifestyle Crafts/Quickutz.
This is an 8"x10" magnetic storage book. I never like to assume that things will work well and so I started out by trying one with the Nestabilities. Well, needless to say I was sold!
There is a slightly raised inner edge and a fold-over magnetic flap that keeps your "book" firmly closed. The snap to the magnet is wonderful, easy enough to pull the die away and yet firm enough to keep the dies in place.
As you can see I have been able to put all my circles in to one folder! I'm not certain what I'm going to do now that we have the pinked circles to add to this collection - LOL! For now I just put them in a folder with other new dies that I am trying so hard to avoid using because no one can purchase them and it is driving you all crazy, but they are worth having to come up with an alternate plan Ü
I then proceeded to make labels for each folder indicating which dies were inside. It is so thrilling to just reach into the cupboard and pull out the set I need to use. If I were just a tad more organized I would alphabetize them, but I'm not quite that anal (at least at this moment Ü) In hindsight I wish I would have placed the writing a little lower on the label so that I wouldn't have a rounded corner, but at least they are labelled, right!?!
Being it is difficult to read my labels I will share the different categories I have used so far:
- Circles (holds all Circles)
- Ovals (holds both Petite and Regular)
- Rectangles
- Long Rectangles
- Squares
- Hearts, Stars, Paisleys
- Tags
- Labels (new)
- Hardware, Alphabet
- Bird, Flower, Butterfly, Pinked Circles (new)
- Flowers, Leaves
As you can see I'm a very basic gal - black and white with a little wood, chrome and glass. I wish that they would make all tools and toys in black, then everything would coordinate. But no - they have to make pink, and blue, and lime, and raspberry, and... LOL! OK, I'll stop now before you think that I'm obsessive-compulsive Ü
So that's it for today ladies (and gentlemen if there are any of you out there reading my blog you need to chime in, it appears that it's mostly just us girls Ü). Please let me know if you find these interesting or dull. If I'm boring you with this information that is the last thing I want to do, being your time is precious! If you like this type of post then I will continue on of course. I can hardly wait to share my IKEA drawers - LOL!
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!
