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How to do organize/store your 12x12 embellishments sheets, whether stickers or chipboard? Do you keep them with the papers they match, or have some other method? And for you kit folks, if you get to the point where you're breaking up kit leftovers, what do you do with them then? Wondering because I've been watching Nic Mackin who built kits using these 12x12 sheets as the basis for putting kits together, and realizing that I tend to keep them with the papers they match - which might mean I'm not considering them for other pages.

I keep mine with their respective kits. I have a Longaberger basket (office organizer type) that holds older sheets without respective kits.
The important thing is to keep them where you can find them easily. The easier they are to find, the more likely you'll use them.

I'll be interested in what others are going.
Right now I have one of those 12x12 plastic storage "boxes" that all the letter sheets or big 12 x 12 letter/stickers/etc sheets go in.
But then I have to dig through them to find what I want.

If it's a new "kit"... like the Echo Park deals, I keep it all together.

Mostly they are kept with kits/matching papers... but I'm trying to make myself get rid of partially used sheets if I'm not going to finish them off. My nieces are recipients of most of that. I do have some shelf space devoted to Thickers and other sticker sheets.... alpha and other... that I should go through and purge from. And I need to do that with the remaining CS kits I have too. Yes, mine are still in kits, but I pull out what I need for any given project. My brain just prefers them organized that way. Tried it the other way and it drove me nuts.

Shimelle says she arbitrarily chose 70%. She feels that if she uses 70% of a sticker sheet, chipboard sheet, whatever, that she's gotten her money's worth. For some reason, that reasonated with me. If I use the majority, I don't feel obligated to use it all.

Also, when I've used most of the big sheets but still plan to use more, I might cut it up and mix it in with like items. Depends.

pamcook wrote:Shimelle says she arbitrarily chose 70%. She feels that if she uses 70% of a sticker sheet, chipboard sheet, whatever, that she's gotten her money's worth. For some reason, that reasonated with me. If I use the majority, I don't feel obligated to use it all.

Also, when I've used most of the big sheets but still plan to use more, I might cut it up and mix it in with like items. Depends.

I like what Shimelle says about 70% and if I do use that much I would be thrilled. Here's how I store my sticker sheets that I don't keep with a specific kit. Those solid translucent vertical magazine type holders have individual file containers plus dividers and hold the loose sheets of any size. I have three of those which I recently purged and reorganized. The bottom right shelving holds whole page kits and accompanying sticker/chipboard sheets.

I used up a lot of the remaining stickers on those 12 x 12" sheets on cards. Borders or partial borders can be cut up and stickers can be layered with pop dots, etc.

This is something I struggle with a lot, and I'm not especially consistent about it. I have a big black square bucket thing (on a rolling cart) with hanging file folders for my 12x12 printed designer papers, and I have a whole wall of those Recollections storage cubes for nearly everything else. Keep in mind that probably 90+% of my stash over the last 5 years has come from warehouse sales. So sometimes I get paper and embellishments that match, and sometimes I don't. I don't typically buy entire collections.

Any sticker sheet that I do NOT have a substantial amount of coordinating cardstock for, goes in one of the 12x12 cube drawers. However, if I've got cardstock from that collection, the sticker sheet is filed with the cardstock in the hanging folders - it works because it's flat. So that's how I do stickers.

As far as all other embellishments, that's quite a bit harder, because the "chunky" stuff doesn't store well in the hanging file folders. I have a drawer that I've labeled "embellishment collections". Lots of times, the warehouse boxes send lots of different embellishments from the same collection. So they all go together in that drawer. And I may or may not have matching cardstock. When I use that drawer as a starting place, I usually pull an embellishment collection, and then go to the hanging folders to see if I have matching cardstock so I am looking at it all together.

But even that has exceptions: Alphas, ribbons, flowers, blank chipboard, bling, etc that come in a specific collection are instantly co-mingled by category. Usually those things are not so strongly coordinated to the cardstock/kit, and I just separate it out right off the bat. Alphas have a drawer, ribbons have a drawer, flowers have a drawer, bling has a drawer and chipboard has a drawer. All collections are mixed.

Other random chunky embellishments that either don't belong to a particular collection, or I know I don't have anything else that matches, all goes in yet another drawer. And the 6x6 paper pads are in yet another drawer.

Lastly... as if all of that isn't confusing enough... when I have an entire pack of matching stuff (cardstock, stickers, alphas, other chunky embellishments), I sometimes just keep that stuff all together, and don't enter it into the rest of the filing system until I've had a chance to use some amount of it.

Sorry for the long (and probably confusing) response. I'm pretty good at getting stuff put away in a place that makes sense initially. And my current storage scheme has worked for me for more years than anything else. But there is nothing that irritates me more than when I start working with a couple of pieces of cardstock, wishing I had something that coordinated with it, and then stumbling across a bunch of matching embellishments months later. And this storage method has been fairly effective for me.

mine are in one big drawer

I keep them with the kit until I've pretty well done what I want to with them. Then they go into a basket which I plow through when I have new paper w/o embellishments and put together another kit. I have those beautiful pads from Debbie that are waiting for me to match up this weekend with embellishments. If they don't fit anything, I keep them in the basket and go through them when what I have with the paper isn't quite hitting the right note. I have one sheet that has one lonely sticker on it that I love and am determined to use.

Monica - Maybe we need a challenge to use our lonely partially used sticker sheets!

Thanks ladies, great responses. While keeping the sticker/chipboard sheets with the matching papers makes it easy when I use that collection, I was looking for an alternative that might make me use more of them - and you've given me some good ideas. I think I'll pull them all out to store together for awhile and see if that helps me use them.

Using those single remaining stickers does sound like a good challenge.

I went through this exercise last night with a particular set of embellishments. I had like every embellishment that existed for the Pink Paislee "Vintage Vogue" (I think) collection. I used most of the papers, but had way more embellishments than I knew what to do with. And most of them were really strongly coordinated to the papers, so I found them tough to use.

So last night I set out to "kill the kit". I'm not finished, and I don't have photos for the layouts, but I have selected some sketches that are perfect for those embellishments. So when all is said and done, embellishments from that collection will no longer be in my "embellishment collections" drawer. I've been staring at those for literally YEARS trying to figure out what to do with them. I think I'm going to use them for my SIL's bridal shower.

That sounds like excellent progress, Julie. I just pulled papers for my next layout, and in the file found a 12x12 chipboard sheet that doesn't match ANY papers. So I pulled it out as the start of my 12x12 flat embellishment folder, and will certainly add others where I have only a couple or no matching papers. I think matching them to photos first and then adding the appropriate papers will be the way to use them - as you are doing with your Pink Paislee embellishments.

Excellent ideas, gals. Evidently I have resisted these 12x12 sheets. I can only think of one or two in my stash. But I have one jillion untouched or barely touched cutaparts from Club Scrap kits and I have some plans for using them up. Stay tuned.

oh Jennifer - you make an excellent point about those cutaparts. I have a massive stash of those too, and could never bring my self to get rid of them. I didn't even consider those when I was talking about where stuff is stored in my room! Those cutaparts all live together in a far, dark corner of my room where they haven't seen the light of day in maybe 5 years. I need to get those integrated into my embellishment system and use those up!