AHHH CLEAN!

Ahhhh Clean!
A place for everything, and everything in it's place.. or so it goes. I don't know how long it will stay clean this time, but I'm really making a effort to keep it that way. it's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate. I can also see each creative phase I've gone through. From Abstract paintings, to Polymer Clay, to jewelry making. It's like a living journal!

I've done some purging, and even started a "for yard sale" box, and actually parted with some never used art supplies...which.... weren't very many, because I kept thinking "hey, one day I might want this again!".... yes, I suffer from "packrat syndrome"

I devised a couple clever ( I think) space saving, clutter busting ideas. Since I've been into the collage thing, I've really gone wild buying all those cool scrapbook papers. But they were everywhere. So I took an old yard stick, which is actually 48 inches long, and hammered small nails about every 6-7 inches, along the length. (there's still room for more!) On the back side, I superglued washers at each end, to hang the yard stick horizontally. That took all of 5 minutes to do. I bought a pack of those big black paper clips, and started sorting through, and organizing the paper. I was going to do it by color, but decided to sort them by pattern instead, although I think it may work best to sort them by color, if I'm working with a particular color palet. Anyway each pattern got paper clipped together, and hung by the corner. The big clips can hold a good stack of paper. It's a great way to keep the paper neat, and accessable. When I 'm using them, I just take them all off the nail hooks, and lay them along my side table. They don't get all spread about, and mixed up this way, and when I find a sheet I want, I just remove it from the clip. Another thing I did was to keep all the sheets that had been cut, seperate. I use a really cool square vinyl tote, that I got free for buying a magazine subscription. The papers fit perfectly, and I know to look in there before using a full, uncut sheet. For smaller bits of paper, I just put them in a large plastic bin, that sits on my art table.

I've also started a collection of ribbon, that was spilling out of the basket I was keeping them in. Of course they were all coming un-wound, and making me nuts. So, I took a length of yarn, tied one end to the middle of a pencil, ( you could use a popscicle stick, or square piece of cardboard, that you

ve made a hole in the middle of, then string the yarn threw the hole, and secure with a knot on the underside) then started to "string" each spool of ribbon. I tied a loop at the top of the string, and hung it on the corner of my shelf. Wow... I don't think I've ever been this organized in my life! My next project? sorting through all the images I've printed out. Hmmm we'll see.

Here's a few more pictures.