Organising My Arts & Crafts Stash

I don’t know about you, but i have tons of arts & crafts stuff i collected over the years. Sometimes, when wrapping presents or making hand-made cards i cannot always lay my hands on everything i’ve got. I scramble around in my humble home office and however much clever storage i have, like my boby trolley or my lego storage head, i still misplace things or can’t remember what i’ve got or haven’t got.

In order to resolve this dilemma i started cataloguing some of my materials. This serves to:

a. remember what i’ve got (i then know where to find it) and
b. to be able to replenish or replace various items i need.

Let me start off with showing you a good example. Let’s take my MT tapes. I’ve had so many over the years and am always hunting for more. It has actually happened that i’ve bought the same one twice. By cataloguing, i can now see that i’m in real need of some more designs and colours and i can also now take my booklet shopping with me and prevent getting the same ones i already own.

I like to shop for MT tapes from many shops, but like this online store for interesting and different motifs. But check out their other stuff too, like for example their fabric tape. For those of you who love MT tapes, where do you buy yours from?

I LOVE stickers on back of envelopes.. do you?

Here we have some from the ever so wonderful knot & bow. I don’t think they do the flourescent pink circles or sparkly ones any longer so might have to hold on to those! They also sell these funky coloured gift tags. I’m going to get these new 100 parcel gift tags – neon assorted.

I often go and visit paul gardner for all sorts of items you never knew you needed! It’s also one of the oldest surviving shops in spitalfields. Here’s a lovely write-up on it.

For the colourliving stickers i go to moo.com

I like dark coloured envelopes. That means i need sticky labels. I favour lollipop and lotta jansdotter.

Who remembers the shop ‘shelf’ in cheshire street? Unfortunately they closed, but thankfully are still selling online. These embossed foil paper lobsters, as well as the pigs and bicycle are treasured items bought from shelf.

Nice, practical and well designed bookmarks are hard to find. I found these:

I have a favourite arts & crafts shop. La droguerie is a chain in france, so whenever i’m in nice or paris i make a beeline for it. I always stock up on these felt self-adhesive numerals.

I also heart many of their ribbons. These ones being some of my favourites:

A girl can’t have too many feathers. There is so much you can do with them. I like making these pens with my feathers. I buy my feathers from la droguerie or from slanchogled in chalk farm.

I also very much like shopping at ray stitch for all sorts of ribbons and haberdashery.

As you can imagine, this is just some of my stash. The booklet is a working progress but i can already see its benefits. Ok, what do you think? Shall i continue? Will you share some of your favourite arts & crafts items?

It’s sunny here in london and me thinks we’ll have a great weekend. Hope you’ll all have a great one wherever you are. See you monday!