Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Organization: collage ephemera

Hello all!

Today I am extraordinarily proud of myself because I finally tackled a lingering problem area in my (newly, and mostly organized) craft room! I'm talking about the daunting pile of collage papers that I've accumulated, both big, and small. I don't have an accurate "before" picture, unfortunately, but perhaps you can imagine? My collection was mostly photo boxes, and paper trays stuffed with hundreds of pages torn from magazines.

I wasted a lot of time looking at organizing boards on Pinterest before finally deciding that nothing I saw would work for me, because I had a budget of exactly $0 to work with, so again, I was forced to improvise. Luckily a few weeks ago, I spotted some little metal bins at Five Below, and snagged them, knowing that I would eventually find a use for them! Today was that day!

So here is some of what I was starting with.
It may not look so bad, but I had at least half a dozen of these paper boxes filled to overflowing with inspiration that I couldn't access!
I tried first to organize by color, but that didn't suit me, so I ended up organizing EVERYTHING by category! For the pages that were roughly 8 1/2 x 11, I punched holes in them, and put them in a binder, alphabetized by subject. Luckily, I already had a pack of alphabetical tabbed dividers!

I love dem! And not just because they're pretty and rainbow! But also because (sor far) they work great!

Next came the smaller bits and bobs! I decided to divide them one more time, into two categories, so that the smallest things wouldn't get lost in the files with the slightly larger items. I made my own dividers out of cardstock and washi tape, and set to deciding what categories I wanted to use! I knew I couldn't alphabetize every tiny piece of inspiration, so I came up with more general categories, like "inanimate objects" "places" "people" et cetera.

I cut down and organized almost every bit of my ephemera, and these bins aren't even half-filled! 



I am so excited to go to make a collage, and see if my organization system works! Also, now I have room to cut up eeeeeeven more of my magazines that are just sitting, waiting for me to rip them apart and collect the beautiful bits!


How do you organize your collage ephemera??



2 comments:

Jennie said...

Looks great!

BT password reset said...

Nice one!