How do your store your themed or by-color embellishments?

My theme embellishments are with my theme paper in Iris boxes. Sometimes I will cut them all into a plastic baggie within the iris box. My embellishments by color are in my side Alex drawers. I have one drawer for red's, pinks, yellows and tans. I use small containers within the shallow drawer to organize them. Very good for sorting through. The other drawer has blues and greens and the other drawer has white, black, purple and multi color. For me, shallow drawers with bins is the best way rifle through my stash.

I store embellishments with my collection kits (until I break apart the kits) - I have plastic envelopes I use for this - they come with flaps but I've cut the flaps off because that works better for me. These are stored vertically in a basket on the top of my cart.

Themed embellishments are stored in 4x6 photo boxes in the middle of my cart. There are a few exceptions (Christmas, Travel, military, and camping) but for the most part this works well for me. I'll either rifle through the box or dump it out and hunt through that way.

The exceptions? Christmas is in one of my Alex drawers - I have small baskets in there for smaller embellishments. My paper is stored separately. Military and camping both have a plastic drawer and paper that is very specific is in there also. Travel - I have a plastic drawer for very specific paper (ie really is only going on a travel layout) and generic travel embellishments (travel themed but not for a particular location). I also have some plastic file envelopes (again I've cut the top off) for more specific travel embellishments - the US, the UK, Canada, and Germany are all separate and then everything else is in an envelope together.

And then I have another set of photo boxes in an Alex drawer for embellishments by colour - I picked up the rainbow coloured photo boxes and supplemented with the clear ones for the remaining colours.

envelopes for the collections are 13" H x 12.88" W x 1.5" D

www.hobbylobby.com/scrapbook-paper-crafts/storage-organization/memory-keeper/p/20475?queryId=c8c4c196bc10f19babc3917708fc71bd

the smaller ones I use for the travel embellishments are letter size

cart is similar to the IKEA 3tier but from Michaels

yes - the photo boxes are the small plastic ones and yes - each theme has it's own.

here's my cart with the collections on the top and the themed photo boxes in the middle

The majority of my embellishments are stored with collections. Themed embellishments are in iris cases, mostly 12 in stickers or bulky items. I also have themed embellishments in bins from the container store with wheels on the bottom. They sit side by side in my Threshold cubes (similar to a Kallax). Wood veneer is in a wide IKEA Alex drawer and a printers tray. Enamel dots are in an Art bin deep semi-satchel, divided by color. Buttons and bling are sorted by color in a plastic drawer unit intended for little hardware bits. I don’t have a lot of embellishments by color, but I keep them in a Michael’s cube with the wine insert and clear acrylic bins. Lisa Soares on instagram inspired me to store things this way.

I agree, the iris cases are good storage but hard searching.

I have Christmas and Halloween stored separately in Iris cases, but last year I moved stickers sheets (12x12 and smaller) and and thickers into vertical storage (ie baggies ) for ease of searching through. It's working better that way. I can put the baggies into the iris case, for that lovely dust protection/stackability, but pull the bag out to flip through vertically. I'm going to sort my other embellies into baggies as well, and maybe label the bags so I can grab what I need more easily. It adds bulk (I'm going to need to add another iris container) but it works for me.

My colour sorted embellies are in mini drawers - I think they're 6x9? so they're big enough to hold most items. I only put older stash items in there, not current supplies. Because they are mini-drawers, I can pull the whole drawer out and put it on my desk to rifle through. Sometimes I dump the whole thing onto a piece of copy paper to look. And no packaging in there...if items are old enough to go into the colour drawers, they don't need packages anymore. So there are loose die cuts and such.



I thought I was the only weird one! I love binders. I love organiation. But something about the plastic sheets give me a sensory shudder... I have OLD stamps organized this way (20-25 years old, technique tuesday, my sentiments exactly...) and I rarely look through because I hate the way it feels. I should take them out, but at the time I spent time and money setting them up (when we didn't have money, so it was a big deal to buy large good quality binders...)

Iris photo containers. Both 3x5 and 4x6 sizes.

I have between 2 and 4 per 12x12 Iris container.

I try and keep brands together but do mix lines because we all know companies are great at using the same color schemes year after year.

I will either filter through the container or dump onto my table or the opened lid of the 12x12 Iris container and find what I need.

Storage needs to slot into your workflow - if you hate flipping through binders or forget they exist, putting anything in one is counterproductive. Similarly if you get overwhelmed by sorting through a box of stuff, or find shopping by collection restrictive, those may not be for you.  It's important to know if you reach for things based on theme, shape, colour, brand, size, or some other criteria the most. That should be how you sort your stash.
How much stuff you have and what size it is also matters. I keep all my embellishments in either old photo album inserts - the type that had the lift-off cellophane tops - or in trading card pockets & sleeves. But my selection is small, only self-made things, and few of them are bigger than a playing card. If you sort by collection or deliberate placement, have a plan for how to deal with leftovers / holes in the space.