Packing Your Bags

Hi all! Michelle Houghton here or some of you might know me as Scrapweaver. I am the artist and teacher for Club Copic. Mimi asked me to share a little info on organization with you for this months organizational theme. My scrap space usually is not very organized BUT when I go to a crop I have a system that works great for me. Let me put it this way when I go to an all day crop I can crank out 25 plus pages and it is because I am organized and ready to get to work. i am a teacher at heart so I am going to give you my system in a step by step with photos.

#1 I organize my photos - I will pull out two or three packets of photos (depending on numbers) and sort them. I group them together in "pages" meaning one or two page layout groups. A one page layout might take two to four photos where a two page layout might accommodate six to ten depending how much cropping I might do. Each of these groups get bundled with a sticky note to keep them organized and so I can tell about how many pages worth in a quick glance.









#2 I pick my papers - I like paper don't you? I usually pick two sheets of patterned paper to go with each one or two page layout. I find cardstock to match and put that with the photos and patterned paper. If I have a large group of photos from a single outing I might pick several sheets of patterned paper and coordinating cardstock and group them all together.












#3 I bag them - With the papers and photo together I put the group in a bag to keep them together. If the paper has coordinating embellishments I add those to the bag or a few items I know I want to include. Anyone who knows me knows I do not leave home without fibers and buttons these days.












#4 Get it together - So I go through each photo group just like that and make a mini kit for each group of photos. I might have two or three groups that can be bagged together but the idea is to make sure I have just enough, without the kitchen sink, and to break them down into smaller groups so they are just ready to go! All these bags go into a protective folder or a 12x12 box would work great.










#5 I'm all packed - When I leave for an all day crop I TRY to narrow it down to two bags, my large tote and my large tool bag. In the large tote I have two or more protective folders full of page kits ready to go, I have a small group of neutral cardstock, folder of letter stickers for titles, and extra adhesive. Can you ever have too many glue dots or tape runners? In my tool bag I have my cutter, my monster tape runner, ruler, a couple punches, pens, distress tools, and yes more do-dads like more buttons!

This can all be scaled back further for a smaller crop or one that you are traveling to by air. I took two small totes to a two day crop in Vegas and had everything I needed by doing some serious planning. My only mistake was putting my Crop-A-Dile in my carry on on the way there. The security crew scratched there head over that one after we dug it out of the bottom of the overstuffed bag :-)

Hope this gives you some ideas and helps you prepare for some serious scrapping at your next crop!

Happy scrapping all!