Pass the point of no return ...

Sounds ominous? It's the song running in my head as I (re)organise my embellishments and cardstock. Because if this reorg fails, I cannot afford the time and effort to revert to the current system, which is:

Everytime I scrap, I would haul out the whole box of cardstock to choose photo mattes, then heave it back to the shelf. Repeat for the box of letter stickers, another two for ribbons and flowers and the collection of brads, buttons and blings. This is a tiring and inefficient storage system for my embellishments and so I decided to revamp it. Instead of like-things-together, it shall be like-colours-together.

I thought over my sequence for scrapping and realised it invariably begins with pairing the photos with the base paper. Next I will look for cardstock mattes in colours to complement the base paper and photo - these will be for the photos and journalling. Then I will decide on the title (and any subtitle) and pick out stickers, chipboard or diecuts to form the words. Finally I will place embellishments bearing in mind scale, colour and visual impact. Often, I will be thinking "I need a series of red buttons here to link the reds in the other parts of the page", or "I'll use some fabric for texture - ribbons and flowers in shades of purple and some green for contrast" or I'll be ransacking all the shelves for something-anything in the perfect shade of teal.

See - it's all about colours!

Essentially I work with just 2 sets of items - paper-based for all the mattes and stickers, and dimensionals for all the fabric, plastic and metallic doodads.

On to the ambitious change. And here, you get to see the size of my cardstock mattes

- and these are not all I have
- but I'm not showing you the rest.

I divided my cardstock mattes into 2 groups: brights and muted. I have decided against mixing these with the embellisments as they are used at different stages of scrapping. I have also retained my box of alphas because they happen to fit nicely into one box as they are.

I designated 4 boxes for the colour groupings: Red (including orange and brown), yellow (including beige and cream), blue-green, and finally black-white-metallics. I find this roughly divides my stash into equal volumes - I have more reds than blue and greens combined. Into the boxes go flowers, ribbons, brads and eyelets, buttons and blings.

The test drive for this system will take place this long weekend. Let's see how fast the pages will flow out of this system ...