My new embossing station

I am always looking for a more cohesive way to craft.  Two of my favorite 'go to' tools are my Cuttlebug and my Grand Calibur.  I have a gazillion Spellbinder dies (some so old I can't even find information on them anymore) and more embossing folders than any one person can use in a life time.  My embossing machines used to be across the room, the dies and folders were in books, cd crates and boxes.  I've often ordered a die that I already had.  I spent a whole weekend trying to create an embossing station that was more functional for me and this is what I came up with:   

This is an old Sauder TV stand that we kept shoving from room to room because it had outlived its usefulness.  If I wanted another one, I would check Goodwill or a thrift shop, these are very inexpensive.   I had my hubs carry this one upstairs and I started filling it up.

My Grand Calibur is on the bottom along with a cd crate (purchased at Michaels) filled with stamps that work with my dies.  The top shelf has all of my long border dies, my long skinny embossing folders and my Memory Box dies stored in the blue basket.  Next to the basket are my grand dies still in their packages which is the best way so far I've found to store them.  On top is my Cuttlebug and a bin containing all the parts of both embossing machines and the white KaiserCraft notebook has my Papertrey dies.

I organized all of my Spellbinder dies into two of these Media boxes.  There are two sides to each pouch and you can label the top of them.  I have added some magnetic material in some pockets that hold small parts and some dies I've just left on their package, cutting it down to fit.  I've filled two boxes almost full.

Note to Sherri:  see the black and white book in the upper left hand corner?  I was so impressed with your find at JoAnns that I actually made one myself.  I found two 4x6 photo albums at Michaels for $1.00 each, tore out the pages, cut out the covers from cereal boxes, doubled them, covered them with pretty paper, used my Bind-It-All and an inch and a quarter coil, wrapped a ribbon around the front cover and called it a day.  It's filled with all my Copic information front to back and turned around, back to front are notes on card sizes and how to make certain cards.

Since I've saved the cardboard portion of almost every die I've purchased, I cut them into a manageable size, paper punched the corner of one to use as a template, placed an address label on each one so I could add the Spellbinder number and the Box and pouch number.  For those dies whose packaging I've misplaced, I found pictures on the web, copied them into Powerpoint, labeled them, printed and laminated them.  I kept all the groups together, circles with circles, rectangles with rectangles, etc.  Then I gathered them all together in a ring.

Now, I can just flip through the ring to find just the right die.  And I know exactly where it is.  No rifling through the boxes or imagining that I have a die I don't have.



You can see how close my Embossing Station is to my chair, my desk and my computer (and it's on wheels so if I need to move it, I can).  I find I'm using the embossing machines a lot more since they're so accessible.  Unfortunately, my large embossing folders are in the closet in two more CD crates that I don't have room for, but I think the exercise will do me good.