Sunday 14 January 2018

"Colour Blast Storage" by Melissa Struhs


Happy New Year Colour Blasters! I hope you all enjoyed some much deserved down time with your families and perhaps some creative time. I did exactly that but spent some time reorganising my Colour Blast products. I find that when my products are well organised and found easily, I am so much more productive and inspired if I have them at my fingertips.


It has been long over due as I decided to have my cabinet maker hubby redesign the space. Great in theory, but everything has been piled up in the corner of the dining room for months on end when we got too busy to put it all back together. But perhaps it's good to look back at how it has evolved since I first started with the team over 2 years ago.


This tower was built to house the little silver chip baskets that I bought at Kmart for $2. They were the perfect size to store the original 3 products of Colour Paste, Colour Shimmer Spray and Colour Embossing Powder in 18 colours. Obviously back then, you can clearly see how empty some of the baskets were. I had to slowly start gathering them bit by bit. Back then, the pastes were my absolute favourites. 


Fast forward to a year down the track, and new products and colours were added to the range and it was back to Kmart for more baskets. Thank goodness they were still available, like most crafter's I wanted to keep the storage all uniform. And they outgrew the tall tower so they were all swapped with my stamp cases and across to another cabinet. All of sudden we had Colour Shimmer Cubes, Colour Sprays, Colour Shimmer Dust, Colour Mica Powders and the White and Black Heavy Gesso. The baskets now stretched across almost two room length shelves and the products were just mixed in together. It stopped being quite as functional at this point because I had to keep digging to find things constantly.

And back to present day...with an extended break over December and January, it was time to get it back into a workable state. I sat and sketched a new modular shelf that would house all the entire range of Colour Blast products but spacious enough that everything could be seen easily and it would also use the original baskets too. Having a cabinet maker at home surely is an advantage as he could custom build the shelving to fit, it did take awhile for me to make up my mind...apparently the customer is not as always right and really annoying too!


I am please to say that not only did he finally suggest some great ideas but he also made it something better than I drew. So lets take a closer look at the end result and how I have sorted all of the products.


There are 21 baskets for the core group of colours and products. In each basket, 1 colour holds all 4 products of the matching colour, the Colour Paste, Colour Shimmer Spray, Colour Embossing Powder and Colour Shimmer Cube...from Sunshine right through to Snow White.


The next rows hold the Colour Sprays, Colour Shimmer Dusts, Colour Mica Powders and the White and Black Heavy Gesso. I love that the shelves are not very wide but have lots of extra room in case I want to pop more of the baskets back in but for now, I am happy with the containers side by side.


And of course, we now have the Colour Artist inks that the Design Team are going crazy over and there is a fabulous big open space where I can stand and gather or custom mix my products when I am creating.


I have also stashed all of my go to utensils, craft mats and palette's right beside the Colour Blast Store for easy access during those times. I am very blessed to have that space set back up. Storage solutions are different for everyone, they evolve, they serve a different purpose and can be as individual as you like.

I am back to creating non stop since my space is again back to it's neat and organised state. Time to start working on my next Colour Blast project.
Till next time,
Mel. 


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