Let's talk tools...

...or rather, the storage of them.

For many paper crafters (especially card makers) their most important tools are their pens and/or colouring mediums - whether that be inks, paints...whatever.

Regular visitors will know that I have a bit of a thing for pens (I might have just one or two............hundred **rollseyes**). However, if they are not readily to hand I find them a pain to use. I really don't want to be sorting through plastic boxes to find the next colour I want to use.

So you can imagine how I felt about this little lot...

...as a result of promotional offers I had finally managed to complete my set of Spectrum Noir pens but as you can see, although they are well packaged they are not exactly user friendly.

So what was the solution?

I've seen lots of ideas on the web about storing pens, many of which use CD/DVD racks - great ideas but not suitable for the space I had in mind for this set of pens.

Crafter's Companion came up with their own idea a while ago but I've been umming & arring as to whether I wanted to spend that sort of money on storage (they ain't cheap)...

...but after having the pens sitting around not being used because it was too much of an effort to find colours, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

This really wasn't working for me...

...too much 'faffing' around as the shades were split between different colour families - pastels, brights, darks etc. Yes I know that I could have re-arranged the pens but I would still have ended up with colour ranges split between different containers. So I gave in.

Taking advantage of a Demo-day promotion at my local Spectrum Noir retailer, a loyalty voucher and some pennies that I had been saving, I now have this... 

...all neat & tidy and readily to hand, sitting on my desk.

I spent some time arranging the colours - no I didn't put them in the same order as the colour chart as that order doesn't make a lot of sense to me (the colours seem to be arranged to fit on the paper rather than in a logical order). I decided to arrange them in a similar order to my Copics and it works for me.

Now with money tight for everyone at the moment I know that a lot of folks will think that all the money spent on those trays could have been used for other stash - yes it could, but I had already bought the pens which was a considerable amount of money sitting there going to waste because they were not easy to get at. I'm not completely daft; I thought about it long and hard and then only pursued this solution when there was a promotion that enabled me to save some money - something I try to do with any 'considered' purchase.

My pens are organised, usable and they don't take up too much space and guess what...I sat and did some colouring last night...................................................................