In the spirit of celebrating the New Year, I thought I'd share a recent organization project I completed for my finished artwork, invitation samples, frames and mats, and shipping and packing supplies.
Over the summer, my husband and I worked on organizing our second floor. We needed to clear out the "future nursery" bedroom - which we'd been using as an office/random storage room for the last six years - before we could paint it (a task I wrote about in this previous blog post). This entailed organizing our other extra bedroom-cum-office into a space that could house both our desks and computers, which in turn necessitated reorganizing all of my "art stuff" - something I'd truthfully been meaning to do anyway, so that I knew where to easily find finished artworks when something sold on Etsy.
I use a room in our basement as my in-home studio space - but the humidity levels are uncontrollable down there, which makes me worry that any artwork down there will warp a bit with time. I do still store all of my art supplies and artwork-in-progress in my basement studio, but I prefer to at least move my finished pieces up to the second floor, where the art will be safer. So over the course of several weeks last summer, I came up with a way to better organize my finished artwork, my supplies for framing and matting finished artwork, and my supplies for shipping finished artwork, utilizing our main hall closet upstairs as well as part of the closet in our guest bedroom.
Our guest room is occupied right now by my sister-in-law (and many of her things), who is in the process of moving back to Michigan and buying furniture so she can live in her newly purchased house - so I didn't grab a photo of the whole guest room closet, since she's using the closet rod to hang up her clothes. But there are two small sections of the closet that my finished artwork is living in - my larger pieces (many of them framed) in the right corner, leaning against the wall; and my mid-sized framed pieces (the pattern watercolors I grouped and installed into multi-opening frames) stacked in protective boxes horizontally in the left corner, coupled with smaller unframed pieces stacked in a box on a shelf above them (not pictured).
Then in our main hallway closet, we installed some new shelves, leaving an opening in the middle so that the attic hatch can still be accessed when needed. The floor has our suitcases and carry-on bags for travel, but the eight shelves above that hold items I use for my "art business" or graphic design business - including bubble mailers and envelopes, air bubble bags, bubble wrap, and packing paper on the top four shelves, which I use for shipping Etsy purchases domestically and internationally.
The two lower shelves on the left side house extra unused frames and mats for future finished artwork, as well as clear bags and boxes for my art print notecards. The clear bags fit one notecard and envelope; I deliver these individually priced notecards to Paint Creek Center for the Arts to add to their art market inventory. For my sets of 4, 6 or 10 notecards, I use the clear boxes. They're laying flat in the cardboard box, but they easily pop into a box shape and then stay closed with a small clear circle sticker when I'm ready to use them.
On the right side of the closet, the lower two shelves hold a plastic bin of past invitation projects and sample invitations, as well as extra brochures and business cards (with plenty more room to spare, as you can see).
Inside the plastic bin, I sorted past projects into their individual clear zip-sleeves. You can see my own personal wedding stationery in the top large sleeve in this first picture here. Keeping them in these individual sleeves helps me keep all the parts of one design together (invitations, save the dates, thank you cards, menus, ceremony programs, table numbers, place cards, etc.) for easy access when I want to refer to a past project or show samples to a future client.
Beneath all the plastic sleeves are stacks of sample invitations I created in 2011, before I had any "real client" projects to show off instead - invitations and other custom stationery with fake names at fake venues for fake events. They show the potential of what could be done to any future clients who want to utilize pocket envelopes.
The hallway closet obviously still has a lot of room to grow - allowing me to easily find space for more shipping or framing materials as I need to, or perhaps add another plastic bin of invitation projects stacked on top of this first one, once I complete more projects.
It's very convenient to have all of my finished artwork upstairs, as well as my "Invites by Andrea" samples and shipping and packing supplies next to my iMac and printer, where I work on graphic design projects and print notecard sets when someone makes an Etsy purchase. It doesn't always look nice (hello dented cardboard boxes, being reused for the third or fourth time) but it's effective, and that's what matters. :)
Over the summer, my husband and I worked on organizing our second floor. We needed to clear out the "future nursery" bedroom - which we'd been using as an office/random storage room for the last six years - before we could paint it (a task I wrote about in this previous blog post). This entailed organizing our other extra bedroom-cum-office into a space that could house both our desks and computers, which in turn necessitated reorganizing all of my "art stuff" - something I'd truthfully been meaning to do anyway, so that I knew where to easily find finished artworks when something sold on Etsy.
I use a room in our basement as my in-home studio space - but the humidity levels are uncontrollable down there, which makes me worry that any artwork down there will warp a bit with time. I do still store all of my art supplies and artwork-in-progress in my basement studio, but I prefer to at least move my finished pieces up to the second floor, where the art will be safer. So over the course of several weeks last summer, I came up with a way to better organize my finished artwork, my supplies for framing and matting finished artwork, and my supplies for shipping finished artwork, utilizing our main hall closet upstairs as well as part of the closet in our guest bedroom.
Our guest room is occupied right now by my sister-in-law (and many of her things), who is in the process of moving back to Michigan and buying furniture so she can live in her newly purchased house - so I didn't grab a photo of the whole guest room closet, since she's using the closet rod to hang up her clothes. But there are two small sections of the closet that my finished artwork is living in - my larger pieces (many of them framed) in the right corner, leaning against the wall; and my mid-sized framed pieces (the pattern watercolors I grouped and installed into multi-opening frames) stacked in protective boxes horizontally in the left corner, coupled with smaller unframed pieces stacked in a box on a shelf above them (not pictured).
Then in our main hallway closet, we installed some new shelves, leaving an opening in the middle so that the attic hatch can still be accessed when needed. The floor has our suitcases and carry-on bags for travel, but the eight shelves above that hold items I use for my "art business" or graphic design business - including bubble mailers and envelopes, air bubble bags, bubble wrap, and packing paper on the top four shelves, which I use for shipping Etsy purchases domestically and internationally.
The two lower shelves on the left side house extra unused frames and mats for future finished artwork, as well as clear bags and boxes for my art print notecards. The clear bags fit one notecard and envelope; I deliver these individually priced notecards to Paint Creek Center for the Arts to add to their art market inventory. For my sets of 4, 6 or 10 notecards, I use the clear boxes. They're laying flat in the cardboard box, but they easily pop into a box shape and then stay closed with a small clear circle sticker when I'm ready to use them.
On the right side of the closet, the lower two shelves hold a plastic bin of past invitation projects and sample invitations, as well as extra brochures and business cards (with plenty more room to spare, as you can see).
Inside the plastic bin, I sorted past projects into their individual clear zip-sleeves. You can see my own personal wedding stationery in the top large sleeve in this first picture here. Keeping them in these individual sleeves helps me keep all the parts of one design together (invitations, save the dates, thank you cards, menus, ceremony programs, table numbers, place cards, etc.) for easy access when I want to refer to a past project or show samples to a future client.
Beneath all the plastic sleeves are stacks of sample invitations I created in 2011, before I had any "real client" projects to show off instead - invitations and other custom stationery with fake names at fake venues for fake events. They show the potential of what could be done to any future clients who want to utilize pocket envelopes.
The hallway closet obviously still has a lot of room to grow - allowing me to easily find space for more shipping or framing materials as I need to, or perhaps add another plastic bin of invitation projects stacked on top of this first one, once I complete more projects.
It's very convenient to have all of my finished artwork upstairs, as well as my "Invites by Andrea" samples and shipping and packing supplies next to my iMac and printer, where I work on graphic design projects and print notecard sets when someone makes an Etsy purchase. It doesn't always look nice (hello dented cardboard boxes, being reused for the third or fourth time) but it's effective, and that's what matters. :)
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