Organizing Chipboard By Shape

In today's  Craft The Story video (Episode 8) I'm taking you on an adventure with me as I organize my chipboard by shape + then make a layout using some of those pieces to support my story.

Chipboard is one of my favorite embellishments to add to my projects. Most of the chipboard pieces we offer in the shop and in our subscriptions include words ( that's on purpose) and I love looking through them for story jumpstarts as well as for words to support my stories. 

For awhile now I've been wanting to organize a box of random chipboard pieces that live in a drawer of my work table. Inside that box you'll find a collection of pieces that have been punched out of their backing from various kits + product releases from the last few years. In a few different videos I've dumped them out on the table to sift through them to see if I could find one to support a story I was telling. For awhile I also stored chipboard standing up in  Dragan Boxes from Ikea and then at some point I started punching them out and putting them all together into this box. 

Check out a post about breaking up my Story Kits here.

My goal today was to organize and sort the majority of my chipboard by shape and then store them in  plastic embroidery thread boxes (I'm pretty sure this idea came from Krystal at some point last year - maybe something from the December Daily® Prep Day event). I can tell you that I'm super happy I took the time to organize these by shape because it opens up a whole different way of looking at my chipboard. I think punching the pieces out of the backing + sorting by shape is really going to work for me - especially after I have used the main pieces of a chipboard sheet for a particular project. 

My current stash of chipboard fit into two of  these plastic storage boxes from Amazon. 

This seriously brought me a whole lot of joy when I was done. 

Sorting by shape now gives me the opportunity to use them in "shape groups" on my projects which is way easier to do when they are all grouped together vs. looking through sheets for specific shapes. As someone who returns to repetition again and again in the way that I design my pages this makes me so darn happy. Breaking them up and taking them out of their backing and placing them into new homes based on their shape is giving them new life because I get to see them in a different way. 

Let's take a look at today's video: 

Here's a look at the layout I created after organizing my chipboard:  

For this layout I enlarged a photo I shared on Instagram recently to 7 inches wide x 8.25 inches tall (the size of the outside of a page protector in a 6 inch x 8 inch album). I took the journaling directly from my Instagram post and copied and pasted it into a box in Photoshop (I got those measurements by using a ruler to measure how much space I wanted my story to take up). 

Above my journaling I added pattern paper from the  Heart Scrapbook Kit (this new quarterly subscription will be available on Tuesday, March 2nd at 9am PST) and added a stack of chipboard pieces that are all the same shape. 

I loved mixing the fonts and colors together and keeping the shape the same. I was able to select a few different sentiments that related to and/or supported the story about what I've recently been reading + my general love of books. 

On top of the main photo I added a foam stickers for my title and use  chipboard asterisk pieces for the dots and a rolling date stamp for the date. 

SUPPLIES

• Plastic Embellishment Storage Boxes
  
• Ikea Dragan Storage Box
• Heart Scrapbook Kit Pattern Paper from our new Quarterly Scrapbook Kit: this will be available on Tuesday, March 2 at 9am PST
• Various chipboard pieces from past projects + kits (chipboard comes in every Story Kit + Stories By The Month Kit)
• Chipboard Asterisks
• American Crafts Foam Word Stickers
• Metal Ruler
• Fiskars Trimer
• Epson Matte Presentation Paper
• 6 Hole Punch
• Scotch Rolling Adhesive
• 6x8 Albums

OTHER LINKS MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO

• Craft Jen Schow Instagram
• Hybrid Product Play Workshop (includes how-to for the other project I show)
• Sweater