I'm doing a happy dance right now, because my storage for all of those fabulous thin metal dies has been improved greatly - lighter, more compact, and super economical.
Many of you have probably seen
Dawn McVey's recent post where she showed how she made super cute little pockets to hold her dies. She used cardstock with acetate sewn on the front to make pockets. It's fantastic! I wanted to do something like it, but I'm lazy and didn't want to drag out the sewing machine. I got to thinking about it, and realized that clear envelopes offer a terrific cost- and time-effective solution.
Check it out! Each die or set of dies has its own little pouch. Each one contains a quarter sheet of cardstock (5 1/2 by 4 1/4 inches) - no cardstock waste! The pouches are made from plain clear envelopes (no sewing!), which I cut to 5 3/8 inches tall. I made them just a little bit shorter than the cardstock insert because it's easier to get hold of the cardstock to pull it out if you need to. On each insert, I wrote the name of the die(s) in the upper left corner, and the name of the company in the upper right. Quick, easy, and cheap!
Here's another cool thing. On the back of each insert, I traced around each die that's contained in that pouch. This should make it easier to help stray dies find their way back home.
I can hear you asking now - what about my Nestabilities? They fit just fine! You can see my solution for dies that are too tall for the pouch. They simply stick out the top. On the back, when I traced the dies, I used a dotted line near the edge to show that a die continued past the page.
Since these pouches are made from a standard envelope, you can store them easily in any container that you'd use for finished cards. The only things not included in the basket you see below are my impression plates, the calendar page die, and the two Favor It box dies. I'm sure they'll go in something similar, but it will need to be a little bit larger.
This basket contains 46 pouches of dies. And the whole stack is less than 4 inches thick!
I have a couple of hints if you decide to do this. The clear envelopes with the adhesive on the flap rather than on the envelope body were preferable to me. That way, the adhesive gets eliminated when you cut. I cut the envelopes on my Tonic guillotine cutter. I found them a lot easier to cut if I did two at a time. And I had to really hold the blade in close to the body of the cutter to keep the slippery little buggers from avoiding being cut.
Thanks to Dawn for the inspiration. This would never have occurred to me if not for your post!
