The SU ink topper

 Hi friends.  Well, I did it.  I spent quite a bit of time yesterday and today putting it together, but I finally finished small rack for the top of my SU ink storage.  I have 15 older ink pads which didn't fit in the main rack, and whenever I wanted to use them, I had to literally dig them out from where they were stored.  Now, they are with all the others.  I store all my inks alphabetically, but for the moment, I'm not going to incorporate these into the rack with the rest, for the simple reason that I've gotten so familiar with the position of the inks in the rack, I don't really have to look for them.  I know certain ones are at the top or bottom, etc.  I may change my mind on that later.  

Since there was plenty of space, I added slots for the ink pads, an open area on the side of those for the few refills that I have matching these inks, and a deeper spot in the center for markers.  

Because there's a bit of a well in the top of the wood rack, I added several layers of corrugated cardboard beneath the new storage rack, so that it sits above the wood.  Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to use the bottom slots.  

Here's the picture.

Thank you so much for visiting today.  Have a wonderful day.

More ink storage

Hi friends. 

After making the large revolving rack for storing my distress ink pads, I knew that I also wanted to make storage for other inks that I have, since they were being stored in places not very accessible.  So, using the same method I used for building the other rack, I made four more smaller racks that fit my other ink pads.  Since these were not all the same size, I made them to fit groups of similar ink pads. Which means they are different sizes.  But I moved my ribbon, so I could put these in a place easy to reach. 

The upper left unit holds archival and a couple other Adirondack inks, VersaMark, Encore, and Fabrico inks.  Lower left holds Brilliance and Stazon inks.  Upper right holds ColorBox pigment inks.  Lower right holds ColorBox Chalk inks and a few thicker pigment inks. 

I do have some Kaleidacolor inks, but haven't decided yet if I will make a unit for those.  I probably will. 

My Stampin' Up ink pads, refills, and markers are stored in a wooden revolving rack that I won years ago.  However, I have more inks than fit in it, so I'm planning to make a small rack (or more than one) to fit on top of that revolving unit to hold those extra inks. 

While in the process of all this building, I also made a couple of boxes to hold some things.  I have a stand that I wanted to make some open boxes for. 

There are ridges near the center and the center post, so I needed to work around those.  I made 4 parts for each shelf, but because of the angles involved, and the chipboard is thicker than I usually work with, they were a little too big, and didn't fit.  So I glued them together where the angles meet, added a bottom piece and made these instead. 

I don't know how to figure the angles, so it was mostly guesswork.  They are not perfect, not fancy, and not pretty, but will work to hold something.  I haven't quite decided what yet.  I will probably try again to make something that fits, but not this design.  I know I can add a filler and just build on top of the ridges, which would make it much easier, so I may do that. 

Thanks so much for taking time to visit today.  Stay safe and be blessed.

And the gazebo on top

Hi friends.  In my last post, I showed you my new ink storage unit, which now houses all 120 of my distress and oxide ink pads.  I wanted to make some sort of cover over the top to keep the dust off the items stored there.  So I decided on an open gazebo.  Without going into all the detail, I made supports, both vertical and horizontal, from 2" wide chipboard, folded into a square tube.  I added decorative sides and a slanted roof, with a little decoration on top.  Not being an engineer, the roof was totally guesswork, and I was thrilled that it worked on the first try.  The gazebo lifts off for easy access to the supplies stored beneath it. 

This is the full unit.  My distress inks are on two sides, and distress oxides on the other two.  I store them alphabetically in vertical columns.  I have room enough to add 24 more ink pads.  These are the regular 3" pads.  So far stored on top are blending brushes and blender pens.  I'm not sure what else will go there yet, but most likely things that I use all the time, so they are within easy reach. 

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Have a great day. 

My new ink hotel

Hello.  I know it has been a long, long time since I posted.  Maybe my life is just that boring?  Well, I don't think so, so I guess I have no excuse.  I know I'm a big procrastinator.

Anyway, for mother's day my daughter made a new header for my blog as you can see.  I had completely forgotten that I'd asked her to make one, so that was a nice surprise.

Six years ago I created an ink pad holder for my distress ink pads.  You can see it here.  Well, it wasn't too long after that Ranger introduced some new colors, so all my inks didn't fit in the holder.  Then, they also produced all the colors in distress oxide inks.  These are the things I put on my wish list for my family to buy as gifts, so I now have the full set of those as well.

So I decided that it was time to make some new storage.  I wanted all the distress inks in one place, so I started construction.  Now be advised I'm not an engineer, and I design as I go, so the final product is certainly not perfect or even designed well, but that's OK by me, as long as it works.  My husband kept calling it a roach hotel, but I think ink pad hotel is a much better description, since we do not provide housing for roaches here.

I should warn you that this will be a long post with lots of photos.  I wanted to give a lot of the step by step procedure that went into the making.

I built the entire unit from cereal box (cracker box, pizza box, etc.) chipboard, corrugated cardboard, and tacky glue.  There is also a small amount of stamped cardstock.

I started by cutting pieces which would hold the ink pads.  These are cut 2-1/2"x8", and scored at 1", 4" and 5".  I taped the edges together.  The ink pads will hang out the front by about 1/2", so I can pull them out easily.  The total unit will hold 144 ink pads, so that's how many I cut and folded. 

Yes, that 2nd picture is the whole bunch!  Then I started gluing them into towers of 12 each.

The next step was to add extra chipboard on the sides for support and then glue towers together in sets of three. 

As I said earlier, I design as I go, at this point, I thought it would help if they were brighter, so I painted all the insides with white acrylic paint -- not spray paint, because I didn't have any -- with a brush.  A lot of work, but it made such a difference.  After I finished painting, I added a back panel.  These were already white on one side, so I didn't need to paint them. 

Because of the way I was going to put the towers together, one side needed some decoration, so I stamped white card stock with ultramarine stazon, and then sponged places with azure stazon, and coated them with matte mod podge to help keep them clean.  I attached these panels before gluing the triple towers together.

Now, since it's obvious that with four sides, the unit needs to turn, so there is access to all four sides.  I had an 8-sided lazy susan that I decided to use.  There is a small indented cavity on the top, so I decided to utilize that to keep the unit from sliding off the base.

Since the towers act like walls, there is a large open area in the center.  I did the same stamping procedure to cover the top around the opening. 

I built a base that fit into the cavity, as well as up into the open area of the storage unit.

The unit sits nicely on top of the base.

I thought it made sense to use that open area on top for additional storage, so I made a partitioned box to hold my blending brushes, and some other items (which I haven't figured out yet).

Since this box was going to be sitting at the top, I needed to add some braces for it to rest on.

I added an additional flat square made from two layers of corrugated cardboard on top of the braces, and the box sits on top of that.

Here is the completed unit.  The base is not permanently attached to either the unit or the turn table, and the storage box on top is also not permanently attached.

And here's a photo with some ink pads in it.  I did not fill it with all my ink pads, because I thought it would be too heavy to move, and it needs to go into a different room -- as soon as I clear a space for it.

Thanks so much for taking time to visit today.  I hope you enjoyed the process of building my ink hotel.

Edited to add:  Please see my next post to view the unit with the gazebo dust cover on top

ink pads

Hi friends.  I thought I'd let you know what I've been working on this past week.  I've been storing my distress ink pads in one of those clear plastic shoe boxes, and every time I wanted one, I had to dig for it.  A long time ago, I decided to make a holder to fit all of them.  I was using cereal box chipboard, gluing five layers together to make it really sturdy.  The only problem was that it was taking way too long and other things took priority.  Anyway, the other day I pulled out what I had done and started working on it again.  Again, I realized that I was making way too much work for myself.  So I ditched the original idea and started over.  Nothing like changing course midstream.


This time I chose to make a rectangular tube (again from cereal box chipboard) that would fit around each ink pad.  I cut each piece 8"x2-3/4" and scored at 3", 4", and 7", gluing a piece of paper over the corner where the ends meet after folding.  Then I glued them together in stacks of 12 and wrapped another piece of chipboard around the back and glued to the sides.  I put paper over the open edges at the top and bottom.  Then all four stacks were glued together, and I added extra layers on the top and bottom to reinforce them. This first picture is after I put all the pieces together, but had not decorated it yet.  The ink pads fit snugly, but not too tight.  I have labels on all four sides of the ink pads, so it makes no difference which way they go into the shelves.  And I prefer storing them alphabetically.  It's so much easier to find them that way. 

I used torn old book pages to cover the outsides and painted the front edges white.  If you peek inside, you can see the print from the cereal boxes, but I'm not going to worry about that.  Notice the difference the white paint on the front makes. 

Now it's all loaded up with my ink pads and I'm happy with it.  It's relatively sturdy, so I think it will be sufficient.  Hopefully, Tim won't add more colors anytime soon.  If I were starting over, the one thing I would change would be to add some sort of notch at the front of the shelves beneath the ink pads to make it easier to pull them out. 

 

 

This last picture shows a bit of the outside - not fancy - just practical.  The only other thing I need to do is add a color swatch to the labels. 

Thanks so much for stopping by.