Last summer, my friend Kinjal had a yellow Delfonics pouch shipped to my house so she could pick it up when she came to Awesome Ladies Live. She lives overseas, so every once in a while she’ll have something sent here instead of dealing with international shipping.
As soon as I opened the door and picked up the package (it was sent in a clear bag), I was like: yep, I’m gonna be needing one of those too.
I’ve always been a sucker for cute organizational supplies, especially bags, and extra especially a dope colored bag. I love it when all my stuff has an aesthetically pleasing home. So as soon as it went on sale, I bought one for myself.
And then…I barely used it. This is not the first time I’ve purchased a cute organization supply and let it sit on the sidelines. Even though it was adorable and very functional, I already had a whole studio full of places for the stuff I was using, so it wasn’t exactly solving a current problem. So it mostly just sat there in the bottom shelf of one of my IKEA Raskog carts.
Then in February, Charlie came along, and for the first few weeks of postpartum life I spent most of my time in my bedroom with her. I was either sleeping or eating or feeding her. My only creative outlet for more than a few weeks was jotting down a few things in the mom five-year journal that I got from my friend Juli. But suddenly that yellow pouch was the solution to a brand new problem—how do I store a tiny amount of supplies and keep them at arms reach?
It was small enough to keep on the bookshelf right next to my bed. I legit only had to lean over to reach any of my supplies. I put my journal, some pens, adhesive, tiny scissors, and a handful of stickers inside. NGL, the fact that it was bright yellow also helped a ton, it was easy to see and reminded me how easy it was to do the thing.
A few months later - after I finally stopped living in my bed with another human being attached to my body - I was out shopping for Awesome Ladies Live door prizes at Odd Nodd Art Supply in Lansing,a delightful little shop and perfectly encapsulates the Lansing vibe. While I was inside, I came across this super cool expanding binder.
My yellow pouch was starting to get a little too cramped, and it wasn’t perfect for holding all the stickers or loose scraps of paper I was accumulating. And I immediately knew it would be perfect for all the little bits I was actively using.
Currently the binder has Brandi Kincaid cards in a few different sizes, stickers, gelli prints, patterned paper, bits of life, and collage scraps. It’s not a ton of stuff, but it’s a nice collection that I can easily leaf through in less than a minute.
And because I’ve been gathering a bit more here and there, I also have one of the Awesome Ladies tote bags from Live holding the bigger stuff—magazines, a big envelope of ephemera, my larger scissors and bit more adhesive. Also, the binder and the pouch fit perfectly in the tote bag, so it’s super easy to clean up and make the living room look like a living room and not a crafty hurricane.
The whole setup lives on the shelf under my coffee table. When Charlie falls asleep in her little chair, I’m usually already sitting on the couch and it’s easy to reach down, grab my stuff, and start making something.
And this quick start is absolutely essential right now because I have absolutely no idea how long a crafty session will last. Sometimes the baby naps for ten minutes and sometimes she naps for an hour.
Lately she’s been fighting naps pretty hard, so whatever time shows up is the time I’ve got. If I need to stop making a page five minutes into the process, I don’t want it to take me 10 minutes just to clean up—or worse, I don’t want to have spent the entire time just picking stuff out to use.
So I don’t. I just use what I’ve already collected.
So, this tiny version of my craft studio under the living room table is helping me actually make things in this season of life.
I still love all the technically involved stuff. I’ve literally been collecting scrapbook stuff for more than 20 years. But if I decide I’m stamping, I’m choosing between a million stamps and ink pads, and if I pull out the gelli plate then who knows where the next half hour is going (thank god for a heat gun, but still).
Right now I need a quick in and quick out. With the stuff under my coffee table, I don’t have to choose between 30 ink pads or 20 bottles of paint. I get to just grab something and stick it down on the page.
Sometimes I still think, oh, I probably have the perfect thing for this back in the studio. But I’m not getting up in the middle of a ten-minute nap to go hunt for it. The last time I had the urge, I just waited until Jeff got home and took the baby, and then went back there to grab a handful of Brandi cards, a few stickers, and some of my fav paper scraps.
My thought is: If I’m going back there, I might as well grab a handful of things and make the trip worth it.
One of my recent pages was basically just a handful of things from a recent Brandi Extravagant Hope envelope. On the left side I used some new washi tape and a little envelope that says “good words for later,” with the little note still tucked inside. The entire right-hand page is a 4x6 art print covered in tiny rainbow hearts that says “let your love surprise you.”
A lot of my pages are looking like this right now. Less mixed media, more lists, more random thoughts, more using up the stuff I’ve got lying around, and more sticking down whatever is already in front of me.
More than anything, right now I’m trying to catch the moments that disappear fast. Charlie changes literally every day. She has already grown out of her little newborn onesies and most of her 0-3 month onesies too. She’s constantly babbling mamamamama and bababababa. She looks (and acts) like a real life miniature human now instead of a teensy alien cosplaying as a baby human.
There are things happening every day that I know I will completely forget in a few weeks. So I’m making messy lists, I’m jotting random things down, and I’m just having fun sticking things into my notebook.
I’ve been documenting my life on paper for a long-ass time. I have a ridiculous amount of experience to fall back on. I’ve made more than a thousand Daily Pages at this point, plus hundreds of scrapbook pages and dozens of albums. I know what I like. I know what my favorite adhesive is. I know what works for me in this season of life.
At this point I don’t have to think very hard about some of this stuff. I know which adhesive I’m going to grab. I know what notebook I want to use (something small, not lined). I know I’ll be able to make a page I like with a handful of stickers and paper scraps in less than ten minutes.
No matter how much experience you’ve got—your pile of already-have stuff is going to look different. Maybe it’s mostly the photos on your phone. Maybe you have a notebook you bought six months ago and still haven’t used. It might be some junk mail, your BFF group text, a magazine, or a bunch of random stickers sitting in a drawer somewhere.
Maybe you’re like me, and you’re extremely good at remembering all the stuff you purchased at the store and somehow forget about the junk mail, magazines, scraps, phone photos, and random bits of life that are already sitting around (thanks capitalism). And I know I’m not the only person whose brain immediately goes, “maybe I just need to buy one more thing...and it’ll all be perfect”
And don’t get me wrong, I love having a ridiculous number of supplies, and the space to store them (thanks Midwestern real estate); having seventeen ink colors doesn’t automatically make me more creative than having three. Mostly it means I have fourteen extra choices to make.
So lately I’ve been skipping a lot of the “what else do I need?” thoughts and coming back to some more boring and ultra simple questions:
Where am I actually going to make something?
How much time do I really have?
What’s already around and easy to grab?
What do I even want to remember from this part of my life?
The time question is the biggest one for me right now. I used to have a hard hour at noon for Daily Pages. Now I might have five minutes, ten minutes, or twenty if I’m lucky, and I’d much rather make a five-minute page and have time left over than spend fifteen minutes setting something up and have Charlie wake up before I even actually start.
Your answers are probably completely different from mine. Maybe Saturday morning at the kitchen table is actually perfect for you. Or you already take a tote bag to crafternoon at the library. Or, legit, the only time nobody needs anything from you is the fifteen minutes you’re on the couch after dinner.
If your answer is the couch after dinner, don’t build your whole setup around the craft table you sit at twice a month (as much as that might seem like “the right way to do it”). Put your stuff near the couch.
And, more than anything, please do not read this email and decide the first step is buying yourself a new pouch.
I mean, the pouch is great and if you want one, go for it (or honestly put a price alert on it). But I bet you already own something that can hold a few things (and you can always make it cuter with some more stickers). So, grab a couple of supplies and put them somewhere you can easily reach them. A bag. A basket. A project box. Whatever works for you.
That little pile underneath my coffee table is basically my craft room right now. Instead of multiple desks, Kallax shelves, hundreds of stamp sets, and 20+ years of accumulated stuff, I’ve got a yellow pouch, a pink binder, and a tote bag.
Time-wise, I’ve got five minutes here, ten minutes there, and occasionally longer when the babe decides to really commit to nap time.
When I’ve only got a little bit of time and no idea what to make, I usually go back to the same place: a Currently List. That’s where we’re going next week.