Organizing the tangles, the supplies... and the ART Part 2

Arts and craft storage... It can be overwhelming and expensive.

I was at Hobby Lobby and Michael's craft stores yesterday and perusing the art and craft supplies and supply storage. My hubby was awesome in coming with me and letting me get some organizational items for my Zentangle stuff. Some of the very things I was going to share with you anyway!

An Aside: Before my blog goes much further, I feel the need to point out how I phrase things. Money is tight. I'm sure many people understand how that goes. I say "my hubby lets me" get things, because he and I discuss all purchases, big or small, for me or for him or for us or for the house. I can envision the masses going "Lets her? Lets her?!?! What is she? A wimp?" or getting negative images of my hubby, like he's a tyrant or something. Let me assure you that is not the case, either way. We just have to agree on purchases. It's how we make our money work.... Now that that's been explained... on with the blog!

So, arts and craft storage is SO expensive! Scrap booking totes for materials and supplies can easily get into the 80 plus dollar range. Most specialized storage is outrageous, regardless of if you're looking at paint and canvas, scrap booking or any other media. Even some of the odd specialized things for knitting and cross stitch I've seen get excessively pricey.

Floating around on Pintrest, I found this most excellent idea for organizing tangles at Tanglebucket. By getting a scrap booking paper punch and some coin collecting storage sleeves, you have a easily manipulated tangle index!

Now, I have to explain the terminology to non tanglers:
"Tangle" - the pattern, the design... the shapes drawn to fill space, in pen.
"String" - the guideline you lay down just to kind of get you started, in pencil.
"Tile" - the paper, the object which you're tangling on if you choose other than paper.
"Zentangle" - the official term for the style of art created and marketed by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. Done on an official zentangle tile, 3.5 inches square. Also have a "zendala" option on a roughly 4.5 inch round tile.
"Zentangle Inspired Art" or "ZIA" - Follows the Zentangle form, but is not the basic monochrome idea of "official" Zentangle or isn't on a Zentangle tile. Options include color, Different sized or shaped paper from "official", on clothes or other objects.

I've got a rather paltry collection of tangles, through it quite literally grows every day. The web is a fascinating place, with people sharing new tangles they create all the time. Then there's resources like Tangle Patterns. And while I will always utilize this resource, it is a more than a bit distracting when you're working on a piece and you have to stop and try and find the next pattern.

Following the idea on Tanglebucket, I've begun putting all my patterns in these coin collecting pouches as of last night. Very, very cool. I'll post a pic of the completed (considering it'll be continually growing) project.

Here's some of my craft storage:

Markers, pens and pencils oh my!

This shows my pen, marker and pencil collection, some water color paper, and on the right is my monster paper punch for the tangle index project. The top shelf is my bookshelf. I've got some artwork up there leaning against the books. Behind the box on the left is a jack o lantern ZIA I did. I'll post that in the next post.

Bead storage and little container to the
left is Cross Stitch storage

I love bright colors, so this was a must have. And we caught it on sale last year! Word to the wise, it's a nice little storage container, but it's not worth 30 or 40 bucks. Get it when it's around 20 like I did and it's a good deal. The beads themselves are in baby food jars from the recycle center in the drawers. *Ecological and economical!* Perfect size and it makes it easy to see your options. I keep all my beading stuff in here including the beads; tools, sorter, spare jars, stringing material, beading mats, etc. Its great!

For cross stitch, though I don't do it much anymore because its hard on the eyes and our pets love to attack the string, The floss is wound on the floss cards and then kept in a plastic container kind of like a tackle box. Then the hoops and the current project, plus the floss box and needle container and other materials go in the big box.

Not shown, I also have a credenza that I have all the other sundry projects I work on in. General arts and crafts stuff, sculpey clay, yarn crafts etc. Its easy to find things. Though I admit that I haven't messed with some of it in a long time.

Finally, here's one of my ZIA's:

Halloween ZIA

I like tangling in shapes more so than the traditional 3.5 inch tile with a string. I don't have any of the Official tiles and I like working in a wire-bound sketch book or on water color paper for color infused projects. So I scour the net looking for shapes to tangle in, or I jump over to The Bright Owl and download one of her zendala challenge shapes. I print them off and when I want to tangle with them, I trace them into the sketchbook and tangle away. Also economical and environmental, since I just keep the original print out for future use.

I love my set up. I an super geeked about this organizational idea. Can't wait to finish it and share pics!

Off to tangle some more!!