Organize your Stuff Challenge: Weeks 9 & 10 Embellishments & Alphas

Whew!  What a week!  I finally caught up to the Scrapbook your Stuff Challenge, only to have my blog hit counter hijack my site and and redirect me to the yellow pages every time I clicked on it. *grrrrrrr*

However, my site is fixed (yeahhh!), and here is my layout from this week (using some of my alphas).

So, this week I started embellishments.  Wow.  If there is one thing that I seem to have a lot of... ok I have a lot of, well, a lot of stuff... and one of those things is embellishments.  The POW and OCD me worked well together, and had a plan for all of the maddness... and they took lots of pctures.

I began by emptying all of my crop bags (I have 3 of them) into a 70 gallon Sterlite bin.  I added the pile of embelishment from upstairs, and the stray embellishments that have been taking vacations in my dining room, scoping out the joint, and checking out the neighborhood.  Now, for someone whose scrapbooking storage consisted of a closet until 22 months ago, it was a pretty full bin.  Next to it is my two Close to My Heart embellishment trays (sorted by color), my brad container from the fishing department at Wal Mart, and some other bins from failed organizing.

After I did this, OCD me took charge which was OK.  Group therapy is working, and the Inner Hoarder and PA Me still have the magazines from idea week to play with and distract them.  Everything that was not CTMH was sorted ino sub categories all over my floor.  Since this is the main hallway, and I knew that Girl Friday was in hiding, waiting to pounce on any weak or straggling embellishments, this spurred me on to complete the task as quickly as possible.

Fortunately or un, OCD Me has flitted in and out of my scrapbooking life since I began, and so my brads (minus a few strays) were already sorted, envelopes were together, same with buttons, never got many flowers, but beads and eyelettes were everywhere.  That was where OCD Me and the POW spent most of their energy.  Fabulous spouse, having hit a low point in sports, found it entertaining to watch...and help...and fend off stealth attacks by Girl Friday (although some beads did give their lives so that the rest could live).  Here is the before and after.

This actually took about 3 hours, but there were SO many little beads, and tiny brads, and eyelettes!

From there it only took another hour or so to get the rest put together and into "temporary" storage (the tax return has not come in yet).  The Inner Hoarder was actually impressed...yet again... at how OCD Me can organize a big pile of stuff into a little one without purging. ...What can I say... its a gift!...

What made my day though, was that there really was nothing to do for week 10.  I am an acrylic stamp junkie and so my Alpha stickers are few.  OCD Me already had them living happily together in a Cropper Hopper Pouch, and so all I had to do was take this picture and call Week 10 done as well!