By Color

The only way it works for me to organize supplies is by color.  Since so much of my work tends to be monotone in nature, or mostly so, arranging stuff by color turns out to be the only way I'll see what I've got to work with.

These are my Neocolor II watercolor crayons -- until the other day they lived in that nice flat two-tiered tin they came in...but it took up too much room on my shelf.  In this tiny space of mine, real estate is always an issue.  Now they're housed in two bins, cool tones in one, warm in the other.

My pen collection below, now in four flat bins stacked two high where the watercolor crayon tin used to be.  Black-white-gray pens in one, yellow-orange-gold-copper together, red and purple in one, and green and blue in the last.  With lots of room to grow.  One can never have too many pens.  Some of these I've had for eons, like the Tsukineko Fabrico markers which I don't use much.

I have a new favorite place to buy pens ~ JetPens.  They have absolutely the best selection of pens in every color available, their prices are the best, and they also carry Japanese stationery products you can't buy anywhere unless you live in a big city that boasts a Japantown.  If you're into fountain pens, they also have a huge supply of those, including handblown glass ones.  Free shipping in orders over $25.  No, this isn't an ad for JetPens, I'm just smitten with them.  And yesterday brought a dozen new pens now in my collection below.

I recycled these old file folders to house my magazine images, by color.  Taped up the bottoms so stuff doesn't fall out.  Previously all the images were in a big drawer, but I couldn't really see what I had without them being organized into color groupings.

And another tip ~ the best sharpener to use with crayons of any sort is an old eyeshadow pencil sharpener, one with a larger-than-normal hole.  "Crayon sharpeners" do not work for their intended purpose.