My Nail Plate Storage System: Sloppy but useful post (I hope)

Soooo this has got to be the sloppiest post ever but I just can't wait to share this with you.  

If there is enough interest.  I will do an "official"post. 

I love arts and crafts and all I need is more hours in the day to do stuff... I've been working for like a year in finishing a "banner" for a towel for Maya (one of my cats) in cross-stitching and I looooooooove scrapbooking. 

My good friends knows how much I love scrapbooking and gave me toooons of stuff, papers, cutters, ribbon, etc..  For some time, I was doing it digitally, although very nice and neat it just wasnt as fun as cutting, folding, gluing, being messy and cleaning up (yeah, maybe not so fun cleaning up).  

In searching for the best possible (CHEAPEST) way to store my nail stamping plates I combined several ideas from all over the web (I wish I had saved a list to give proper credit) to make my very own storage system.

One wonderful cheap idea I saw was using a baseball-type card collector binder but it was as big as a school binder to fit in my bookshelf but I want this to fit in my dresser or next to my nail polish rack.

Using scrapbook paper I made small envelopes 2 and 1/4in. (plus folding flaps)  (about the size of the plate)

each 12x12 sheet was good for 10 little envelopes.

Using my Circle Scissors (#47) I made the circles so that the plates will show through.

then cut the outline

Because scrapbooking paper can be on the thick side, in using the 2 and 1/4in measurement the plates were nice and snuggy (snuggy being a word in this post) in the envelope.  However, some papers were thinner leaving the plate with room to move around and possibly slide out.  

So i cut smaller foam circles to create some sort of non-slip surface

this way the plate wont silde out. 

 

(Seen are my Pueen plates)

I glued the envelopes in different places throughout the page to create different looks.  I plan on decorating the pages too! between the plates for added cuteness.

Every page holds 4 plate-envelopes.  The pages are made from scrapbook kit covers (much thicker than the paper)

The binder is a software storage binder I had with a bunch of CD's and CD sleeves, took those out.  The binder cover is a utility cover but I will decorate it differently (eventually) 

I can now see ALL of my plates and have discovered images I didnt even know I had :) 

Best of all I can flip through the pages while doing my nails in case I change my mind or want to add something different. 

This was the perfect fix for my longing of a plate storage system while on a no-buy for what seems to be forever :(

This is sooo exciting. (to me).  I hope you like it too!  If you do (or if you don't) let me know.