Organizing those little bits and pieces

My scrapbooking stash seems to have a lot of little things. Brads, Buttons, spirals, paper clips, doodads and dolittles. The trick is to know where to find your little things when you just need that perfect finishing touch. Like almost everyone I know, I have tried and tried again to find the perfect way to keep these little things sorted and easily accessible. I have spent hours searching the fishing tackle sections, craft aisles and organization rows...I do have standards though. For me, any organization container must be portable,durable and not cut into my paper budget too much.
 At one time I had those cute little Cropper Hopper brand plastic boxes for every size and color of brad, eyelet and button I own. Were they cute? Yes. Did they look organized? You bet...but...
Stop for a moment. Think about how you make the decision about what embellishment you are going to use on a layout. You try something, it doesn't work, you put that back find something else. You know you want something small and let's say red... hmm I could use a button or a brad or what else??? Before you know it you have opened and dumped out sixteen different little boxes of little things. Yup, I quickly discarded those cute little boxes.
It was then that my friend, Wanda, discovered a tool box at Home Depot which we call Big Bertha. It is a bi-level tool box with two sizes of containers that stand upright inside it. She may not be pretty or pink, but she is definitely functional. The idea is that they are easy to dig around in, there is no cover that you have to open and close, and everything is in one place. The hard part was convincing myself to dump all of my little things together sorting them only by color and theme. So when I need something red, I dig in my RED container; something for Christmas... I dump out my Christmas stash.

The best part about this method is that when I want something red, I can look through all of the red things that I have, and play with them until I find just the right item to add to my layout. This is where the artist in me takes over. Besides, its just plain fun to dig in all those little things. SO Big Bertha is my perfect solution for my by color little bits and pieces.