I am an ink phreak.  I love ink in all forms, for all surfaces.  If it comes in 24 colors, I want all 24.  But where can you store and retrieve this kind of material?  What makes sense?  It’s colorful, but bulky too.  And if you aren’t stuck on one brand or another, one of those turntables just isn’t the answer.  I’ll show you some ideas for storing this most colorful of mediums.

I love ink, and I own lots of different colors and varieties.  I’m not tied to any one brand, but the ones I use the most are:

• CTMH dye-based hybrid (long lasting color in a quick-drying dye ink), 60 colors
• Ranger Distress Inks by Tim Holtz, 24 colors
• Brilliance, mostly the metallic ones, pigment inks, (fast drying without heat embossing)

So we’ll start with accessibility for a large collection of ink.  I wanted them AT HAND.  So I started with a cassette tape holder from Kingdom Tapes.  Inexpensive, alterable and able to hold 100 inkpads of the more standard size, so NOT for Stampin’ Up inkpads.

It was GREAT for my craft area.  And I’d highly recommend it if you ONLY craft at home.  But I don’t – and quickly determined that this wasn’t working for me.  I gave it to my friend, Laura.

The second iteration was a case from the Home Depot, hardware department.  It made my collection of dye-based inks portable in one unit, and I had a second case for the remainder.

Ok, now we are portable.  Yippee!  But why do we really need to bring SO MANY inkpads with us at one time?  And good luck if you tip it over when the lid is open.  LOL!  I still have one of these, but only to hold a couple of loose inkpads that I haven’t found a home for yet…  so how can we store the inkpads and have portability in smaller amounts?

The final solution for my dye-based, most utilized inks was a simple little zip case with a handle.  It’s called an Accessory Case, #Z4200 by Close To My Heart.  I have six of them.  Let me caveat quickly by stating that I am not currently a consultant for Close To My Heart.  Just wanted to get that out of the way so there is no conflict of interest.

I have my six Accessory Cases on hooks in my studio.  I can leave them unzipped, and access my inks as needed while I’m working at home.  Or I can zip em up and put them in a tote to take with me.  Because I have friends that scrap with me, I labeled the cases by putting cardstock swatches hanging on the side for all 12 colors in each case.  Also, I have inkpads from CTMH, Brilliance (Tsukineko), Stampin’ Up, Versamark and Stazon in these cases.  All fit well.  It’s a nice universal system.

And finally, my beloved Distress Inks, Alcohol Inks and reinker bottle from Ranger Industries. 

These all fit beautifully in Snapware containers that I purchased at Target.  The larger pieces were designed to hold ribbon spools.  They work exceptionally well for paint dabbers, alcohol inks and reinker bottles.  The shorter pieces house my Distress Inks and Distress Embossing Powders.  It’s a tower of creativity with an amazingly small footprint!

I cut and inserted small pieces of chipboard to hold the reinker bottles upright for transporting.  This because these particular bottles are made of glass.  Otherwise this step would not be necessary — but best I tell you just in case you want to adopt this method.