What Markers Do I Have?

Have you ever found yourself shopping for craft supplies and either you buy duplicates of supplies you already have, or you stand in the aisle staring at them and trying to remember if you’d already purchased a certain color?  Many crafters have this problem.  For serious crafters, those which spend a lot of time crafting, the supply inventory seems to grow rapidly and you quickly lose track of what you already have and don’t have.  When it comes to Markers, there are many different brands and hundreds of colors.  It’s impossible to remember them all!  In order for me to prevent myself from buying duplicates, I’ve created a Markers section for my Inventory Binder.  I have blank printouts for each brand that I’ve purchased them from.  Then when I buy a new one, I simply color in the inventory block for that brand and color so that I know which ones I have.  If I take my Inventory Binder to the store with me when I go craft supply shopping, I can simply refer to the Markers section and quickly determine which ones I need to buy.

Markers Section

The Markers section of my Inventory Binder was real simple to create.  The actual divider for the section is a piece of cardstock from the K&Company 8-1/2-Inch by 8-1/2-Inch Ancestry.Com Scrapbook Album Kit.  I cute the paper down to 5  7/8 in. to 8  3/4 in. to fit the mini binder.  Next I distressed the edges using the distress tool from my Making Memories Distressing Kit.  I used a regular hole punch to punch the three holes for the binder, then I inked the edges of the paper with the Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad, Tea Dye.  In order to get the divider tab, I used the ancestry.com paper and my Tim Holtz File Tabs die to cut out the tab.  The Sizzix Bigz Die – Tiny Tabs & Tags by Tim Holtz will also work for this.  I stamped the word Markers on the file tabs using the Miniature Alphabet and Punctuation Marks Rubber Stamp Set by Hampton Art.  That’s all it took for me to set up this section of the binder.  I used a stencil and Stickles to put the section name on the divider page.  The final step was to actually set up the inventory sheets.

Marker Inventory Sheets

As I said previously, there are several different brands of markers used for crafting.  Copic is one of the top brands so I started with that one and then worked through each of the brands I actually own.  I only used brands that I actually have product of as the purpose is to capture my own personal inventory.  As I buy products from other brands, I will either find or create a new inventory sheet for the binder in order to track my supply of those.  The brands I actually have inventory sheets for are as follows:

• Copic Markers
• My Favorite Things Copic Markers
• Papertrey Ink Copic Markers
• Simon Says Stamp Copic Markers
• Stampin Up Copic Markers
• Tim Holtz Distress Markers

Feel free to click on any of the links to obtain the inventory sheet for your own use.  I did not create any of these sheets as they were already out there and I didn’t see any point in recreating the wheel.  Once I printed off each of the sheets, I then took my markers and used the appropriate brand and color to color in the box on the actual sheet.  By doing this, I know when I’m at the store that, if the box isn’t colored in, I do not have that product in my inventory.

By keeping track of which Markers I already have, I reduce the occurrence of buying duplicate items which saves money, space, and frustration.  The trick is just remembering to take the Inventory Binder with me when I’m headed to the craft supply stores.  I hope this post was helpful to you all, I know many of us wish we were more organized.  This is just one small step to my goal of getting organized for more efficient crafting.

Happy Crafting!

~Ki