How I organize my stencils

Hi, my name is Mary and I have a stencil addiction.

No, I don't want help with it.

I have been through at least 4 ways to store my stencils. I have scoured Pinterest looking for ideas that would work for me. I love to look at how some people keep there stencils in the original packaging and they are hanging pristinely in their studio. That is not what I was looking for. I am not neat. I don't clean my stencils. And the chances of them making back into a plastic sleeve are zero.

My first organizer was just a 12x12 scrapbook plastic storage box. That lasted for quite awhile. One day though I outgrew that box. My choices were to buy another box or find a new way. The box had been great, but I was tired of digging through looking for the stencil I wanted.

Organizer #2 was a set of large binder rings. I hole punched each stencil and hung it on a binder ring. I had 4 binder rings and I could hook them on the side of my art cart, so they were handy. The binder rings started getting loose after a year or so. I decided to buy just one big ring and I bought the Reset Girl's Again small washi tape ring (organizer #2.1). This worked for awhile, but first the ring was heavy since I didn't stop buying stencils. Also when I would take the stencils to my classes, it was time consuming to put all the stencils back on the rings.

So now we arrive at my new find. I had a desk organizer similar to this one from IKEA for a few years.

I had been using it to store my Project Life cards. I don't know what happened, but one day I walked by and I wondered if my 12x12 stencils would fit in the back pocket. They did! And my 6-8 inch ones fit in the next pocket. Another one fit 6x6's. It was a miracle!!! The only adjustment I had to made was cutting out one divider in the front section so the 6x6's fit perfectly.