Cardstock Ink Pad Towers

Here's what I did yesterday:


I got all of these glorious brand new stamps from my Stampin' Up! party order and I just wanted to stamp away, but my ink shoebox (a plastic shoebox that previously stored all of my inks, in a big jumble) was annoying me. I started pulling things out and realizing just how many awesome colors I have that I never get to use because I don't remember that I even have them. So here's what I've done so far. I've got 1 tower for some colors and 1 tower for all of my blacks and browns and my embossing inks. YES, there's a difference between all of those blacks and browns. But I don't have to get into that right now.

I had become inspired by the idea of having a lovely little ink tower when I saw the beautiful spinny one Stampin' Up! sells for their inks. That's $55, though. And I don't have enough of their inks yet to justify that. So I figured I could try to make something for the inks I have, but didn't really get to sketching a design until seeing them in a sad jumble yesterday and becoming particularly convicted about it.

So these are made 100% from cardstock and glue (my FAVORITE glue, of course... Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive! Which not only dries fast, but dries hard, lending structural integrity to things.). I covered the edges once finished with my glorious Marrakech Basic Grey paper, which makes me feel like crying in some ways because almost all of my Marrakech paper is gone. Luckily I have this beautiful way of enjoying two pieces of it for a long time to come.

The shelves dipped a bit overnight, so I flipped it all over and put the inks in again. I think the shelves might end up just dipping, which is fine. I didn't need for it to be a perfectly structurally sound object (it is only cardstock, after all), just something that would stand and hold my inks in an easily accessible and upside down fashion. Storing inks upside down is best because it always keeps the ink at the top.

My next puzzlement is to how I'm going to store my little Tsukineko Dewdrop chalk inks. They look like teardrops. I could create a piece similar to these, I suppose, but these were a hellish amount of work and I'm not ready to put myself through that again, quite frankly. Maybe those will require a simpler solution. Something to keep them straight, but also easily accessible.

The wheels are turning now...