Tutorial: Organizing Mists

So I tend to be a collector.  I have 10 linear feet of patterned paper in cropper hoppers (no joke)... a basket of flowers sorted by color (we will get to that some other time!).... and my mists.  There are 22 of them.  Yep, you read that right.... TWENTY TWO.  eek!  So in my newly reorganized office, I desparately needed a way to know what colors I have to play with and what they look like because they are in a basket in the new closet.  And I am forever forgetting what colors I have.  So I created this handy little swatch book to toss on my desktop in my basket of most used stickles, ink pads and paint dabbers:

First, I cut two pieces of plain white 12x12" cardstock into 3x3" squares, which gave me 32 squares.  (Room to grow I hope!)

Then I punched one edge with my favorite edge punch at the moment (martha stewart mini scallop heart) and the remaining two corners with a corner rounder.

My fingers hurt after all that punching!!

So before I start spraying mists everywhere, I cleared the desktop and put down some scrap chipboard (leftover from a paper pack) to catch any stray mist.  Newspaper would work well too.  And I busted out my trusty sharpie pen.  Before spraying a card, I made sure to write down exactly which mist I was using!

So then I took each of the sprays in my stash one at a time and gave each 3x3" square a spray or two to cover about half of the area.  I wanted to make sure that I still showed a good portion of the white to give me a point of reference to compare to. 

Once I had my pile of 22 sample cards, I took two of my blank cards and played a little with my new Maya Resist.  I freehand spelled out "My Mist Stash" with the resist.  I have to say that I am in LOVE with the Maya Resist!  The bottle comes with this fabulous lid that has a pin already built into it -- no trying to unplug the bottle EVER!  Also, the tip is super fine which allows for all kinds of control.  I would guess that the tip is about the size of a pin head.  It isn't like a bottle of stickles or glue with a wide application tip.  Trust me, you will love this stuff!

So once you have the Maya Resist on there, just walk away and let it dry for a while.  Once it was dry, I came back and misted several colors on my cover cards to make them stand out from the rest of my swatches.

Once they dried completely, I peeled off the resist leaving me with this super cool cover:

Note:  It is very important to make sure your paper is completely dry before trying to peel the resist off the paper!!

When everything was dry, I punched a hole in the upper left hand corner of each swatch with my cropodile and used a ring to attach them altogether! 

Now I have a great little "cheat sheet" for my mist stash, which also comes in handy when I'm drooling over the fabulous new colors of Maya Mist and trying to decide what to buy!

How do you keep track of your mist stash?  Do you have any cool tips for how you store or organize them?