If you can afford some space to call your own, it makes all the difference in the world. I am very fortunate to be able to create a mess of torn paper and be able to close the door and walk away when I am done for the day.
In the past I have worked in an extra bedroom and in a corner of the garage. Being creative means having your work accessible at all times so that when inspiration strikes, you can jump right in. You don’t need an ultra-fancy space, just a space; I have an artist friend who works in a storage unit!
My favorite studio organization piece is a kitchen cart on wheels. I have three sets of clear plastic drawers stacked on top of the cart so that they are easily accessible while I work at my easel. (I prefer to stand and do my collages rather than sit at a table.)
I divide my hand-painted papers by color family, and the clear plastic allows me to see which colors of paper I have in each drawer. When I know I will be spending significant time on an area of one color, I take that drawer out and put it right next to me.
My second favorite organization system is a clothes-line that runs from one end of my studio to the other. I use wooden pins to put my wet painted papers up to dry. This system works well for keeping paper from sticking to the table or the floor. It also allows for some happy accidents in the drying process when one wet paper touches another, and the color transfers in beautiful and unexpected ways. Synchronicity.
I organize my papers by color, a paper palette of sorts. It is much easier to work the green areas of your collage when your papers are organized enough to let you easily and quickly find the green pile. Rather than digging through a multicolored mess, organization enables efficiency. I file my papers in the following color groups:
What do I do if a paper has two colors from this list on it? I tear it in half and put a piece in both drawers!
My travel setup consists of gallon-sized plastic bags, each filled with one color of hand-painted paper, stacked into a tote bag with outside pockets for glue, brushes, drawing tools, a water bottle and folded paper towels. Every so often I spill the bags (one at a time) onto a table, eliminate the pieces of paper that are far too small, fold flat the ones that have gotten wrinkled up into a ball and reorganize the colors. When you are working in small spaces, the organization of the colors within the gallon bags is imperative.