 Well, hi there. I'm Sandy Allnach, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube, and I want to share some Copic Marker storage ideas with you today. The first half is all my stuff, second half is all of your photos you've submitted to me, and there are two items that were donated that are in this video, and the rest of this is not sponsored. It's just stuff that I've used, tried, liked, or disliked, and I want to share what I've learned with you. This is the Copic bag I've used for ages. It's probably the fourth one I've purchased because I go through these like mad. It's a fabric bag, and I travel a lot, so it gets banged around a lot, and I put holes in it, all sorts of things. So I have had to repurchase this case a few times. I have liked it though. There's a number of things that I do like about it. Size is one, because the other cases that you're going to see are a little bit larger, and for somebody who has all the markers, that's a bit of a challenge, but a friend of mine purchased this insert. It's an MDF insert to go into this case, specifically made for this, and the Etsy seller, I'm like really impressed with them that they make this out of MDF. It fits the markers perfectly. They go in really well, and I borrowed this from my friend because I wanted to try it first. I had heard about a lot of people who made a grid for themselves for the case out of this lighting stuff that you can get at the hardware store, and not only did that sound like a lot of work to my little P-brain that couldn't figure out the math of like, what size do I get, and how does it fit, and what do I need to cut it with, etc. But it also, I had heard rumors, and I don't know if they're true or not, that when you pull your markers out of that lighting grid, that the caps may fall off, and then you got to dig around for the caps. That did not sound like fun to me. So I just never really dealt with having an insert for mine. This one is not going to be something I'll get, though, because it only holds 276 markers. I have the full set, which is 358 markers, but I did want to try it. So thank you to Sheila for letting me use this so I could test it out and see if I liked it, how it's going to work. With this, I like that you can put all the numbers facing the same way, so you can read them all and see them all and stuff, and my recommendation would be to put your sketch nibs facing down probably. I don't know whether down or up works best for you, but put them in consistently. If you get your hand used to the motion of putting them in all the time the same way, then you'll pull them out and be ready to roll. So this one is an insert I could definitely recommend in this case. If you can still find that case anywhere. This is the new case that Copic's making. That's the replacement for the black case, and they gave me this one. This is one of the donated items. They gave it to me at CHA for doing a demo for them, and I just kind of walked by their booth and they didn't have somebody sitting down, so I sat down and did a demo and a periscope. This one has two little hooky bobs on the side for a strap. It has little feet on the bottom, so it's a little raised up off the surface. This case I sent through checked luggage on the way home from CHA, and it did get a little bit on the beat up side. I did not have Copic's in it, don't worry, because I wouldn't send Copic's through the checked baggage, but the case does have a key that you can lock it up with. So if that's been something that's of a concern to you, then this is a pretty cool deal that it locks, and it also has the nice little strap. The case is meant to use the plastic cases. If you've ever seen those, this one is for the various ink refills, so it's shorter, but the one for the markers fits perfectly from the bottom surface of the suitcase to the top. So they hold in place, they don't slide around in there. If you have those plastic cases, they'll all fit in here. This, though, is what I got from TJ and things. I purchased this one because I was so impressed with the other one, and I thought if I'm going to use this case, this little piece of wood is the only thing that's going to make me use it, and I'll explain a little more about why. But it holds 360 markers. There are 358 in the line, so it'll hold all my markers with two extra spaces, and it also has room for some refills. I wanted to try putting it in hex chart order and see if that was going to work. It didn't work, necessarily, because this is a straight grid. The hex chart is in a little bit of a kittywampus grid because of the hex shape, and if you haven't seen the hex chart and you want to check it out, link in the doobly-doo, you can go purchase that from my site. But you can see it arranges colors in color order, and so that's what this whole thing looks like, which is beautiful, but I had to do some adjustments to make it kind of work because the mat doesn't line up. There are two extra holes there. I left them toward the interior so that I could put in a Copic multiliner and a white pen and not have them kind of tilt sideways and hang out the edge when I close the suitcase. And yeah, so it's all filled in. All my markers are in place in rough color order-ish, like the hex chart, and then I can close it all up. I'm going to test traveling with this because I'm a little concerned it's very heavy, not only because now it has the MDF in it, but it also is a heavy case in and of itself, and I want to see how it goes on an airplane and whether or not I actually am going to have a hurt shoulder after rushing through airports, but I will update the blog post associated with this video when I have done that trip, and I will let you know. So this is the profile of the cases. So you can see the size of it. The blue case is definitely much bigger. It does come in other colors, by the way, other than blue. I think there's a purple one and a gray one. The other case here that I have, this is my student markers, and I'm going to throw my wides in there. You can see the bags kind of squish around so you can sort of adjust to the amount of markers you have. You can put other art supplies in there as well, but this is my student markers that go to my classes. So my students have something to borrow if they didn't bring the right colors with them. This now is my wallet, and I've adjusted to putting all of my original markers in there. The originals or the Copics or they call them classics, a lot of different names for them, but they have a chisel nib on one side, and instead of having the super brush nib, which the chow and the sketch have, they have a bullet nib, which is a little bit better for writing, doodling, small details, stems on flowers, that kind of thing. So you may want to have a couple colors in that kind of a marker if you're interested in doing those kind of fine line details. So for now, that's where they're going to be. If I resort back to the black case, then everything will go in the black case. Now this is another donated item. TJ and things, when they heard I was going to make a video, asked if I would review the case for the refills. So this holds 209 of the refills. This one came with the plastic case and the insert. I think you can purchase them separately, and it just kind of fits in there. You see how easily it pops in, and it only has one layer, whereas the marker ones have two layers, a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom. This is just one, and I decided I'd try putting them all in there and see how that works. They go in nice and smoothly, and they do only hold 209, and I say only because I'm crazy, and I have all the refills, because I do so much Copic coloring, I needed them all. So if you only have 209, this is a perfect solution for that. I think you can buy the art in locally, and then only just purchase the MDF insert if you wish to do that. I'm not going to be using this one. I'm going to give it to my friend who loaned me her insert for the beginning of this video as a thank you to her, and this is how I store mine. I have a couple of the official Copic storage from stores that have gone out of business, as well as a shoebox and a plastic case and stuff, because I wanted them all in one drawer, and that's the reason I will not be using it, but otherwise it works great. Viewer ideas. On Facebook recently, I asked you guys to send in pictures of your Copic storage, and I'm going to run through a bunch of those. This is all what you guys have sent me. Lots of folks use the black case with different types of inserts and dividers, whether it's MDF, whether it's cardboard, whether you've painted your MDF, lots of different ways, even using cups inside of it. I think it's a great idea. A couple of you use the wallets and stack up the wallets. Those are a great way for transporting. A few of you of other people have used some of the Copic storage, maybe purchased again from a store. Those are the official things that they display Copic markers in. Crafters Companion sells these, lots of you use them, and they are made for the Spectrum Noir markers, but I believe lots of you are using them for your Copics, and then there are the Tote people, lots of craft totes, makeup totes, kitchen totes, little spinners. Just keep your eyes peeled when you're shopping for anything for something that you could use with your markers. These are all different storage shelves, whether just all different kinds of grid bins, whether they're from container stores or from hobby stores or goodness knows where you can get these. You can have your husband build you one, and there will be some we're going to see that hubby's built for their artistic wives to be able to use for their markers, and some of them will have storage that you can put other items in as well. There are plastic bins galore out in the world, lots and lots, whether they have drawers, whether they just have lids, or whether they're totes with a handle that you can transport around. Lots of different types, styles, and companies. I was glad to see a few people send in pictures of the inserts inside of plastic totes. If you don't want one of the cases, you can do inserts on the left hand side is one from TJ and things. They do make them for plastic cases, the art bins as well as the official cases. And on the right is one that somebody made using the lighting grid. You can see that the marker angle has to be a little kitty wampus for them to go in. That might be also why the lids tend to pop off sometimes. And then on to cups. Many, many, many of you use cups of all sorts. Here's just a small selection of them. On the bottom left are pill jars, and on the top right are silverware cups. I thought both of those were pretty unique types of solutions. This is the Raskog, I think that's how you say it, cart from IKEA. Some people use the black little bags from the Copic case, probably because when they transport their markers, they can just pop those into the black case to go around in color elsewhere. These are the lucky people who had storage made for them, whether it was by their hubbies or by someone else. And that's always nice to get custom storage that fits what you need perfectly. On the left hand side here are PVC pipe cups, which was interesting. And on the right hand side, square pencil cups that are stacked. And this was an interesting idea, PVC tubes to hold the markers, they're glued together so that you could take that whole brick of markers with you and pull it out onto your desk. Now we have a few unique solutions. Up on the upper left is a suitcase, just a regular suitcase that somebody put their markers in. On the right is a basket with an insert. And on the bottom is a whole wall full of cups to put your markers in. It might be a little fuzzy to see, but you get the idea. I think that's an interesting and beautiful solution in your craft room. I've saved my favorites here for the end. One is Kat's idea to use tool bags. And she folded down the top of bags around each of the little marker sets. So they're divided into colors. You could even use colored bags for each group. I think that'd be pretty. Lene found a gorgeous little wine rack to put our markers on. And I think that's an ingenious little piece to have in your studio to display them and also in a very beautiful way and very elegant. And Terri blew my mind with this. Look at this rack she has made. It's a spinning rack, so she has different brands on different sides. And I was amazed. If you want to find out where any of these people got their storage from, I'm going to link you on my blog to the Facebook page that has all of the information from each of these people on it. Rather than me retyping it, I'll let you look through the Facebook page to get more details on any of those types of storage things that you might be interested in. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you to everybody who posted their photos for me to use in this video. If you're interested in the hex chart, you can get that on my website. You can also sign up for the Copic Jumpstart class there as well. It starts on Friday if you want to join us for the fun. But if you're watching this video later, you can take the class any time it will be available on my website. And I want to thank you all for spending a few minutes with me today and I'll see you next time. Have an awesome day. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Bye.