Still Keeping it Real - Craft Room

Not to make you think I dont have piles of stuff of my own, I wanted to show you my craftroom this week:



Piles by the door of things I am shipping out, piles on both desks, project bucket on the floor.



Another view of the stuff shipping out, the project bucket on the floor and the pile of fabrics that need to be made into roman blinds, pillows and chair covers.



My desktop... Piles of scrap fabric, fabric for my next project, pile of papers I need to do today, and a corner of my desk completely taken over by a blog post project I havent finished yet.  Trash can is full too.



Pile of artwork on the floor, overly full filing basket.

That pile of artwork... Kathryn created all of this in a week.

That blog project I mentioned... this corner of my desk has looked like this for a month.

Bucketeers

This is the IKEA desk on the left side of my craft room, attached to the 8 cubbie EXPEDIT unit from IKEA.  4 of the cubbies are hidden under the desk. 

I stuck buckets in them.  No, not pretty buckets that fill the space, buckets that cost a couple dollars at Walmart and are sold in the dish section.   I figued they aren't all out in the open, so who cares.

Anyway, these are Project Buckets.  Specifically. 

They are not Product buckets and they are not dump spaces.  Each bucket has a purpose and items that coorespond to that are inside. 

These four buckets are:

PHOTOGRAPH which includes stuff I need to get good photos of,

SEWING which has fabric for specific projects, not just fabric I bought because I liked it,

PAINTING, which has items to paint ranging from wooden items, ceramic and resin ornaments and paint palettes, and

RECIPE BOOKS which is an ongoing scrapbook project I am doing to put in print, with photos, all our favorite family meals for my meandering family.

So far this has worked out beautifully.  I know where to go when I have a project in mind and can easily find the items I need.  And it is also good for when I might just feel like painting but dont know what I want to do, so I can pull out the entire bucket and browse through it until I find something to do that suits my fancy.

There are 4 more buckets on the other side of the room with less prominant subjects in them.  I will show you those soon.

How do you organize your projects?

Love IKEA???

One entire side of my craft room is now storage and so amazingly functional due to a trip to IKEA in Illinois. It was a horrible trip... the traffic was awful just leaving Wisconsin. The traffic was awful around Chicago. The store was experiencing a brown-out so less than half the lights were on and it was about 95 degrees inside... AND although the checkout lines were all open, people and carts went 30+ back for EACH checker!

But in the long run and through all the hassle, we brought home a 5x5 EXPEDIT as well as a 2x4 EXPEDIT with DESK attachment. And I LOVE THEM!!!!

From top to bottom, the larger bookcase holds all my scrapbooks to complete (Creative Memories), cardstock (Stampin Up in Cropper Hopper), printed papers (also in Cropper Hopper), black leather cubes (Target) for children's craft supplies, all my Mother and Father-in-Law's photos albums for the last 20 years (that I need to scan and burn to DVD then put into SAFE albums). The Red IKEA drawer units hold my Sizzix dies.

The desk unit is my new area for die cutting and sewing as well as friend space. The bookcase cubes hold my mini-machine, my sizzix, my sizzlets... and under... project buckets. The desk is quite deep so I easily have room for the MakingMemories 17x23 self-healing mat as well as some great buckets (Target Dollar aisle) for adhesives and decorative scissors my kids still use and love.

I love love love this side of the room!!! What do you think???

Tiny Bits of This and That

All my little bits got organized into this great set of hardware drawers.... by color first and foremost. Things like glitter, micro beads, eyelets, brads, buttons... glitters, primas and even some seasonal embellishments and metal words. This setup has worked out great for me! I now know what I have and dont have (always shopping, you know!) and remember to use these embies more often. I love it so much that I am thinking of adding another one for puff balls and wooden pieces that we use for other crafts!

I can Always use a Helping Hand

Seriuosly, I meant it when I said that I loved the hand and I wanted one... I dont know quite what I was thinking, and I doubt Angie (from The American Homemaker) did either, but she still sent it to me...

It loved me right from the start, running it's fingers through my hair and helping around the craft room.

But it was drab and shabby and unhappy with itself. So we gave it a little facelift!

My helping hand is so happy with itself now and can be found all over my craftroom! Hand really gets around!

Organizing Cardstock

Just a small taste of the cardstock I keep on-hand in my craftroom. This is the Stampin' Up cardstock I use for card bases. There are new, as well as older, discontinued colors represented here... so I can't just refer to the catalog to pick a color or to match it with inks and printed papers. To make it easier, I made this swatch kit. It is portable, yet has a large enough chunk of each color to easily match with other items as I shop around my craftroom for a current project.

And because I find I will make cards more often if it is easy-smeasy, I precut a couple dozen card bases and stuck them in a cute little bucket on my desk, always at the ready. No more will I stamp and color then set aside and lose... now I have cards ready and can complete projects quickly and without procrastination!

Do you know what papers you have in your stock??

Sometimes you just Gotta Bling!

Seriously, is there anything you can't bling up or alter??? First, this $5, 9" battery operated clock... a gift from Jill K, my previous CM upline. Isn't it adorable how she took some simple stickers and die cuts and made this clock look great!!

And then this metal sign I found at Hobby Lobby... $10 with a 50% off coupon... cost me $5 and about 2 foot of ribbon.



I have had these signs for 6 years. They were high decor in my previous house, but they hadn't fit in here until I took a can of spray paint to them.

I love them once again!!!

Sure, we are all talking about decluttering and tossing stuff, but every once in a while you really can just redecorate or repurpose stuff.

Cleaver Containerizing for Pens and Handy Tools

It has worked for years this way, these small CM pen holders that I would easily stow in my wheeled tote until the next time I stamped or scrapbooked... but set up in my own craftroom, I want my tools and pens at my fingertips and easy to get at... not easy to stow away. So enter the dollar aisle at Target (yes, again!)... and these adorable buckets:

A quick bit of organization and I have 3 buckets of hand tools and adhesives at the ready. Taking up no space at all on the side of my desk, these buckets have solved one hassle!

Cheap and Chic Art

Somewhere around the first of the year or the end of last year, I found adorable 8" square calendars in the dollar aisle at Target. Without any real plan, I stashed two in my cart for later. When I got home, I promptly stashed them in my projects to do bucket...where they sat...and sat...and sat...

until I saw these 12"square frames on sale at Michael's. A quick switch of the art and VOILA! For about $30 I have a complete set!

Craft Room Renovation Complete!

Just a few teasers for now! Stay tuned for details!!!!