Craft Room Reorganization - Summer 2013

My pegboard holds my scissors (fancy and regular), some punches (I need to buy more loops to hang the others), my tape runners, my corner chompers, rules, markers, clipboard and the only scrapbook page I have ever made.



Let's talk about craft organization.  I am lucky enough to have a whole room dedicated to crafting space, but having a whole room just means more space to put stuff.  Organizing it in a useful way has taken some time.  I have been known to pile things on surfaces and work on crafts on a tv tray in front of the television in the living room.  There is nothing wrong with that, but I know I am so much more creative when I can work in my own craft space.  I recently got a peg board for my craft room.  My husband found it for less than $2 in the scrap bin at Home Depot. My brother-in-law spray painted it for me and they mounted it on the wall.  I bought the hooks and pegs on Amazon and the whole project cost less than $20.  I love it.  I hang the things I use the most from it and it honestly makes me really happy.  It is the anchor for my craft room.
I moved all my plastic storage bins below it. I keep all my stamping supplies, punches, paper trimmers and card making supplies in the larger bins. In the smaller bins I keep adhesives, twine, paper ribbons, washi tape, alphabet stickers, and embellishments. I organize all my scrap pieces of paper in open paper trays and sort them by color.  Under the trays of scraps I keep holiday related papers, sorted by holiday.

I sort all my ribbon by color and hang it on the wall.  This makes it easy for me to visually take inventory of what colors I have and it is simple to grab for any project I am working on.  This ribbon holder was made with three pieces of photo paper, a circle punch, and a yardstick.
The teal cart I purchased at Ikea and use it to hold all my letterpressing supplies,  It conveniently holds all my inks, cards, the L Letterpress, plates and cleaning supplies.   It also holds all the supplies for tissue paper flower making as well.
I have a small cart that holds canisters of buttons sorted by color and mason jars filled with paper flowers.  Below are various card kits, paper collections from American Crafts and containers of glitter tape. 
My work surface is a 4ft table from Costco with an Ottlite lamp.  The magnetic white board and bulletin board is perfect for ideas and to do lists.  I have American Craft paper boxes to sort my colored cardstock.  One box to hold 8.5"x11" paper, one to hold 12"x12" paper and one to hold plain chipboard and neutrals.  Below my table I store all my scrapbook paper in vertical Iris paper containers.  I store my paper alphabetically by brand and collection.  To the right of my work surface I have a gift wrap cart where I store wrapping paper, tissue paper and gift bags. 


I have a black storage unit from Ikea that I store all my other crafting items in.  Each compartment holds different supplies.  You can easily see my Cuttlebug, my 9" Xyron machine (which my husband spotted at Goodwill for $6 in perfect condition with a full roll of sticker adhesive!) and a ton of other crafting supplies stored in this unit.
On top of the unit I have a magazine organizer I purchased from Michaels and assembled myself.  I store back issues of Papercrafts magazine and other odds and ends like labels and notepads in it.  I have my Artbin full of Copic and Prismacolor markers and my crafting caddy on display as well.  My Clip-it-Up holds all my small embellishments like rhinestones, adhesive flowers and brads.  I was lucky enough to find one on Craigslist for $50 and it is so useful. I also keep my rolodex style address book and birthday/anniversary calendar on display as well. 
The room also has room for another small table so I have space if other people want to come over and craft. I try my best to keep it tidy, but when it gets cluttered I can always close the door.
All in all, the storage pieces and work space cost less than $400 to outfit. I did it over time and could not be happier with the results.  I love my craft space.

June Crafting Hiatus

I was doing so well.  I was keeping up with my twice a week posts, being inspired, making crafting a priority and then June came around and it was if I just hit a crafting block.
Sometimes I wish that crafting could be my day job.  Then I could create and blog day in and day out.  Right now, I craft when I have time and somehow the month of June flew by and very little crafting was done (with one exception: invitations to my sister-in-law's baby shower) and I neglected ihearthello. 
Well as summer is in full swing I have some summer crafting goals for July-

• Re-organizing my craft room.  I plan to paint my craft room and rearrange some things this weekend.  I will be sure to take photos. 
• Make my Sister-in-Law something crafty for niece's room.  She is due in August, but her shower is in two weeks so I better motor on making something,
• Make July special events cards.  Lots of birthdays, anniversaries and weddings this month!
• Start planning holiday crafts.  I really want to participate in Urban Shopping & Cocktails October event as a vendor.  This would be a HUGE thing for me, but would clearly require me to step up my crafting game and create some inventory.  I want to make bunch of holiday crafts and paper wreaths like these:

So all in all, July looks like a month that is sure to be filled with crafty goodness and reasons to blog.  Blogging every Monday and Friday was a little stressful, so I may reduce it once a week on Mondays and the occasional random post as well.
Readers - let me know if there is something you would like to see on the blog.  Ideas for crafts,  questions about crafting?  I would be happy to provide information and answers.
Thanks for reading!