If you've come for the "Christmas Is for Kids" Banner Hop, please click HERE.
Welcome to the "Show Me Your Craft Room Blog Hop." If you've come from Liz's fun blog, you're on the right path. If you'd rather start from the beginning, please go to Susan, our hostess's blog, at http://itsmesusanp.blogspot.com. Now, to get the "business of the Hop" right up front, here are two things you need to know:
1) YES, I have blog candy. You can skip my post and scroll to the bottom to find out what luscious things I have from TWO sponsors, or you can read on and be inspired to organize your room.
2) The next place to visit on this hop is Deb's blog. CLICK HERE for the link.
Getting those two pieces of business out of the way is my way of trying to stay organized ... for at least these 5 minutes. Now on to my "show", and a little tell:
It's my (occasional) pleasure to clean up my craft room and get it organized. It makes finding the "stuff" I have so much easier. However, whenever I sit down to clean/organize, I wind up finding so many goodies that I must sit down and craft right away. As a result, my craft room usually looks like this:
That's right -- a whirlwind. Much as some of us can't work when the table is not immaculate, there are others of us who can't work when it is immaculate! There must be a happy middle ground somewhere. Imagine, then, when you look at my table's "before" picture (above) how Erin felt at our last crop ... Sue sat her next to me, and I spread out. Turns out, Erin has O.C.D. and was practically shaking by the end of the day. Erin, I'm sorry! This cat's for you:
But I wouldn't have volunteered to be in this organizational hop if I didn't have some decent ideas for organizing your craft supplies. First, here is the wall unit that I inherited from my old living room, filled to the brim with crafting supplies:
It may look a bit messy (errrr, creative), but I think I've made good use of drawers and baskets and shelves to group similar items together, and to have a place for everything. Getting it to "...and everything in its place" may take a bit more doing, however.
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| Seldom-used storage boxes (save the boxes!!) and items are atop the wall unit. |
My craft room is in the 2nd floor loft of my home ... if you haven't figured it out by now, I call it the "PaperJungle." It is a junior one-bedroom apartment where my daughter Emily and her hubby Josh used to live, before they bought their own place. It has a full bathroom (YAY! For clean-ups and big messes!!), a mini-fridge and a microwave -- all of which I've used in crafting! And it's mine. With a door. That I can close after a messy creative day. And lots of steps up to it ... which means Hubby (with not-great knees) rarely intrudes upon. YAY!!
General Layout:
I have several work stations: The primary one is the PaperJungle itself, which includes my layout laptop (highly portable, WI-FI enabled) computer (for MTC, SCAL, Fairy Cut, Design Studio) that is linked to my Cricut; my Copic markers and my paper. Let's take a look:
I keep my 12x12" paper organized in Plexiglas paper holders, suspended from a slat-wall directly over my Cricut. I bought the slat-wall at Home Depot for $23.95. It came in a sheet that was 8'w x 3'h. I had Home Depot cut it in half so I have two pieces, 4'w x 3'h; there was no charge for this splitting. I got the Plexiglas paper holders -- 30 of them! -- for free from a local scrapbooking store that was closing. I got the tan shelves (one for my pins and pencils, to the left) and the larger one for my Cricut mats, from another store that was closing, for free.
In the cubbies atop the dresser, I keep my scraps of paper, organized by color in 12"x12" snapping plastic folders. It looks like this:
Before the paper's trimmed and sorted ... just to clean up and get the paper off my work table ... I have one drawer in the dresser where scraps are collected pre-sorting. Once a month, I sit and trim/sort into these scrap holders.
When my collection grew a bit, and I noticed that I was pulling out more shades for skin tones very often, I bought this hanging pot from Ikea, and now keep the skin tone markers separate: 
Cricut Station: Just around the corner from my Cricut Expression is an alcove where I store my Cricut cartridges. Here is how I have them stored:
Again, the tool box was purchased at Lowe's. The photo storage boxes (above) were purchased at Michael's; I made the small file tabs using Cricut's "From My Kitchen" cartridge and a Brother P-Touch labeler.
Embossing/Die Cutting Station: Next to the Cricut area is where I do my embossing and die cutting. That station looks like this:
Embellishments Storage: Like most papercrafters (I suspect), I have a lot of embellishments. While many of them are in the drawers of my wall unit:
... still others of them are stored in a small, plastic 3 drawer storage unit, tucked into carefully-identified envelopes for quick access:
I found I was going to my gradient gems and pearls envelopes a lot, and weeding through them was time consuming. So I created a separate album for these, sorted by color (ROYGBV, of course) and size:
I keep my Stickles lying flat in a tackle box, like this:
Stamps: I also keep some of my stamps in albums as well. I have one poinsettia-decorated album (a book designed for holiday recipes) that is dedicated to only Christmas acrylic and rubber unmounted stamps.
For miscellaneous acrylics and rubber unmounted stamps, I also have two plastic drawers. For the wood-mounted stamps, I have one drawer:
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| I try to keep these sorted, with the holiday ones on the right, sentiments on the left. |
Here is how I keep my stamp pads, for now. I suspect this may be changing in the future, as I acquire more stamp pads. I'm thinking about getting a stamp pad storage rack from OrganizeMore! (See their DISCOUNT code below!!)Sewing: Most of my sewing is on paper, but I still do some fabric sewing and embroidery as well. Here is my Sewing Station:
That lazy susan can hold a lot of threads:
Computer: I have a separate computer (desktop) and printer for creating sentiments on cards and for doing my blogging. I'm lucky -- hubby is "into" computers so I also have a full work desktop downstairs in my office, for my business-related work. This one's just for crafting! It's in addition to the large laptop I use with my Cricut.
Flash drives come in various sizes, so I keep one for my digi-stamps, one for my completed digital layouts, one for my photographs, etc. They're great to carry to crops with you even for projects that inspire you that you've saved and can scroll through on a slide show. Here's a really cute flash drive I got recently at Staples:
Finally, here are a few other miscellaneous storage solutions I've come up with over the years:
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| In one of my drawers, I keep this organizer for my Clear Card Bags of various sizes. |
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| Again, by keeping the "like" things together, crafting is fun! |
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| Bed Bath & Beyond sell these cute bottles for buttons. |
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| Keep your ideas and magazines, books, etc. in what I call "Inspiration Station" |
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| Wonder what specialty papers you have by a manufacturer? Make a swatch pack on a binder ring, and carry it with you to buy complimenting papers later. You could do the same thing if you want to group together the papers you used in a layout. |
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| In the PaperJungle, everyday ribbon is hung from drapery rods. Specialty ribbons/colors are grouped. |
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| This is a work-in-progress. When I've collected names/addresses of my fellow crafters, I simply gather them up and put them in a storage box. Eventually, they'll make it into a computerized address book. But until then, at least I saved them! |
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| Again, group everything. Here, baker's twine, with metallic threads. The pretty two-tone jute (far right) came from Ikea. |
Well, I hope I've given you a few ideas for your craft room. You'll note that I didn't show you any "AFTER" pictures of my work table, as it NEVER gets clean enough to show off. Maybe one day .....
SO as your reward for reading all the way through this, I've got a SUPER prize:
Again, don't forget to continue on this hop. I know I've kept you a VERY long time, but Deb is waiting!
