It’s been a long time since I did anything
remotely creative.
Why, do you ask? Well, let's see...
1) Work, I work 4 days a week.
2) College. A few years ago, I decided to go back to college to pursue another career and I am now in my final year (woohoo!).
3) My friends, family and pets occasionally demand my attention as well.
4) My craft space resembled a
disaster area…
All in all, this leaves little room for
creativity.
When I moved into my current home some 6
years ago, I had planned to go through my craft supplies and get rid of all the things I no longer liked or used. Yeah right. Of course that never happened.
I ended up chucking everything in
boxes and taking it all with me. Over the years, I just got more and more… stuff.
My craft space is divided into a landing and a craft room. Earlier this year I already moved some bookcases to the landing as I wanted to make that my new office. This meant that some of the other furniture had to be moved to make room for my computer desk.
Here's a look at how my craft space was just a few short weeks ago. Brace yourselves...
Stuff
More stuff
... and more stuff.
The craft room:
Shelves lining the wall storing papers, magazines etc.
Stamp and ink storage on the other wall.
There is a table underneath there somewhere...
Anyways... When I had a few days off last month, I
decided to finally roll up my sleeves and do a complete craft room make-over.
My parents were kind enough to lend a hand.
The first thing I did was take measurements of the available space
and of the furniture I wanted to re-use. I made a floor plan using
Floorplanner.com, a free online service.
One of the problems was that a lot of my
craft materials were scattered all over the place and I had difficulty finding what I
was looking for when working on projects. I decided to divide the room into
three designated areas: a scrapbook area, a stamping area and a sewing area.
There was one 2x4 Ikea Expedit book case in
my craft room and one on the landing. I put them both upright in my
craft room to store my scrapbook papers and craft tools. This also freed up
space on the landing for my computer desk.
The paper trays fit perfectly but the vertical Cropper Hopper paper holders had to be cut down a bit. I understand that the size of the more recent ones has since been adjusted to fit in Expedit/Kallax.
I moved around my craft tables and
put the 2x2 Expedit bookcase at the end near my sewing station. It now
stores my fabrics and knitting/crochet supplies in boxes, and on top are my binding machine and die cutter. My old metal drawer units
became the supports for the new sewing station.
My rolls of ribbon found a new home in Ikea’s
Bygel kitchen baskets. Loose ribbons are sorted by colour and pinned with
safety pins to a belt organizer, which hangs from the door.
I stacked a few Ikea Moppe drawer units some
time ago and moved them near my sewing station to store my sewing supplies. I
cut down a piece of cardboard to fit into one of the large drawers, drew a grid on the back and stuck
nails up through the bottom to hold my bobbins.
My most-often used items are stored within reach in one of the top drawers underneath my sewing desk.
My mounted stamps are stored in (retired)
Ikea display cases and my unmounted stamps are sorted by theme in plastic CD cases
in Ikea Kassett CD boxes. My roller stamps are in an old stamp holder
that I rescued from the garbage bin at work. (Can you tell I <3 Ikea yet??)
After reading Stacy Julian’s book The Big Picture several years ago, I had an epiphany and decided to store most of my paper and embellishments by colour. Some themed papers and embellishments, such as travel, culinary or animal-themed items, are stored separately by theme.
Small embellishments such as buttons, eyelets and brads sorted by colour.
Alpha stickers in Kassett DVD boxes and small themed supplies in transparent drawers.
Lunch meat containers repurposed to house label stickers by colour.
Scissors, pens, rulers etc are stored in Ikea Ordning containers on a Lazy Susan on my desk.
Larger embellishments are stored in these semi-transparent drawer units.
On top are my ink pads, alcohol inks and spray mists.
I have too many craft-coloured supplies to fit in my 'brown' colour drawer, so they are stored separately.
My Project Life cards and other miscellaneous journaling cards and labels are in a divided box (Tjena by, you guessed it, Ikea).
Here is a full overview of the current set-up.
The landing:
My computer desk on the left where one of the Expedit bookcases used to be.
My printer and Silhouette die cutter are on a new Ikea Omar storage unit.
A curtain hides seldom-used items, such as boxes with Christmas ornaments, from view.
The craft room:
My stamps moved to the shelves on the opposite wall.
There is actually room to work on my table now! *gasp*
It has taken 5 full days (and a couple of evenings), approximately 15 garbage bags, several trips to the city dump and about 5 boxes of items to be donated to get this space where it is now.
I’m still not completely done (still need to sort through my scrapbook papers and unmounted stamps, to name a few), but I'm very happy with the result so far. Can’t wait to get my hands dirty again!
Thanks for reading everyone!
Claudia
(a.k.a. Lily "Dutch Dame" King, Jack Sparrow's great-great-great-grand cousin twice removed)
