My Craft Room

Happy Sunday, All!

The winds from Arthur have died down and power has returned...yay!  Yesterday afternoon I opened up the curtains in the craftroom and worked by natural light (although it was a cloud covered day) on some cards.  It was quite peaceful working without power on.  Does that sound strange?  I think the cards turned out ok and I hope my colors match!

Today I am sharing views of my craft room.  The idea to share my cluttered but happy space was due to the linky party at Craft Hoarders.  I have only shared my space once since I started blogging but I decided to be brave and share it again.  

The shot about is how it looked this morning.  It is the view when you first walk in the room.  (I still have project materials sitting out!)  The state of the room is pretty standard- sometimes it looks a little neater and sometimes...well...not so much. 

Before I go any further, I should say a little bit about it: the room is small.  The pictures were all taken with me leaning as far back in the room as possible.  Also, the room has been in transition this year.  A few months ago I was moving stuff to a spare bedroom to "upgrade" to a larger space.  At one point the stuff was frantically moved back as we had weekend company that was staying in the room.  Then, I slowly started to move the items back to the spare bedroom.  Two weeks ago one of my besties, Janice, gave me a huge storage unit that fit perfectly into my craft room.  Now, the stuff it almost completely moved back into the original room (LOL) but still needs to be organized...big time!  Hopefully the next "Fifth Week" linky at Craft Hoarders will result in me sharing a more organized room.  I will do a video then, too. 

Ok...back to the room...

A quick turn right and you see my die cutting area.

My die cutting table.  I keep post-its handy to hold my dies in place (the holder was a gift from Janice) and all of my boards are in the drawer under the machine.  You can also see two large bins in the background.  Those bins contain most of my dies.  

I just finished this organization on Friday.  The first container has all of my non Grand and non D-Lites Spellbinders.  Almost all of the dies have their own zip bag sealed to size.  The container to the right are the remaining Spellbinders and other manufacturer dies.  The dies are easily accessed at my die table and sometimes I just enjoy taking scrap paper and running my dies through.  Can you tell I like die cutting?  

Turn 180º and you see the crazy space packed with stuff.  It may look bad at first glance (or second...or third) but it easy for my to grab my stuff while I am at my desk.

Here is a straight on shot of my desk, aka The Crafty Command Center.  (Please pardon the poor photo quality.)  The basket on the desk contains adhesives and small stamp blocks.  The pink fabric item on the adjoining desk is a gift from Ruby (quilter and sewer extraordinaire) that I can toss scrap paper in and on top is a pin cushion.  On the floor is a three tier stand that has my Quietfire Stamps and ribbons.  The window trim needs repainting- some of it came off when I removed the plastic winter window covers- and as you can see, the room was purple before.  That's right- PURPLE.  Goodness...

Turn 90º and you can see the back of the room.  The storage unit is the awesomeness shown in this photo.  It is so big that it did not fit in the photo!  I still need to figure out the best way to store items in the unit so I will not open the doors on this tour.  :)

Finally, the sneaky storage space is shown below.  My wonderful hubby made the stamp shelves for many of my wood mounts.  The ribbon holder is actually a shoe holder that I converted to hold some (ahem) of my ribbon.

One thing I am in process of doing now is taking my ribbon off spools and neatly putting them in mini storage bags.  The clever idea came from the first Fifth Monday linky party at Craft Hoarders.  Pam showed how she stored her ribbon and I knew I had to do it!  Scroll down on her post here and you will see her neat and easy to access ribbon storage.

Thanks for talking this long winded tour of my small room!
Hope you all are having a great Sunday!
Hugs,
Kathy Jo

My Craft Room

View when you first walk in my craft room

 Hi All!

Craftin' Desert Divas challenge is "Show me your craft room".  Admittedly, only 3 or 4 people have ever seen my space in five years.  I always keep the door shut and I give excuses why people cannot go in!  I love my little room but I do not want people to think I am disorganized or that I have too much stuff or some other silly reason.  So, this was actually a tough challenge for me: do I finally show people the room or continue to have the room hidden?  Well, you all know what I decided.

First of all, the room is actually a baby's room.  (It is small and in the corners of the room on the hardwood floor are painted stencils of rocking horses.)  Since December my husband and I have been doing small improvements to better utilize the space.  The view above is the view of the room when you first walk in.

The desk is quite thin and I have had it since college.  A nice memory/working piece for me!  To the left of the desk is a paper sorter unit I picked up for $20.  Super sweet.  It holds all my letter size card stock and is sorted by color.  To the right of my desk is the bottom half of a china cabinet I bought at an auction for $30!  The top half is used as storage in our basement.  Well spent $30!  On the wall is a peg board my hubby installed in January.  My friend gave me the peg board (score!).


Desk with project bucket on floor

You may wonder why I have a bucket next to my desk.  Every time I work on a project I put the materials or tools I used into the bucket.  When the project is done, I take photos of the project and bring the bucket to the computer with me.  I find the bucket method helps to list items I used.  :)

Area next to china cabinet

Near the china cabinet base is this little area.  Above the iris boxes is a wall unit that displays my Peanuts stamps!  What a happy couple of shelves.  :)  To the left of the unit is an almost bare wall area.  My husband is going to install another peg board in that area for me.  Yay!  On top of the iris boxes you can also see my two white boxes of scrap paper...boy, I need to find more uses for that paper!

Snoopy stamps...and buttons...and ribbon

The photo below is the area even more to the right (behind my desk).  The tall unit contains my small paper pads, loose ribbon and JustRite stamps.  The two door unit contains photo albums and more 12x12 paper.

The photo below shows the wall to the left of my desk.  This is my Cuttlebug machine working area.  More stamps and goodies on the wall.

Cuttlebug area

Facing back to the door is the special storage area many of you may have seen already.  A great use of space and so easy to find ribbon or stamps.  

Area behind my door- more ribbon and stamps!

So, that is my craft room.  It is small with a lot of stuff...and I love it!  I try to keep it tidy and when I finish a card I clean up so that I start with a clean slate...well...sometimes that does not happen but I try to do it!  When the peg board and other improvements are completed, my room will be much more organized and cleanup will be even quicker.

What do you all think? 

Looking forward to seeing every else's room/area!  Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

The above crazy, crowded room is entered into the following challenge:
Craftin' Desert Divas, Show me your craft room: http://www.craftindesertdivas.com/2013/05/craft-it-up-link-it-up-party-6.html