Crafter's Paradise...

I am a firm believer that there are two keys to a happy marriage.  1) A woman should always have her own bathroom.  2)  If possible, each person should have his/her own space to create - be it paint, write, craft, daydream, etc.  If these two pieces fall into place, a couple can get through anything.  

I spent much of late November and early December creating my own craft space.  It occupies one half of our office, and has slowly been transformed into a place that I can keep my paper-crafting supplies neatly organized and at my fingertips.  Because, really, who wants to craft when it takes two hours to take everything out, three hours to fit it all back where it gets stored, and the crafter has no idea what her supply inventory even contains?


I knew that an essential piece of my craft area was to have sufficient containers for my various writing and coloring supplies.  Anyone who knows me know what a hoarder of writing instruments I am, and I need a nice place to store my Sharpies, Le Plume pens and colored pencils.  Target has a wonderful $1 area that sometimes has some really nifty little items.  I found these adorable little buckets there, and I loved that they hang with pink ribbons.  So with the help of Scotch brand sticky hangers, I was able to devote plenty of space to storage of pens and scissors without using precious work table room. 

Next, I wanted something that could store all my tiny embellishments, (think brads, clips, and little adornments).  I found an amazing little spice rack that works perfectly.  The lids are clear and they screw on, so no unfortunate spills.  The containers holding the embellishments have a magnetic bottom that sticks to a metal tray that they all sit in.  I can hang the tray on the wall, or leave it sitting on my desk.  It is the perfect solution to my challenge of storing tiny but lovely pieces.

 

 

 

Ribbon and letter stamps can be hard to store, but they are fun to put in clear containers because it makes it easy to find what I am looking for as well as add a little decor to a room. 

As any person who crafts a lot knows, there are a lot of odds and ends that take up space and need to be accessible but neatly stored.  I'm a bit of a neat freak, so I like a place for everything and everything in its place.  And if that place can be labeled, even better!  So, with the help of some shelving cubes and Rubbermaid storage baskets from Target, I organized the rest of my supplies here and then used my new handy-dandy labelmaker to give everything a permanent home. 

 

 

 

Paper storage was the hardest element of organizing my supplies.  Obviously you don't want it getting bent, creased or folded.  It comes in so many shapes and sizes it can be complicated to figure out how to group it and where to put it.  My solution came in finding 3 drawer organizers that held my 12x12 papers flat.  Those are the bins that are in the top part of the organization picture.  I divided those papers by color, floral, striped, patterned, holiday, solids, etc.  For the remaining solid papers in 8x8 and 81/2 by 11 I put magazine holders on the bottom row and tried to sort by color. 

 

 

 

Now I have a beautiful crafting area, and I put it by the window hoping to get as much natural light as possible in these short winter days.  The only problem is, I am so content with it being all organized, I hesitate to actually sit down and craft!  I have to get over this silliness. 

 

 

 

I think I need a little bit larger worktable, though,  because this one is too rocky and too crowded.  But it's time I kept waiting for the area to be perfect and just started to enjoy using it. 

 

Because, come on!  Just think about all the potential for amazing ideas to happen here!