Guest Post: My Craft Room

In case you missed me guest posting at Rycrafty's blog last week, here's the post about how I set up my craft room.

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Guest Post – Craft Room.

Here is a guest post for you from my friend Maddy! She’s lucky enough to have her own craft room – something I just fantasize about, and experience vicariously through other people!

When I heard that Rycrafty needed guest bloggers while she is away on her amazing honeymoon, my first thought was that I’d never been to Costa Rica and am amazing jealous, and my second thought was that I could totally do that! I mean, I’m crafty, and you can sometimes see said craftiness on my blog.

My somewhat infrequently updated blog is called Sweet Townhome, because my newly-wedded husband, Tris, and I just moved into our own Townhome about 8.5 months ago. With demanding jobs and long commutes, not too much house decorating has been done, but at least I have my scrapbook room set up (or my craft book room, as the hubs calls it).

I feel like most crafty people need a space of their own; possibly so that we can just buy more crafty stuffs or so we can spread out all the crafty stuff we all ready have. I mean seriously, there have been some amazing, drool worthy craft rooms on Pinterest lately.

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As far as hobbies go, I can’t knit (but would love to learn!), but scrapbooking is my favorite, and I had to make a space in our place for the most fun hobby of all time .

One day, I’d like to have a room like one of the above photos, but for now the goal was using things we all ready read had, like shelves and bins. In fact, the only purchase we made was the black table from IKEA.

The most recent issue of Scrapbooks, Etc. has some good advice about setting up your crafting space, and I totally agree with them. On page 44, the magazine advises to, “Use what you have. . . Getting organized doesn’t mean your room has to be picture-perfect. Before running out to purchase coordinating baskets, bins, and containers, look at what you may already have and think of clever ways to repurpose them.”

This statement is totally true in my space! I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so those black wire cubes you see in the corner? They were in storage, left over from my college dorm days. Also left over from college? The white shelf you see on the right. It’s actually like a 6 foot tall shelf, but rather than screw the legs together to use it at full height, I created two shelves out of it.

I set up my craftbook room in the basement, and I work at the table in the center, that way, it’s easy to walk around and get to anything I need. (Don’t judge the messiness of the table here – I’m in the middle of a page!)

Although it looks kind of messy, every thing really is in a place of it’s own, and that makes it really easy to find anything I need, be it 4”x6” paper, stamp pads, or paper cutters!

All the plastic bins you see below? They’re actually just plastic shoe bins (you can find them at Target or anywhere) that my mom, a school teacher, had left over from one of her classes. I used chipboard coasters I all ready had, wrote the names on them, and just taped ‘em on to the bins. It’s also obvious that the too large boxes on the bottom shelf (one for stickers and the other for alphabet stickers) are just large actual shoe boxes. Hey, whatever gets the job done!

I wish more things in my life felt as put together as my craft space . I really set it up with organization in mind so my scatterbrained self could be productive.

Honestly, though, I love it, and it’s really made a difference in my scrapbooking. I feel like I used to spend a loooong time looking for a certain punch or something, and know I finally know where they are . . . now, all I have to do is finish scrapbooking our Vegas trip from 2008, and maybe I can finally get caught up!

Anybody else setting up a craft room? How’s it going?

XOXO
Maddie @ Sweet Townhome