Evolution of my Crafting Space

I know what you are thinking! She has re-done her craft room again!?!?!  Well yes and no. I finally have found a layout and organization for my craft room that works great. It allows me to get lots of cutting, sewing and other crafting done with ease.

So why the make-over?  Well you see when we first moved into this house, the craft room was my husband's home office. Over the next several years I tried to make some different areas of our home a craft area only to always return to the dining room table. With small children at home, that was not a great solution since they quite often would get into my paints, papers, or glue. Fast forward a few years, my husband's business had grown and he decided to rent an office space outside of the home. I was then allowed invited into the office to have a crafting space. Hence we got this. Trying to share the space proved difficult (I have a lot of stuff!). Then there was this attempt to set the room up. But still it didn't work for long.

My hubby finally gave up any hope of having an office space at home and he moved out of the room completely (except for a TINY desk space in the corner). The result was the beginning of the space I have now. The paint color was changed to suit me SO much better and the furniture again rearranged. At the time we had hopes that the space could also serve as our homeschooling room since we would start that adventure that fall. Quickly we learned that with only 1 in school and the others being a toddler and a preschooler, that just wasn't possible. There was NO extra space to move in there!

A few changes have been made to the furniture layout but I think we finally have a winner! {Pictures will be added to this post soon, thought I had some already on my computer, but I don't and nighttime doesn't provide the best lighting in there.} So now that it is set up properly, I am trying to dress it up a bit.  I have wanted to make curtains for under my desk for some time now, but I cannot find a tutorial on how to do so anywhere. Can you guess what will be coming to this blog really soon!

Thanks to Pinterest, I have a list of other craft room projects I have set to work on. But those are for another post.

Finally my addiction gets funded!

Now that Christmas is over and the new year has come, I finally have some down time. Time to sew what I want! Sew something for ME!  I have long been wanting to make some curtains for underneath my crafting desks in order to hid all the junk storage I have underneath. While that means hours in the fabric store searching for the perfect fabric, it also means LOTS of money (I measured my desk and it will take about 8 yards of fabric to make the curtains! YIKES

So while on a quick trip to the fabric store, I decided to finally listen to my husband (the businessman and entrepreneur's advice) and test the waters in making and then selling my creations to others. Since Valentine's Day is approaching I thought about what I was doing this time last year. I was sewing Valentine Chair bags for my boys with my new machine!  When I made them there were lots of Facebook Ohhs and Ahhs and I even had a few "orders" for bags. So off I went, happily sewing the bags.

Keep in mind a year ago there was no Pinterest in my world so I found the tutorial for these the "old fashioned" way - AKA - my Google reader. 

Quickly, while leaving said fabric store, I typed up a quick Facebook post to test the interest level for Valentine Chair bags. Within a couple hours I had 5 bag orders!  Not too shabby.  A couple days later I was back at the store picking out felt, Valentine fabric, and the assorted notions I would need to fulfill my orders. Fabric was cut, piled, organized and prepped for sewing. Having a bit more sewing experience than I did a year ago and NOT wanting to fight with the bag like I did previously, I made a few changes to the original design making the bottom of the bag SO much easier to sew! Thanks to Pinterest and the amazing Copy Cat Bag tutorial (which is sadly no longer online - so glad I printed the tutorial out!) I saved myself hours of frustration and thus streamlined my assembly process.

Just a little over a week later and my bags are being delivered to customers and received with great joy (YAY- for customer satisfaction). After posting finished product pics on Facebook, I received another order for 2 bags as well as a order from a friend that wanted a purse like mine (again, the Copy Cat Bag!).

Not sure where this will lead as I do have 4 small children, homeschooling to accomplish, a house to manage, and the need for some down time, but I do know that very soon I should have my under desk curtains as well as a few other nice touches to make my crafting space a bit more friendly on the eyes.

Craft Room Reveal

It's done! My craft room is finally done! Almost a year ago (for Mother's Day) Bryan told me the home office could become my craft room. He no longer needed a home office since he has his business office now. With the boys being so curious, crafting in the dining room wasn't working. Leave anything out for a bit and they were getting into it. So now a year later, the room is done! As you can see from previous posts, this has been a long time in the making. I moved things around several times, we got new furniture, I purchased cabinets and drawers to put it all away, and the last step was to paint!

Here is the finished product!!!

SCHOOL AREA

This is what you see when you stand in doorway. The left side of the wall is the school area. Bryan and I are calling the office the SCOR, school-craft-office-room. I am homeschooling Christopher next year so I wanted a space to work for him that is away from the distractions of the other boys. Cameron also has a desk for future schooling. He can work on some preschool type activities while Chris does his school work.

Chris's desk is on the left and Cameron's desk is on the right.

CRAFT AREA

View from the doorway looking at the right side of the room, my crafting space!

Lots of cabinet space for supplies - stamps, adhesives, embellishments (eyelets, brads, tools), etc. The clear boxes at the bottom are for pages that are being worked on for the boys' scrapbooks. Hoping to get scrapping very soon and get closer to being caught up on their albums.

This cute buckets are from my wedding! They were the centerpieces on the tables in the reception. Now they are repurposed for craft supplies. These have chipboard, stickers, and rub ons. More are in the cabinet underneath that hold small letter stickers, various scissors, and more.

This is my main workspace.

From top to bottom:

top shelf - paint & CM cutting system

long shelf - various sizes of ribbon (the boxes are FULL!!!)

hanging rods - flowers, buttons, pens, tools

underneath - Cricut machine & drawers for bow stuff, cards, and ongoing projects

This is more workspace!

More storage on the walls!

The tall cabinets hold scrapbooks that are in progress, idea binders and tear files, more paper pads and scraps, Cricut mats, 8 1/2 x 11 paper, and TONS of alphabet stickers.

Notice all the pictures I need to scrap on the left. They are FULL of pics from Jan of 2008 - February 2009! I need to get busy.

Close up of the wall storage over the work area.

Small trash can for little pieces of trash and a bin for little scraps.

Lots of stickers - now I can actually SEE what I have!

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!!!

Thanks to my wonderful husband for 1) giving me the space to be creative (and relax!!!), 2) for painting the room for me on Monday and Tuesday nights after working ALL day, and 3) for putting up all the shelves and rods all afternoon today.

Bryan, I love you so very much. You are always willing to go above and beyond to make me happy. Thank you so much for loving me!

Craft Room - Reorganized!

You might be thinking to yourself, "Didn't Allison just redo her craft room?" Well, yes, you are correct. It wasn't that long ago that I purchased several cabinets, spent a few days putting them together, and totally overhauled our home office to make it into an office / crafting space.

So why am I organizing it again you ask? Lots of time recently has been spent in the craft room as I worked on Christmas presents and various other things. I quickly realized that 1) I still had lots of organizing to do - the mess was driving me crazy & 2) Some of the cabinets were not arranged in a functional way. I found myself having to stand up each time I needed something out of the drawers since they were stacked on top of the cabinets. Plus, with the 6 foot table in the middle of the room, it was feeling a bit cramped!

Most of my Saturday was spent moving cabinets, organizing the closet so all office supplies were in there thus making more room for my craft supplies in my cabinets, and then getting settled in. You can find pictures of what the previous "redo" looked like here.

Rearranged and Reorganized

My half of the office

A view of the newly arranged cabinets

View from in front of my craft table

My Cricut, how I love thee!

With it on the rolling cart I can wheel it over to the table easily.

I so wish I had a wall full of ribbon! For now, this will have to do.

Next year, this will become the office / craft room / school room.

In order to prepare for homeschooling CB, I made him a little desk area of his own. The pocket chart was hung so I can post sight word for him to practice or words he wants to use to write notes. I gave him the organizer on the desk and CB put in all his "stuff". Too cute, but OH SO VERY like his mommy!!!

The left side of the closet

Rolling cart full of MORE craft supplies and wooden crates with art supplies for the kids.

Right side of the closet

Office supplies, no longer taking up my craft space in the cabinets!

We will see how this works out. I am sure it will need some tweaking, but I am planning on trying to get some scrapbooking done over the next few weeks, so I will be in here a lot.

Craft Room Makeover

For Mother's Day, Bryan gave me a very thoughtful present. On top of my standard gift of scrapbooking supplies, Bryan also decided to turn his office into my craft room. He put a sign on his office door and told me that after he cleaned all his things out, I would have a craft room. Part of his motivation for this was the fact that when I would scrapbook or craft, I typically haul all my supplies from the office to the dining room table. When I would leave things out the boys would get into my supplies and would even routine my crafts sometimes.

So here is the problem with what my sweet husband did.... I could NOT work in that office! It was so disorganized and dysfunctional that my OCD brain couldn't focus! Recently I have felt the need to purge and reorganize the ENTIRE house. This started with the craft room (I am hoping to get buy making crafts for Christmas). With just a bit of money and a lot of organizing and purging, I would be able to have a space I could work in.

Here is what the office looked like about 2 weeks ago:

It was sort of a dumping ground for all sorts of things: Bryan's work stuff, old college textbooks, my teaching junk, kid art supplies, scrapbooking supplies - you get the picture!
Bryan's old desk that he cleared out completely for me. So loving - but this is NOT a desk that is conducive to crafting since there really isn't much actual desk space. So instead, it became where I dumped all the stuff I needed to file, work on, etc. Walking in the room and seeing this made me nuts!
My workspace. A table where I could spread out and really scrapbook since I like to have lots of space to work. This became where Bryan would set up and work when he needed to keep the boys from bothering him.

Here is what the office / craft room was transformed into:
I cleared off the desk for Bryan so he could still have a workspace in the office (at least for now, this time next year this area will have a desk for homeschooling).
My new Closetmaid cabinets and shelves! This makes my heart skip a beat! So many places to put things and so many ways to organize my supplies.
These shelves are for paper storage and scrapbooks in progress. Each of the boys has a clear 12x12 box where I keep the pages I am working on.
A rolling cart for scrapbooking supplies to stay organized in. Each drawer houses different supplies: embellishments, adhesives, cutting system parts, scraps, etc.
The finally product (for now). I would still like to paint to make the room a bit more serene, but that will have to wait!
Lots of shelves for scrapbooks, paper, accordion files, pictures ready to be scrapbooked, and supplies for gifts.
The boys even have a space that has been reorganized for all their craft supplies. The drawers are now complete with labels too!