My AWESOME Craft Room

Forgive me for such a long post today, but I have been wanting to post pictures of my scrapbook/craft room for months and finally figured out how to blog. I have a table in the center of the room that I work on, but I wanted to avoid shots of the whole room until I could get a better camera. For now, here are the elements of the room, and I'll keep working on better shots to show. I'm sure I'll find other things to post as well. But . . . here goes . . .


This cabinet is in the corner by the door, and it's a great place for displaying cute storage while also being utilitarian. I bought it from a company, and it's designed for a dining room, but it was perfect for what I wanted. Beside it are two cabinets stacked on top of each other and a third shelf on top of those two. These are those little particle board cabinets from Walmart that I bought years ago.

This is the bottom of the hutch. It had a wine rack, but I needed the space, so I took it out. The Mason jars hold rick rack wrapped around embroidery floss cards and also that stuff that you put in a gift basket. I have no idea what it is called, but I have multiple colors and use it frequently. The bottom shelf holds my old camera from high-school journalism as well as a Rolodex from Pottery Barn that I'm going to alter one of these days. Behind both of those is one of those tiny sewing machines for sewing paper, but I can't figure out how to thread it anymore. I kept it in case I find a YouTube with directions. Inside of either cabinet I keep photo paper, regular paper, and a couple of boxes of photos.

This is an old Coke box that I found at an antique store, and I keep my crackle paints and embossing powders in it. I planned to hang it on the wall, but I ran out of wall space since I have so many furniture pieces in here.

These beautiful Mason jars have a special holder for them. I got a dozen jars and the basket for less than 15.00 at Walmart. They have baskets for larger jars as well. In these jars are my Prima Christmas flowers and my plain flowers that I can ink.

This is a jewelry box I got at T.J. Maxx  for 4.00, and it is perfect for Martha Stewart inks and supplies. The glitter bottles won't fit with my Stickles, so I keep them here. This sits beside the coke box on the hutch. The black circle is a tape measure that I keep handy. I was always looking for one, so I decided to keep it in a place of its own.

These big jars hold ribbon wrapped around doll pins that I got at JoAnn's. The Epsom salt is beautiful glitter for candles. The ribbon tag matches the other tags on my hanging shelves. The pink round tags were made with my tag maker. I was going to stamp them, but I thought my handwriting was fine for these. It's not funky or cool, but it's handy and easier than picking out tiny stickers or stamps.

When I led a huge project at my campus, my friends at our satellite campus gave me a gift certificate to an awesome gift store in their town. This gift store is in an old hotel, and it is a real treasure. The women knew how much I loved that store, so they surprised me with a great gift. With it, I bought this adorable set of bowls. The pink bowl holds piping and similar trim. The two eggs are from World Market and are just cute. I keep large needles in them for embroidering blankets.

This green bowl holds sponge brushes, and the little ashtray over to the side was my grandmother's. The little box on top was a prayer scroll that a student brought back for me from the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. after we read Night for our common reader a couple of years ago. I wanted it to have a special place so I could see it frequently.

These polka dot bowls and plates are from World Market, and I keep the extra buttons you get with a shirt or pants in them in case I need to replace one. I know where all of them are, now, so I don't have to search! The beautiful plum glass jars were a gift from my children this Christmas, and I keep cotton balls and Q-Tips in them. This shelf if above the green bowl (you can see the sponges peeking up).

These cute little jars were on closeout at Walmart and were part of a wedding favor package. I think I paid about three dollars for the entire set. I keep eyelets in them, separated by color and/or theme. They fit perfectly in one of the drawers in the hutch.

This is in one of the little cabinets beside the hutch, and I included it only to show that I have my own iron for crafting. It was one of the cheap little ones from Walmart, but I don't have to worry about it getting sticky or flaky from crafting. If you work with fabric, buy your own iron - it's an essential tool.

This purple bowl holds my thread. The picture is out of order, but it's such a cute part of the set that I wanted to include it. I know lots of people store their thread in different ways, but I don't have that much, so it's not a big deal to dig through the bowl to find the right spool. That red glass heart was a gift to me from a very special colleague who visited our college a few years ago. It is very dear to me because his friendship has been life-changing for me.

If you enter my room through the door, this is the far left corner. This room is a bedroom, converted just for me, to an awesome craft room. I got this dresser from a friend who owns a bed and breakfast in a town just north of here. In the two small drawers on top, I keep my punches that are not punch-around-the-page punches. One drawer looks so well-organized because they fit so nicely, but the other drawer holds the oddly shaped punches, so it doesn't look as neat, but it is, I promise. In the top big drawer I store my favorite movies and television shows (like Bewitched and The Nanny) that no one else will ever watch. In the bottom drawer, I have fabric rolls. I wrestled with fabric storage for a long time, and I finally found a system that works.

Since the dresser was already missing a mirror, I tied pink tulle around it and fit the embellishment center in the middle of it. I also have to point out the little silver reindeer. It complements the poodle lamp so well, and I'm not packing it away just because Christmas is over. This is the kind of Christmas decor from my childhood, and I like it, so it gets to stay.

This wire shelf sits to the right of the dresser but is all part of the system that works in that corner. My sewing machine is on a little table in front of the window. I don't sew much, so it's just an inexpensive machine with some embroidery capabilities that I've yet to master. I had to watch a YouTube to figure out how to use the automatic threader. That bodes well for an English teacher, eh?

I picked up this wire shelf at a local flea market, and it hold glass jars just perfectly. My doll pins, trim, and large tags are each in mason jars or glass candy jars from Walmart. Each of them has a tag that matches, and I rarely make any changes to the contents.

 These are the jars on my embellishment center that I got half off from Micheal's. These tags match the tags in the wire shelf. I cut them out with my Cricut and then embossed them and distressed them. The darker tag is stamped with Martha Stewart alphabet stamps, and it is attached to the lighter tag with eyelets. I made several extra tags that I left unstamped in case I had a need to change the label titles.

Here is the shelf and its contents. On the bottom are the border punches from Martha Stewart. The small jars with the round labels hold narrow ribbon and cording. The jars won't stand up in the self space, so I just turned them on their backs and slapped on labels. The silver boxes hold extra rubber bands, pins, needle threaders and other small tools that you need to have on hand but don't need to have handy. I have a stool in my closet that I can stand on to reach the top shelf.

This is the cricut cart that I picked up at an antique store in the city. I kept my eye on this for months, and I finally bought it on the day my children graduated from college. It is an old changing table/cabinet from a small hospital north of here, and it is a perfect find for my Cricut station. I got my Cricut from my kids for Mother's Day, so I only have eight or nine cartridges so far. I got all of them at Michael's on Thanksgiving day when I also picked up two of the small Cricuts for 59.00 each for Christmas.

 This is the inside of the cabinet where I store completed and in-progress scrapbooks. My empties are in another location.

 This is the top drawer of the cart, and it holds supplies like the mats and tools.

 This is a cart for my die cuts, and in the rolling cart, I keep my Christmas paper. I'm going to make a curtain to go around the cart, but it's a handy place to store it for now. I keep all of my regular size and bigz dies and my embossing folders in this cart, and I have a special drawer for my small dies.

 This is a close up of the front of the cabinet. I hate to give so many pictures that you might not care to see, but when I was daydreaming about my own space, I looked all over the internet for ideas, and I ALWAYS wished people would show more pictures and share more ideas. If it's too much, just drive through. LOL

 Here is my "cutting station" set up. I like having the cricut separate from the manual cutters.

This is the cart, and you can see the brown bag that holds my Cricut. My daughter calls me "Little," so she had this made for me for Christmas this year. I think it's lovely. She intended for me to use it to carry supplies over to my mom's or to school, but I think it's a great protective cover for my Cricut.

This is the closet in my room. The house is a 1940's farm house with those sliding doors that a weight lifter couldn't move, so we took out the doors, and voila! I have some other things stored up on the top shelf, which I can't reach anyway, but the hanging space is all mine. I don't have anything in the adorable pink bucket yet, but I love, love, love it, so I'm waiting until inspiration strikes.

 These are storage boxes from JoAnn's that cost about 3.75 with a 40% off sale. Inside I keep all of my stickers and embellishments like that. I had them all in little clear pockets in binders, but it was too hard to keep the pages from wilting, so put them into the boxes. I'll show pictures of the dividers that I made for the categories, but for now, this at least keeps them in a manageable place.

 I don't have very many paint dabbers or sponge applicators, so this Tim Holtz stamp holder was perfect for what I needed. It reminds me of my dad's desk when I was a kid. My older sister and I would stamp his deposit slips for hours at a time.I also love those hangers in the background. I paid 33 cents for each of them, and I don't know how I'll use them, but I know I will! In the storage shelves below, I keep loose paper and page kits. My paper packs are stored in a different unit.

 These are two of those nuts-and-bolts boxes from Walmart that hold my chipboard letters and some of the numbers. I put labels on to make it easy to find. The blue are upper case, and the pink are lower case. Instead of separating them by sets, I separated by letters because I often forget that I can mix and match and make a really cute layout doing so. I tend to be very linear in my thinking, so I ended up using letters that just didn't fit so that I could make sure they all matched.

 Okay, so this is the storage idea of the century, and I almost hate to share it because I have dreams of making these and selling them and retiring to an island some day. But . . . these are shoe boxes that I got at Target before my closet was completed. I have two that hold 25 pairs and one that holds 15 pairs. I made boxes to slide into each slot except in the bottom row where I store binders and other big items. (By the way, taking one of the bottom slots out to make the very bottom row will give you a perfect place for 12 X 12 paper.) I altered the front of each box and left a place for a tag label, but until I finish all the boxes, I used temporary tags, which are the manilla shipping tags you see hanging out of the boxes. In here, I keep scissors, glue, tape, lighters and candle lighters, hardware, my drill, screwdrivers, and other things like that. I love this part of my storage system. I had the shoe boxes and was going to give them away until it occurred to me that they would be perfect for odds and ends.

This is an incredibly awesome cabinet that my wonderful husband made for me to hold sweaters. I bought the baskets from Walmart, and he built the cabinet to fit the baskets. Then he built me an incredibly awesome closet, so the cabinet held our DVD's for a long time. We got too many DVD's to fit, so I got the cabinet when I moved into this room. It shuts just fine, but I like the red tulle, so I keep it running through the handles. It sits beside the hutch, and the door to the room opens up against it. You can see my stamp storage hanging on the wall beside it.

 Here's another picture that shows the whole wall a little better. You can see the light blue on the walls. It looks a little darker here because I was taking pictures at night and needed the flash. It's a very soft blue, and one of the walls is a buttery Sarah Lee yellow. This would make a perfect nursery, LOL. It's serene and calming, and a total girl cave.

 This is an awesome basket from Hobby Lobby that holds rolls of fabric remnants. It sits on top of the hutch. I wish they had had more than one basket because I would have bought them all.

 This is my basket inside the white cabinet that holds my rolls of felt. I usually just buy the packages from the craft store, but rolling them helps me keep all of the colors together. When I buy felt from a bolt, I store it with my other fabric.

 This is a white tray from Hobby Lobby, and I keep some of my colorful but lower-quality thread in the coffee cup. I use this thread from hand work rather than machine stitching. My spray paint cans are also in this tray.

Here is a picture of the white cabinet open. The bottom library drawers are where I store my small die cuts and embossing folders.  The tags on the baskets are from the days of DVD storage, but I really like them, so I've kept them until I find a new home. Last year we had a terrible blizzard, and school was canceled for two days, so I spent those two days watching True Blood and making tags. I know we go back to school after two weeks off tomorrow, but I'm hoping for another blizzard. I love snow days.

 This is a basket holding some of the tools I use like craft sheets, rulers, and paper trimmers.

 This basket holds my unmounted stamps, and another basket holds my holiday and words stamps. I have too many for one basket.

 This is above the cabinet. The small birdcage basket is a card holder from the wedding section at Walmart that I got on clearance. Always comb through Walmart because they surely don't mind putting things on clearance! The other basket is one I picked up somewhere years ago, and it holds little journals and note cards perfectly. The cards I have to alter are stored in one of the wicker baskets, but these are the journals and cards I want to keep as is.

 This white cabinet is a CD holder I got as a gift ten years ago. I keep odds and ends here, but I wanted to show you my Elf on a Shelf that I got from my daughter. He'll have to move somewhere else next Christmas, but for now, he makes me happy.

This is an old tv cabinet that we don't use anymore because the flat screens won't fit in it. I plan to paint the green with white paint, but that will have to wait until this summer. On top of this is a great thermos I got at TJ Maxx and a bird house from Hobby Lobby. There is also a great candelabra that I got when I got the pink Cricut cabinet, and I'm going to find a better place to display it. It has really funky lemons and limes woven throughout the vines. This cabinet fits just between the door and the closet. I keep paper packs and transparencies and other special paper products in here. Also, the top shelf is where I keep all of my Christmas candles that I can't store in the attic because of the heat.

 Here are the labels for the drawers. Nothing fancy, but at least I know where my paper is. I tend to favor K & Company and have several drawers of it. Sometimes I have issues with using my favorite paper, so I buy two packs if I especially love a pack. I always get them on half price, so I can afford to buy two packs. Most of them are not so dear to me that I feel a need to have a backup, but it has helped me be better about using them up. I'm trying to do the Erma Bombeck thing and not die with unburned candles, but it's hard to overcome that fear that things are finite.

 What is awesome about this cabinet is that it holds so much paper. The small drawers fit in right between the big drawers, and they are perfect for mat stacks. I love my label maker, by the way.

Here is the top shelf of the cabinet (well, not the top top shelf since it was made for a VCR and holds my candles), and the bottom shelf looks basically the same. The two birdcages were fifty cents at Micheal's in their dollar bin. One other thing I keep in here is a roll of 30 gallon trash bags. They are so handy for picking up major paper trash and other things that accumulate in a short amount of time when you craft.

 This is the bird cage from Hobby Lobby, and it holds remnants from flowers that I bought as a fund raiser. I love this little piece and didn't know what to do with it because it's a little hard for me to reach, so I didn't want to put things in it that I use frequently. Beside it is the thermos that serves no purpose other than being vintage chic.

This is one of my favorite ideas that I've had. The birdcage was on the 80% off clearance at Hobby Lobby, so it was under TEN DOLLARS!  I keep my yarns in here because I don't have many, and it keeps them away from the cats.

 This is a Kaiser craft chest that I altered, and I really like the simplicity of it. I tend to put one too many things on my stuff, so I'm trying to listen more closely to find out when I'm finished.This is one of those projects that told me I was finished at just the right time.

I got this cool lampshade from my friend who sold me the dresser, and I put it on a floor lamp that I had without a shade. The basket in the background holds my ink pads, and it sits on top of a rolling tool chest that holds photographs. I got that tool chest at a fire sale, and one of these days, I'm going to paint it white. It has ten drawers.

This is the poodle lamp my kids got me for Christmas from Urban Outfitters. I just love this lamp because it's so sassy and so Betty Draper.

These hooks and mirror complement the pink light switch plate by the bird cage, and the note on the mirror is from K's little sister, thanking me for some journals I gave her. I haven't met her yet, but I just know we will love each other. She sounds just like me when I was a little girl.

Here's another wall that has useful decor. The big basket was a closeout from Hobby Lobby that I got for a steal, and it holds my acrylic paints. I put the black tulle on it to dress it up, and the glass acorn was a Christmas decoration I fell in love with and decided to keep. The yellow wall is so soft here, and this wall gets the late afternoon sun, so I put up curtains on these windows but not the others. The hat box actually has a real hat in it, and I keep meaning to take it upstairs, but I kind of like it here.

This is the find of the century. It is a sheet-music cabinet that holds those plastic storage boxes that you put beads or embroidery floss in just perfectly. Hobby Lobby also has some acrylic boxes without dividers that fit in the slots. I looked forever to find boxes to make it more uniform, but I haven't found anything better. When Dollar Tree was still here, I bought small cake pans that fit inside very nicely as well, and they hold things like crocheting hooks and other sewing items. The plastic boxes are perfect for things like brads and clips and other embellishing items, and they allow me to see everything I have and choose accordingly. I think the cabinet actually has 100 shelves, and I have three boxes of brads, so you can see how handy this cabinet is. The bottom cabinet is where I store craft magazines and idea books. On top, I have three of the baskets that I used in the sweater cabinet because I needed space in the cabinet for a few other things.These baskets hold some fabric I want to keep but don't want to mix up with the rest of my stash and some cards and envelopes perfect for embossing.

 Here's a closer view of the cabinet. I have tried to label everything, but I keep moving things around, so I've decided to use less permanent labels. I've also committed to using up what I have instead of buying new things, so I'm hoping Tim Holtz is a total flop at CHA next month.

 Here is a box of Christmas embellishments that I included for any new readers who might not know how handy these boxes are. I think I started six or seven years ago and was so proud when I filled my first box with buttons and tiles, and now I have so much "stuff" that I have to weed through it regularly.

I included this one because it holds only Tim Holtz and Ranger products, and usually I try to organize by type rather than brand. However, I find myself looking for things specific to these two lines, so it was logical for me to keep them together. For anyone who likes paper crafting, Tim Holtz is, without a doubt, the best out there. His creations are so vintage and quirky while also being ephemeral. Besides, he has the best directions of anyone I've ever seen. He walks you through step by step and gives his lessons-learned-the-hard-way advice as he goes. His 12 tags of Christmas are magnificent.

This is an umbrella stand from T.J. Maxx that I used as a trash can in my office. Now it holds my wrapping paper without tipping over. It's nice to be able to keep the paper handy, and this is a pretty container.



 The picture below is my final picture for this blog (thank goodness, right?!). These two authentic printer trays were picked up by a woman I worked with at the college for several years. She was my boss, then I became her boss, and she was so gracious about it. We got along beautifully, and she picked these trays up for me on one of her retirement excursions to the country flea market scene. I don't have too many wood-mounted stamps, and these trays don't hold the bigger ones, but they are perfect for Stickles and for small Martha Stewart glitter. I also keep metallic mixatives and alcohol ink in these. The trays are on the wall behind the door, but they are really fun to look at, so sometimes I enjoy working with the door closed.