Archives: Tour of My Crafting Station

Originally published on January 30th, 2014

Since coming back from Christmas break, I attempted to organize my crafting space.  A few weeks later and I’m ready to reveal my area.  My space is one half of our third bedroom.  The other half of the room is filled with J’s modeling supplies and workspace.  The closet is full of bookcases.  So, that leaves the half by the door (minus the corner dedicated to the servers and various computer stuff) and a small space of the long table.  From the above picture, you can see my limited space.

Let’s start with the area by the window:

On top of the white table I keep a variety of things.  I have my red bin (we’ll look inside in a few minutes), finished cards (currently just stacked up), envelopes, and all my 8.5” x 11” paper.  I decided to buy some Ikea cheapy magazine holders to sort my paper by color.  The last holder on the left holds cut card bases and my Stampin’ Up catalogs.  I plan on adding fun scrap paper to the magazine holders to liven them up a bit.

Tucked under the white table is my beloved Ikea Alex drawer set.  I bought this piece right after we moved in almost two years ago and am still in love with it.  It has a total of six drawers.  The top three are shorter and the bottom three are longer height-wise.  All the drawers are extremely deep.  They hold 12” x 12” paper with room to spare.  We couldn’t put the drawers under the table with the opening facing out because of a vent (you can see the corner in the pic).  Instead we slide it in sideways.  I can still open the drawers without moving this extremely heavy piece.  The extra room sticking out was the perfect size to hold my boxed Project Life kits.  Currently I have a pocket pages box, a Baby Neutral kit, a Sunshine kit, a Seafoam kit, a Holiday kit, and a Seasons kit residing there.  It makes it really easy to grab a kit to work with and frees up a ton of space on my table.

Inside the Alex drawers, I have a ton of supplies.  The first two drawers hold a lot of various office supplies not worth looking at.  The third drawer (short drawer) holds my Christmas supplies.  I finally decided to sort out my Christmas only supplies from the rest.  Best decision I’ve made in a long time.

The fourth drawer (first tall drawer) used to hold all my stickers for scrapbooking.  Since I am moving towards Project Life, I’ve slowly used my stickers and haven’t bought much more.  Because of that, this drawer is slowly becoming a paper drawer.  One of next projects is to sort through my 12” x 12” paper and organize them by colors / patterns.

The fifth drawer is a split drawer.  Half is full of more 12” x 12” paper.  Half is full of my paper punches.  Fairly soon I’m going to have to make more room for paper punches.  I’m thinking about moving the punches up to the sticker drawer as I use those.

The last drawer is another half and half drawer.  Half is paper, half is my heat embossing supplies and my scoring board.  Kind of random, but I don’t use my heat embossing tools all the time.

Finally on top of the window table I have one of my red bins.  This one is filled with all my Stampin’ Up stamp cases, SU framelits, and SU embossing folders.  I would like to have my stamp cases in a more visual spot, but I need to think more about how I want to do that.

Here’s the view of my main work space.  I bought this very basic table from Amazon.  I love that I have a large area to work with and nothing for me to get tangled onto.

The right side is a big hodgepodge of stuff.  The little shelving unit contains random notebooks, the twins’ scrapbooks I’m currently working on, and my yearbooks.  The top of it has some random office supplies and coasters.  Under the desk, I have my two Project Life albums.  On top, I have my Project Life supply box, two Studio Calico PL supply boxes, and a few PL specific embellishment envelopes.

The pink box contains Project Life specific supplies.  I have a few rotary stamps, some photopolymer stamps, a corner rounder, day stickers, and some random things.  I tried to make it easier on myself when I got to do my weekly spreads.  I didn’t want to spend a lot of time searching through supplies.  Having a dedicated box cuts my time in half. Love it!

On the left side of the table, I have a PL album (not usually there), a couple of paper stacks for notes, and four boxes of supplies.  The bottom box (darker blue) is pictures and ephemera for the twins’ scrapbooks.  I haven’t switched them over to PL (probably won’t until I fill the current album).  I tend to scrap there pages once every few months.  So, I throw everything in this bin to keep for later.

The turquoise box holds all my small embellishments. I have a ton of buttons, brads, flowers, jewels, and die cuts.

The orange box holds paper scraps.

The green box has all my ribbon and washi tape.  Given my current obsession with washi tape, I will probably have to rethink this box soon.

Under the table holds the last of my supplies.  I have a few bins and my tool caddy.

The red bin contains my Stampin’ Up ink pads, my stamp scrubber, my snail refills, and a few random ribbon spools.  I usually keep my ink pads horizontally, but for the pictures I put them vertical to see the colors.  I don’t want the ribbon in this bin, but I ran out of room in the ribbon box.

The second scraps box.  I think I have a scraps problem.  I really need to do a scrap purge.

This bin holds all my non-Stampin’ Up stamps.  I think I need a better way of accessing my stamps.  I’ll have to think about it.

Lastly, I have my tool caddy.  I try to keep all my scissors, markers, and random tools in one easy access place.  Plus, this holder is mobile!

Overall, I am satisfied with my crafting area.  However, there are a few things that I want to improve in the near future.  I’ve filled my Pinterest board with crafting room inspiration.  I see a trip to Ikea in my future!