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Welcome to the third issue of the FaveCrafts Craft Rooms Exposed series! As promised in our monthly craft question post, every day this week we’ll be featuring the inside of a famous craft designer’s craft room. Get inside tips from some of our favorite bloggers and designers and find out how they turn their craft rooms into lean, mean crafting machines! And now without further ado, let’s explore our first featured craft room.
Today’s featured designer: Jenny Barnett Rohrs, Craft Test Dummies
How does a board-certified music therapist become a full-time crafter? Find out why Jenny made the switch on her FaveCrafts designer profile.
Craft Room Tips and Tricks:
I like to use recycled/repurposed items when organizing my craft room. For my most-used ribbons, I thread the spools onto a pants hanger. The swing-out arms make it easy to load as well as switch out when I use them up. For my day-to-day crafting essentials, I use an old library card catalog from a school. They were switching over to a digital system, and these were going to be trashed! Lucky for me, my mother-in-law rescued them for me and now they hold my stamp pads, inks, jewelry-making supplies, and punches- everything I need to keep on-hand for daily crafting!
The Tour:
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1. I also use slack racks (2) and love having it visually available colors and type of ribbons.
2. I have 3 rolling carts with 5 drawers that I separate one for sewing supplies and two for crafting and jewelry supplies. I store all my loose beads in baby jars in the narrow drawers. I also store my wires on spools in the same narrow drawers. The larger unspooled wires go in another but are tied in loops. Needles and various size and types of pliers are stored in the deeper drawers. My beading tray I keep vertically behind my desk with my cutting mats so I can always reach them easily.
3. I keep all my photos in indexed photo boxes so I can access them immediately… seeing the ones I need that are sorted by person, season, event, and/or year. These I store on stacking shelves in my closet.
4. Every drawer, box and bin I have is labeled with a pretty label and either taped on or tied on with a pretty ribbon.
5. I am an excessive collector or all crafts supplies. I purchased 15/x15x5′ wire racks from a scrapbook store. I store my papers in these….some by just pads of themed papers, the rest by color. I do put special occasion and season items on separate shelves. Here, I have a page filled with the index of items, showing the location and attached with a loose ring to one edge of the ehselves. This way, I know exactly what shelf contains what colors or themed paper. I also have several 12×12 magazine holders…I use these for old magazine and also have a couple I label textured papers…such as vellum, rice paper, mulberry papers, velvet, and textured, etc. I store my project idea notes and papers together on one shelf…i plan to 3 hole punch these and put into a separated index binder…when I find the time!
6. I do have a binder like that where I have stamped all my rubber stamp images onto plan paper and filed them by themes. This makes it easy to see what I have and what I might need.
7. All my rubber stamping supplies…ink pads, embossing powders, glitter powders, and cleaning supplies are stored in boxes on shelves in my closet.
8. I do have one of the 14″ cubes filled with nothing but my bigger tools…heat gun, xyron machines, light box, portable light, power strip, and extension cord, etc. Keeping my tools together this way, I always can see them and access easily.
9. I purchased clear sq. plastic storage jars from $ store and store small scraps of ribbons, odds and ends stickle glitter bottles in them. I have also removed the labels from Archer Farms Macadamia Nut popcorn (target) and used those tall clear containers for storing specialty ribbons…like Easter,
Christmas, Baby, etc.
These work well for the larger pools of ribbon
turned on their side.
I use belly bands to label these items.
10. I purchased a desk from the Container store (on sale) and use that with the shelf top (same store, same sale) I love these two items. The opened shelf unit leaves
room for my work surface. I have a set of childhood 14″ plastic cubes. I use these for storing stcked plastic boxes of various sizes. I put in my small thumb punches and odds and
ends of craft items.
I use open wire plastic
‘baskets’ to store my unusual yarns and fuzzy
crafting yards.
11. At Target, I purchased several black linen covered open top divided boxes. I use them for storing all my little times like, pin cushions,push pins, erasers safety pins…all stored in small clear plastic containers. I can move these boxes from shelf to work surface all in one move. I also sometimes use them for transporting my stamps to a crop class.
12. Watercolor pencils, pentel pens, micron pens, and regular pencils and ink pins go into old coffee ugs or small ceramic pots and jars…on my desk top.
13. At Michaels…I watch their ad and purchase Iris storage
cases (14×14) The have lidded cases have no handles. I purchased small screw 2 pc. metal fasteners from the hardware store. Then my husband drilled two holes just below the closure and used old pcs. of a leather belt cut to size for my fingers…and viola, I have a great handle.
I cannot tell you how great these are to transport to a crop or friends house when going crafting. I sometimes fill them with paper, stamps, tools and stack them on a rolling wheelie…Super!
Now, I am looking for storage ideas for my cricuit dye cut paper pcs. Any ideas?
Despite all of these organizational tips, I still like to move project things to my dining room table and work there where I can really spread out my supplies and see them all at once! I am definitely a messy crafter!
I hope these ideas help you get organized and keep your supplies visible.
Judy
Lamperti
I really like your idea for storing your ribbon. Makes it really easy to get to. Thanks for sharing.
I have always been wondering how to store rolls of ribbon and my spools of wire,(I love making wire trees). The pant hanger idea is brilliant! Thanks for the tip! I may be gleaning more ideas from your suggestions!
I use iris drawers to store all my stamps and now that I stamp less than I use to I keep diecuts in them and other scrapbook supplies. I also have plastic drawers from WalMart that I keep scraps of usable paper in according to color. Hope that helps!
Love this ribbon idea! Can you add Pinterest to your share buttons? I am moving to AZ to a likely tiny house! I have so many craft supplies, particularly yarn! Any storage ideas for yarn?
Love it! Love the joy Jenny finds in her work! (now I don’t feel so bad about my stash).
🙂
I would love to see photos of the projects you described in your posts above. Where DO people get those wonderful Library card file cabinets?? I would LOVE to have one, Maybe I can come up with a way to makeshift one
cool idea with the pants hanger. My ribbon is on a dowel rod and is not so easy to change out.I think I’m going to have to find a pants hanger like that.
Thanks for the idea.
nice,nice,nice thans for sharing.
to jana, I also store LOTS of yarn, my best advice is a corner net or hanger. The one i have was actually a closet hanger for a little girls room, (its supposed to store stuffed animals) its about 6 feet tall and a foot long and wide, hangs from the ceiling so you can store it over a table or set of drawers. the one before that was just a piece of netting (mesh) that i tacked in a high corner, i did need a stool to get them down however
I have curtain rods hanging on the wall in my craft room with all of my rolls of ribbon on them it is very useful you can see what you have and it is easy to roll off what you need
I went to Walmart in the auto section and purchased a yellow ( I’ve seen gray ones also) a container for supplies. It has 18 drawers (4x5x2). It stands about 20″ high x 18″ wide by 5″ deep. I got 4 of them. They hold my stickers, die cuts, wooden beads, etc. I then labeled each drawer and put them in alphabetically. Now I can go to find my die cuts so easily.
That’s a well-thoguht-out answer to a challenging question