Craft room tour with Marty's Musings | Craftaholics Anonymous?

Marty from Marty?s Musings is here to show off her Craft Room makeover and share some organization tips. enjoy! -Linda

Linda at Craftaholics Anonymous (love that title!) asked me to share my scrapbook room makeover and any helpful organizational tips I gleaned from the process. My original post is here?but since I?ve worked in this room for six months now I?ll also share some of the things that worked and didn?t work for me.

The transformation was done over the course of a few weeks. This is the room my oldest son had been sleeping in for a year or so. (He has since moved to college. ~sigh~) Many of his clothes and things, though, were still in his brother?s room. You can tell from the before pictures that my stuff and his life were all crammed in together! I didn?t scrapbook in here because there was no available space. I had all my ?stuff? but nowhere to work! The room contained a full bed which was entirely too big for the room. The space is 10? x 12?, fairly small for a bedroom, but we live in an older house and that?s as good as it gets!

I spent weeks devouring websites and magazines trying to plan out my space. I was possessed with this project, probably more than any other one in our 21 years in this house. My husband and I enjoyed countless hours talking through my options and ways to keep the remodel as cheap as possible. We actually transformed the room in stages, moving out the full bed, chest and bookcase and replacing them with a twin bed. This immediately gave us a tremendous freedom in space! My husband also painted in stages as we repositioned things around the room. I also cleaned out my supplies BEFORE we started moving things around and sold the extras on Craigslist. (First mistake, not selling my supplies for more money. The lady who bought my extras got a great deal!)

?BEFORE

AFTER

?And voila! Here?s the most important wall in the room. (You can click on each picture for a closer examination).?If you look carefully in the ?after? pictures you will see many items reused and recycled in my new and improved room.

?This picture highlights the same wall with some of my goodies, prices and where I obtained them. Many, many of my storage solutions came from yard sales.

?You will notice that my counter is waist high. I scrap and create standing up and there was much consternation over the exact height of the counter. Luckily, we figured right and it is perfect! I bought this desk chair at a yard sale and it was a great buy and the most comfortable chair. (My cats like it, too!)

The biggest splurge was the flat screen TV. The screen doubles as a computer monitor. Without this we couldn?t figure out a place to put the old TV without losing a ton of space. This was a great purchase. I also splurged on an Ott-lite because I had heard wonderful things about them. Half price at Jo-Ann?s. ?The countertop was discounted at Home Depot and I adore it! Blends in with the room without showing lots of dust and ?mistakes!?

I used many glass jars (mixed and matched) for storage of small embellishments, buttons, brads, etc. I think these were from a spice rack I found at a yard sale.

Love my label maker for tags!

I have had these black drawers for several years and love them for organizing so many different things including patterned and solid paper scraps (separated into small and large), misc. tools, even a drawer of nail polish! Can I just say I?m in love with my label maker? I destroyed the one I started with so I bought another one just like it.

Brads and eyelets

Stamp pads

?This is one of my favorite storage solutions! I adore ribbon and have far too many rolls that I have gotten at yard sales and craft stores. I wanted to be able to see as much of it as possible because it inspires me and I use it often on cards and layouts. ?My husband rigged the dowel rods and hooks. A perfect solution plus it?s pretty to look at!

?I use a Making Memories Desktop Carousel?for all my crucial items. When I go to a crop I just take it with me like it is! It includes my adhesives, glues, notepads, corner rounder, etc.

I have a stool here in case I want to scrap or work sitting down. One of my top goals for this room was keeping my Cricut out to use whenever I wanted. Score! This little table was in our living room and I repurposed it for my room. Perfect!

My husband is a painting contractor and often brings home things others are getting rid of. He was given this rolling craft table that stores underneath my counter but also opens to give me a tremendous amount of space if I want to invite a friend over or need extra room. Free!

My husband built this wooden shelving unit for paper but I now use it for idea books stored in the closet. I used two of the tackle boxes for alphabet letters and misc. small embellishments. It?s not the most immaculate closet but I can get to everything!

Most important storage: my secret stash of chocolate (the little green box)! Every crafter needs one of these!

I use these hardware organizers for storage of individual letters and other misc. embellishments.

?My scrapbook room?s design ended up revolving around the two units I bought at Goodwill for $20 total (below). ?The unit had 6?x6? cubbies with removable partitions. I removed several of them to allow the units to be used for 12?12 paper. Absolutely perfect solution for my massive collection! (I am slightly paper crazy.) This also allowed smaller compartments at the top for some of my other supplies.

We bought the twin bed with headboard from my niece and used a mattress and bedding we already owned. Best feature: more drawers for my ribbon stash! It seriously was taking over the world!

I wanted a place to display recent layouts and this was our solution. I love the inspiration and feeling of accomplishment it gives me.

This wall was a work in process. I got the black shelf at a yard sale for $3 and used pictures I already had for the inserts. I used half off coupons and bought two 12?12 frames at Michael?s and found a couple more at a yard sale. I then used free collage prints that I had gotten at Walgreen?s, matted them and used the Cricut for the date. I love this wall and it only cost about $15!

One of the keys to my scrapbook ?organizational system? was gleaned from this book: Photo Freedom by Stacy Julian. If you follow the link it will take you to Amazon, with the new book price showing right at $100. No, I didn?t pay that price. It was more like $20. I?m guessing if you search you can find it cheaper (please, let?s hope so.) The basic idea is a filing system for photos that either puts your photos into categories or in chronological order. ?For those pictures I?m fairly certain I will scrapbook by event, I put them into two 12?12 3-ring binders in pocket pages. I have 10 years of pictures (not scrapbooked) in these two binders.

After I scrap my pics onto a layout there are always leftover pics. These go into one of four storage boxes, sorted by category. My categories are All About Us, People We Love, Places We Go, and Things We Do (each represented in a different color binder). ?Within these categories are subcategories such as one for each individual child, our extended family, church, vacation, holidays, etc.

I don?t worry about scrapping chronologically. I never really have. This system of Stacy Julian?s set me free! If I want to scrap an event I go to my binders located in my scraproom and look for the pics chronologically. But if I want to scrap a connection through the years (such as the layout displayed above of my daughter and her dad) I go straight to my storage boxes and the pics are right there! No searching through backup CD?s and boxes for pics of the two of them together.

If you can?t tell I adore this system. It works for me! The other part of my preserving our memories comes with relocating my favorite scrapbooks to a bookcase directly by the front door. If there were to be a fire they would be easily grabbed on the way out! Other than family and pets there is nothing more important to me than these albums. They contain our family history and memories.

Category storage boxes

Albums located by the front door

?These are not all of my albums but they are the ones I cherish most. They also include my Project Life?albums from the last three years (and that, my friends, is a post for another day!)

About $500!

Lessons learned from my remodel:

**time spent researching and dreaming and planning are not spent in vain!

**use your space wisely and evaluate where to put your most used items

**decide whether you want open or closed storage (I used both)

**if you want to do things as inexpensively as possible you have to be prepared to take your time and collect storage items over a period of time

**the room is always a work in progress

Source: http://www.craftaholicsanonymous.net/craft-room-tour-with-martys-musings

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