The After

Welcome to my crafting room, come on in!

I made the panels to hide all my visual clutter on the hutches.

A little velcro holds my table skirt in place, a overlapping front makes it easy to get to my hidden crafting supplies.

With all the cabinets there's very little wall space for pictures so I hung this right over the panels. It's light weight and easy to move.

I need molding!

Pretzel jars with decoupaged tops holding ribbon scraps and decapitated flowers.

These cabinets hold most of my craft paints, needlework kits, box full of hermafix refills, stencils and various crafting supplies.

Top of my dryer, basket catches left in pockets items.

My soap jar, I love it.

Utilizing every single bit of space I can to store my crafting supplies.

The shopping bag holds emtpy SU containers.

My husband brought the window home from a job site for me. I filled it with vintage papers and a picture from Charleston, my favorite city!

Shelf over the door, taking advantage of every available space to decorate.

A little curtain I made from some scrap fabric, love the Eiffel towers.

Hmmm, where to hang a picture?

There's a good spot!

I added a little embellishment to my punch rack, rub on letters spelling "ART", blue and white striped ribbon hot glued to the front and a little flower in the corner. Next to it is a iron work crown hook holding a decorative key and my decorated paint can key. I could never find one when I needed one so now I always have one handy.

Remember the breakbox eyesore? I painted it and got cute Eiffel tower magnets to hold some of my postcards, some were from my dear friend Debs, and others I collected while in Japan.

Thinking I'll make matching panels to hide my under counter paper rack.

I've since painted the baskets under the sink shelf thingy.

My busy corner filled with wicker cannisters holding supplies and pictures of family and friends.

One of my basket make overs.

Inside view of uppers.

My new under counter light hubby installed so I could see. Lighting is a huge issue with me when I'm working.

OK I have a few supplies....

This is on a tiny strip of wall between cabinets and hutches, I made the altered canvas and plan to do a companion piece for below the photo frame.

I love this basket, found in a local antique shop, hubby says it is from a Hoosier cabinet, love the red chippy paint even if it doesn't match my room. Perfect size to hold vintage papers and 12x12 papers. Ooops, missed hanging that wall hook up.

Thank you for visiting my craft room! I hope you enjoyed seeing it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you. You are very welcome to come craft with me any time! I love company!

Before, During, Wait for the After

After 5 years of not living in our home (employment reasons), we moved back in two years ago and were faced with a house destroyed by people we had called friends. I'll leave the horrific details to your imagination but suffice it to say we had to repair our entire home with a budget of about $1200 which covered the leaky pipes, leaky roof, major holes in the walls, and lots of other crimes committed to our poor house! I know everyone loves a before/after so here's one of my favorite rooms in my house, my creative space. I also share the 8 x 12 space with my washer/dryer. Major DIY work was done by my darling men folk to carve this space out for me. I'll spare you the gory DIY details. Our budget was like $20, seriously I don't remember what we spent exactly but I do remember we didn't have anything to spend so I'm sure it was under $100. The cabinets were completely salvaged from a friend's kitchen remodel. The work has been done in stages over the last two years.

Phase One which I call humble...

New countertop scored for $10 and my darling husband sanded my walls one weekend so I could paint. I repurposed the over the sink shelf thingy, great for holding more crafting junk.

This is Phase Two ~ A little progress but nothing pretty yet...At this point I was still figuring out how I wanted it to look...and that breaker box? Yeah, I know! Eyesore!

Hmm, I wonder where those stamp hutches came from? Anyone have a guess? I basically have no wall space now with the cabinets so in order to use these hutches dear sweet hubby installed them right over the only window in the room. I took a poll with my friends and everyone said Lose the window, keep the hutches! So I did and I truly haven't missed it because the hutches are awesome. Visually cluttered? You betcha but I love them. And they are the very first thing you see entering the room as they are directly opposite my door.

On to Phase Three ~ Wait for it, I will post those pictures soon!

Projects Started

Somehow I manage to create a list of things I'd like to do on the weekend much longer than I'm able to finish. This is what I created this weekend:

Lounge pants: I have some fitted sheets that are so soft that I'm loath to part with them even though their elastic is completely shot and they creep easily off my mattress corners. I've noticed a lot of crafting blogs have been making lounge/pajama style pants from vintage flat sheets. So I thought why not from the fitted sheet as my flat sheets have plenty of life left in them. Sunday afternoon found me laying out and pinning a pattern to one of my fitted sheets. I even managed to start sewing them up!

Lined Baskets: I have some baskets that I purchased years ago from Waccamaw Pottery, these are blond and rectangle shaped along with some collected oval baskets that have seen better days. I've been using these in my scrap room but thought they need a little zing to update them. One can of cheap spray paint in flat black and a bit of left over black and white scroll fabric later and I have a stylish set of lined baskets to hold all my tools, pens, and whatnots.

Table Skirt: Remember my post on visual clutter in scrap room? This is part two of the project, skirting the work table under the stamp hutches. I finally got it made and hung with velcro to my table. I can't tell you how much it adds to the overall decor of my room. I'm totally loving it.

Warehouse Fabric Shopping: This wasn't on my list but a sweet little friend of mine wanted to check it out so we drove over Saturday for a few hours of fabric shopping and lunch. Found a few interesting bits for myself, she found $230/yard designer fabric for $3.99/yard!!! It will make a gorgeous Renn Faire style dress for her.

That's my weekend! Next weekend my vacation starts....

Visual clutter in my creative space

I noticed right off the major differences between scrap rooms on twopeas is visual clutter. Some rooms are definitely bargain basements, lots of plastic storage containers in mix matched colors, lots of supplies piled up and no overall cohesive design plan while other rooms look more like designer rooms with trendy paint colors on the walls, fancy Ikea cubby hole shelving units, small fortunes spent on matching basket sets and the obligatory "CREATE" or "ART" letters. But visual clutter was hidden inside those baskets and decorations had a definite theme of color coordination as well as overall style.

I can't compete with those super star designer looking rooms and I'm not sure I would if I remotely could. But I cringe when I see those bargain basement rooms as well. Poor women! I know, I was one of those, everything in plastic three drawer chests stacked in every available square inch of my space threatening to topple over at any moment. So where's my happy middle ground...My lovely space to create...How do I put it together so I'm a designer look studio space on a bargain basement crafter budget? The answer for me lies in taming that visual clutter!

Stamp hutches are a wonder, they can hold a ton of small supplies but visually it's a train wreck no matter how neatly their contents are arranged and displayed. I had a semi-serious Sizzix collection going on, lovingly stored in Sizzix black towers and as my space is limited those towers consumed entirely too much of my precious counter top. I moved them to the floor under a table and guess what? I never used them, out of sight, out of mind syndrome. Towers were quite the investment for me but sometimes you have to just have to suck it up and make the tough decisions. For me it was emptying out the towers and storing my dies in my stamp hutches. Nine empty towers later I have reclaimed my counter top and no longer have to dig under the table to find a die. Progress. Of course my dearest Mr wanted to know if the towers were going to live by the back door now... Of course not darling, I'm going to move them soon (yeah right, like where?).

My answer to the visual clutter of the hutches is to hide it behind a curtain. Being the queen of the save I had the perfect black curtain rod stashed, it's long enough to accommodate the 60 inch wide hutches. I love curtain ring clips and snapped some up from Hobby Lobby in a Fleur De lise design, perfect touch to go with my Eiffel tower votive candle holder, my scrappy chic shopping bag, London clock and sign, not to mention the darling Eiffel tower fabric curtain I made for the door window. Off the remnant table at Hobby Lobby I snapped a large piece of black and white cotton apparel fabric, perfect to go with my turquoise blue broadcloth I purchased to make simple panels. I'll use the b/w fabric in small doses as it's more expensive and since the broadcloth is a solid color more soothing to the eye. Once my panels are made I'm going to hang a poster print of an antique Paris map over the hutches in a frame I dug out of my attic. I was going for the art work hung over the bookcase look but in this case the "bookcases" will be my fabric covered hutches. Next I'm planning to sew more panels trimmed in the b/w fabric to skirt my plastic banquet folding table under the hutches. Then I'm seriously considering panels on a tension rod to hide the space between my base cabinets where I have my paper rack stashed.

My counter top clutter was another issue, it's hard to get around it because even with cabinetry, space is still at a premium and careful thought has to be given to how tools and supplies are used. I know to keep my most often used items near me so I've got those in drawers next to my work space as well as tossed in baskets on my counter top for easy access. My ribbon I've sorted by color and put in mason jars which are lined up in a neat row across my over the sink shelf I use to increase my counter real estate. Visually it's borderline clutter but I'm hoping once I have everything else in place that it will look more on purpose like a design feature vs visual clutter.

The rest of the counter space is taken by three wicker canisters filled with tools and supplies, two cropper hopper file folders filled with stickers and various papers, and some other things awaiting a home. Once I'm able to get those few odd pieces stored then I think the rest will be OK. So its curtain time for me and hopefully I'll get those panels sewn up in record time as I'm anxious to see my ideas become reality.

My creative space

What do you call your creative workspace? Do you call it your studio? Or project room? Or craft room? Or scrapbook/sewing/knitting/junk room? I started out calling mine my studio but it sounds pretentious which is part of the attraction, wanting to instill a sense of importance to my creative pursuits but when it's also the room I'm washing laundry in it seems rather assine to call it a studio. Studio conjures up visions of a light filled lofty room with lots of canvas and art supplies scattered about and that vision is about as far from my reality as you can get. I'm in a 8 foot by 12 foot room off the enclosed carport. I have a single ac/heat vent, salvaged cabinets, water heater, no window as it's covered by stamp hutches, sub flooring, and a decided lack of molding. Not exactly the artsy fartsy mental image you'd have when you hear it referred to as my studio.

Since it's inception, the room has undergone a major transformation. Originally it had nasty brown shag carpet with bleach stains by the washer, a 12 foot ceiling, walls and ceiling were in bead board, a water pipe coming out of the floor in front of the single window, the washer and dryer were on opposite sides of the room and there was a single section of white ventilated shelving for hanging our clothes.

A friend's kitchen renovation netted me some 20+ year old cabinets that had seen better days. We removed the old carpeting, replaced the rotting subfloor, lowered the ceiling and sheetrocked the entire room, built a platform for the washer and dryer so they could be side by side, replumbed, removed the old pipe, installed a ceiling fan/light fixture along with an electrical outlet, and installed cabinets along one wall to serve as my storage/work area and more cabinets over the washer and dryer for storage. I spent a year with naked drywall and no countertop for work space but I was thrilled at having my own little space to create in and spent lots of hours looking at scrapbook rooms on twopeas daydreaming of my own stylish decor I'd have some day.

I originally thought I'd want my room to have a prim theme and feel with antique white distressed cabinets and brick red and gold accents, calico fabrics and country crafts to decorate with. Last Mother's Day I asked for my room to be prepped so I could paint it. My husband sanded the sheetrock mud and my cabinets along with hanging my two stamp hutches I got from Hobby Lobby when they redid their rubberstamp aisle. I totally changed my mind about the white cabinets and painted them a lovely chocolate brown color. The walls were a caramel yellow. And he bought me a piece of salvaged counter top for $10. Finally I had a proper workspace. I sewed a red skirt for the waterheater and bought some decorative pieces on clearance at Hobby Lobby. My studio....!

Then I did something that even I couldn't have predicted... I quit scrapbooking. I lost my mojo for it. I quit working in my room, pretty much quit daydreaming about and turned my focus towards my sewing. My paper got dusty, my hutches collected a few webs, and my countertop was cluttered with all sorts of junk. Welcome to the laundry room!

This feeling of apathy has been with me since vacation last year. Within two months of having the major components of my room in place finally I quit scrapping except for making a few Christmas cards the creative side of the room pretty much has been unused.

I felt some guilt. I felt at a loss to explain my feelings. I just simply fell out of love with paper crafting. I think deep down I was disappointed in myself. I finally got a space of my own with cabinets, I had a huge stash of supplies to work with, a counter top, I spent effort painting the room and cabinets, a little money to decorate it, and this was the best I could come up with? Lots of visual clutter and no strong sense of decorating direction. I simply failed to create a space that beckoned to me and inspired me to create. It was ugly and blah and I was ashamed of my efforts.

Months passed. And suddenly I felt the stirrings of longing. I wanted my own space dang it! I had this room and it was sitting unloved and unused, my creative space and I failed in creating it. With a new creative vision for my room I spent National Scrapbooking Day last weekend redecorating my scrapbook room. I painted the walls "spring waterfall" a lovely shade of blue, I purchased hardware for my cabinets finally, blue ceramic knobs for the doors and silver cup drawer pulls, and I got a brown rug to cover the sub flooring until I can get vinyl floor covering. I kept my London clock and sign, added a spice rack I painted black, some flowering garland, bought a case of mason jars to display my ribbon and button collections. Basically I'm creating a space that calls me to create, a space I enjoy spending time in even if it's doing the laundry. I'm not finished with it. I'm still sewing some curtains to skirt my work table and hutches but I'm well on my way to having a lovely creative space. Maybe now I can call it my studio without inwardly cringing at my own pretentiousness... Actually I don't feel this need to project that sort of image anymore. My room can stand on it's own merits and doesn't need a fancy schmancy label to justify it's existence or to glorify it's real identity. It is what it is now, a space that reflects me and my tastes. And important thing I learned from another blogger on here, The Nester, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful... And it is beautiful now, unfinished but still very much loved and reflecting the joy I feel when I'm creating.