Behind closed doors - a tour of my craft studio and a look at some other cool ones

Crafting revealed.

I am not actually a crafting maniac.  Although I have, on occasion, spent upwards of 8 to 9 hours in here.  I truly believe that that time would be significantly cut down if my computer wasn’t so slow and didn’t have to chug so hard to do what I wanted it to do.  It is old.  2003 Dell Inspiron 8200.  But it has my softwares on it.  I have a macbook pro too (you know for interwebs and facebook) .

I have recently rearranged my studio, again.  I added a shelf unit and filled it up (the one with the fake flowers on top, in front of the window).  I of course, brought in my photo area.   And reorganized my closet.

My friend, also named Erin, has been launching her new home scrapbooking/crochet/knitting studio.  Sales on organizing furniture/pieces are helping her a lot too!    A picture of her studio in progress is below.  Aren’t you jealous?  I only have one of those organizing pieces.

And for Christmas, my husband and I helped put my mom’s new sewing studio together.  So with all this impetus, I decided to blog about studios.

We all have dream studios (like this http://bit.ly/fvLcQE), in our minds, or ones that we see on tv or in magazines.  Or like this from Pottery Barn.

But it doesn’t always come together exactly as we imagine.  Mine has been a work in progress from day one.  I rearrange, haul up organizers from the basement that weren’t being used, shuffle them around, stack them up.  I leave it like that for a while and then more stuff wants to come into my studio and it gets reworked again.  So I have an old dresser, a curio cabinet, a small filing cabinet, a bunch of plastic draw units, a few shoe organizers, a ton of plastic bins, a bunch of baskets, a few cardboard boxes and one cool craft room organizing drawer box.  But it works!  And I kinda like the eclecticness of it all.  Like puzzle pieces that have fallen together.  And I like that it isn’t so perfect that I can’t rearrange it all again tomorrow.

That said, I do love organizing.  I love bins and sorting and labeling and belive that if there is a place for everything to live, then it is easy to pick it up and put stuff away.  Post-it Note commercials are like porn to me.  And if someone bought me a card catalog drawer thing I would consider leaving my husband and running away with them.  OMG I want one of those card catalog things.

Later, when you are alone, click on this. http://bit.ly/4bH24z

As far as studios go, there are all kinds.  You can search for hours on YouTube and find tons of vlogs and tours of other people’s studios.  And they are all very nice but they tended to be mostly scrapbooking studios.  And for some reason all the ladies doing them have HUGE rocks on their fingers.  I don’t really do scrapbooking.  I am too anal and it would take me like a day to do a page.  So the assortment of embellishments and stampers wasn’t doing anything for me.  If it does for you, have at it.  Search craft room on YouTube.  You will explode.

So I made a tour of my studio.

It’s on YouTube, right here——>>  http://bit.ly/dPgsAb

So go watch it!

Did you enjoy?

If you liked my new little schnauzer notebook, check out Corey’s page at www.coreymarie.etsy.com.  She and I were locker partners in middle school.  We have always been crafty.  She reminded me the other day that we once made a fake cardboard “pay” phone for our locker.  It had a real phone cord on it.  I guess someone actually paid us a quarter to “use” it.  LOL.  She also has a blog that will eat mine for dinner at www.coreymarie.com.

Before I did my studio tour, I did search around on YouTube forever and watched a million videos and finally typed in crochet room or something and found this.   http://bit.ly/fj8oP0 I thought OMG this is so similar to my studio.  Like all the same parts, but rearranged differently.  It was weird.   She has an Etsy store too.  It’s www.jennyhats.etsy.com.

Here is another studio that I found that I love.

http://bit.ly/gZCnRh But check out the architecture that they started with, how could I not?  High plate rail.  Wood floors.  And then Pink paint.  LOVE.  I also love all the white and uniform organizing.  Shelves and bins and labels.  *hysterical laughter*

Oh my gosh, here is another one.

I found it here.  http://bit.ly/gIGek8 I love the white with all the bright colors.

My mom has been sewing for nearly a half a century.  I said Nearly!  But she has never had her own special place to do her sewing.  She has always just used the huge dining room table with flip-up leaves.  Well she has been sewing a lot more recently, since she has joined me in the Etsy and craft show world.  www.wrapcity.etsy.com.  And as a result, her dining room was always messy and cluttered with sewing stuff and fabric bits and thread all over the floor.  My 18-year-old sister moved out of her old room so mom had a  spare room suddenly available.  She and I took a trip down to Ikea and picked out some shelving units and found and awesome, perfect table in the clearance area for half off!  As her Christmas present from me, my husband and I went over and put it all together with her.  Here it is.  It is a picture from her phone after she finished putting all of her fabric away.

And here is the other side.  She is so happy with all of her storage areas and bins and the fact that her fabric is now sorted and available.  She has a bigger, older, realer sewing machine. She was borrowing this one cuz hers needs work.

In the vein of things falling together to create a studio, I noticed that a lot of things get repurposed for crafting things.  Either because the crafting world hasn’t invented the equivalent yet or it is just as easy to use what you already have lying around.  For example, I like to use my cookie sheets, to the chagrin of my husband who bought them for me for christmas to use in the kitchen, for my magnet projects.  I use flower pots for my pens and pencils.  I use Pampered Chef carousels for my tools and markers.  One of the cooler things that I have repurposed would be the cardboard display boxes that I got from Target, Office Max and Michael’s.  I asked!  The teal ones that I have my cards and prints in were actually the display boxes for the frames that I have my prints in.  I just printed some labels on craft paper and stuck them on the fronts.   The pink boxes that my hats are in were actually from Office Max and had those super cheap colorful school folders in them.  The one that my individual notecards are in was actually a display box for some small painted wooden things at Michael’s.  Don’t be afraid to ask.  They are throwing that junk away anyway.  They can only say no.  If you are gonna ask, find a manager, or someone you know has worked there a while.  They will know the protocol.  Newbies will tend to say no to cover their butts because they don’t know and don’t want to get in trouble.  I went hunting specifically for craft show display bins and I got ‘em.  I also have some old ones I got at Walmart years ago in the school supply section.  I use them in my linen closet to sort washcloths and hand towels.  Who needs fancy Martha Stewart baskets?  Well me, but in a pinch, cool boxes work great.

My friend Erin keeps all of her knitting needles in an old vase.  My friend Corey uses old suitcases to store stuff in in her studio.   My mom uses a small food scale to weigh her corn hole bags that she makes.

My grandpa and his brother used to keep all sorts of garage, tool, woodworking bits in babyfood jars.

See where my organizing genes come from?  This is my mom’s dad but my dad’s parents are equally amazing in the organizing department.  My grandma quilts and would make the best fabric collector jealous.  I will have to get a picture.

What kind of weird things have you repurposed in your studio?  Either storage related or as a tool to aid you in your crafting.

I went down to VA to visit my friend Corey this past year and got to see her crafting studio.  While I was there I helped her organize some of her stuff.  As we were sorting and stacking, I said “maybe we should go get a bunch of plastic bins and drawers.” To which she said, which made me rethink everything, that she tries to avoid plastic bins and instead uses found objects, wood and metal containers to house her stuff.  So she has made rules about what she wants in her studio.  She is really into retro and vintage stuff so it makes sense.  And I have to admit, once she said that, I looked around and sure enough, the rule had made it look pretty cool in there.  Very eclectic still of course but without all the newfangled plastic stuff mine had.  Since then, in my reorganizing efforts, I have swapped out many of my plastic bins for the wood and fabric baskets that were holding stuff in the closet.  The baskets are now more on display and the bins are hiding away.  Keep that in mind when you are working on your studio.  Are there any rules you want to enact to help your studio to have a more cohesive or specific look?  Certain materials or colors you want to stick to or avoid?

I hope you enjoyed this post about studios and organizing.  Feel free to ask me anything about my studio or my crafting.

Rosie helping in my studio.  And a shot of my facebooking computer too.  LOL

I would love to see some of your studios too!  Good luck and remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be great.

“Don’t worry so much about not supposed to.” – Judy Dench on Chocolat

-Erin