My
sister Sariah is an incredibly talented
crafter. While several of the siblings in my family have creative talent, Sariah seems to excel in things like baking, sewing or (paper)crafting. I just returned from a week long "vacation" from visiting Sariah and her family in Utah. We spent two and a half days redoing her craft room.
Here are the before pictures:
We also had to incorporate her craft supplies she was temporarily storing in her bedroom:
We were operating on a very limited budget so we were as resourceful as we could be. Eventually we sorted her supplies into three main areas, baking, sewing and (paper) crafting.
Sariah and I are similar in that we're visual. If we can't see what we have to work with we can't remember what's available. She wanted a way to stylishly display and quickly locate things like her different threads, her embellishments and notions for sewing and scrapbooking, her 12x12 scrapbooking paper and her paper punches, ribbons and fabric.
We scoured the internet for quite a while looking for inspiration on different ways to store her scrapbooking paper until Sariah thought up her own idea. We disassembled her metal shelving in her bedroom (shown in the pic on the left) and reassembled only one column of it in the scrapbooking room. We then used twisty ties (because we didn't have any zip ties) to make flat shelves to hold her paper by sorted colors and designs. Brilliant and it was free. Interestingly, we found a woman on Etsy selling the very
same idea in her
Etsy shop. Good on her for selling her ideas and good on us for thinking of it on our own.
Here is the craft's room east wall where we decided to locate the scrapbooking corner and store her fabulous fabric supply:
Oh glorious organizational wonder of all that is crafty and good.
- We bought the little wooden shelves that the jars are resting on at a thrift store for a couple of dollars. The jars on the shelves were bought at Ikea and Sariah is going to make little stickers for each one.
- We made the strong, square shelves out of MDF board that Sariah had on hand. We made them big enough to hold several of her scrapbooking books at a time.
- The desk is a good ole' fashioned option made from cement blocks and more of the available MDF boards.
- We also used hooks and dowels to make the hangers for her paper cutters.
- The chair was also bought at a thrift store for $10 and Sariah is going to recover it. Brilliant.
- Lastly, we moved the black shelves that were already in the room to the entrance way and organized the fabric by color and placed her patterns in easy to flip through plastic storage bins.
Next up, the craft room's south wall. We divided it into two sections. This is the baking corner:
Pan racks can be incredibly expensive. We made our own by drilling holes 3" apart from each other on the top shelf and hot gluing them to the bottom shelf. Perfect!
Sariah wanted a designated area to be able to freely use her various sewing machines so we gave her a separate desk for this section. She also wanted to display the quilt because it was the first craft she made in her teens and it is really what started her lifetime interest in crafting.
We hand made the thread and spool holders from wooden plaques and boards we bought at the thrift store and then painted white and modge podged with scrapbooking paper. Then we added nails and hung them on the wall. Voila, a sweet, visual way to access her different threads.
Lastly, the craft room's north wall:
Oh wonderous organizational fabulousity! Here you can see our creative solution for storing her scrapbooking paper for easy access. We bought the white shelves from the thrift store for only a few dollars and we used some scrap wood to extend the dowels from the wall to create her ribbon holders.
It was exhausting, but so worth it. I'm looking forward for updates on some of the finishing touches from Sariah. Oh, if you're looking for more creative ways to organize your craft room, check out this post from Craftynest. Oh, here's an adorable way to store your fabric as well. Just another fabulous offering from Cathe Holden at Just Something I Made.
Totally awesome. This Wall Street Journal article follows a growing trend among truckers who have picked up quilting, sewing, and knitting as a hobby. The downturn in the current economy has meant that instead of dropping off a load and picking up a new one right away, truckers will sometimes have to wait hours or days until they can head out again. Some men (95% of truckers are men) have started using a needle and thread (and sewing machines!) to pass the time.
