Craft Room Organization DONE!

I’ve finally finished painting, cleaning and organizing my craft room! Go me! I never thought I’d get it done. I was very overwhelmed. I wrote a “To Do” list every evening in my journal and that gave me the enthusiasm to get it done. One baby step at a time.

     

The first picture is just entering the room. I still have the shelf at the beginning. Now it has the things I use on a very infrequent basis.

Picture 2: Is my craft table folded in half. I don’t use the whole space anyway. Across from that at the window was a cabinet my father picked up at a flea market a while ago. I have my paint rack on it.

Picture 3: Is the far side of the room. I have my little 9 cube shelf. I put 2 of my plastic drawers in the closet to save space. It mainly has my rubber stamps and most of my crayons, colored pencils, gel pens and markers.

Picture 4 is my closet with my fabric shelf, minus most (2 full to popping shelves) of fabric. I have that up for auction on Ebay. I hope it sells. I put up 8 pound so fake fur and about 4 pounds of regular fabric.

I am glad to have the room cleared out. Now I have to get started on making sets of my Glass Marble Magnets that I sell on Etsy.

 

Before: 

After:  What a difference!

Craft room the Organization Begins . . . tomorrow

The room is painted, the tape is off and the furniture moved in. And now the organization process begins in earnest . . . um tomorrow.

Here is the room so far

     

 

Picture 1: back of the room by the closet. As you can see the things in the laundry basket still needs to find a place.

Picture 2: is at the door. Directly in front of the door is a small 3 shelf bookcase. I didn’t take a picture of it.

Picture 3: is also by the door but it shows the 9 square book case by my desk.

Picture 4: is by the window where the paint rack is.

I like the cheery yellow and that I have more room. I just need to get rid of the things I’m not using. I should also find another spot for the paint since I don’t like it by the window. But then, it’s been there for 10 yrs. I have to see how much of that paint I may need to throw away. I’ve went through it quickly earlier this week. I need to try them all out to see.

I have Pirate game cards to get rid of, some games in the closet. At one time I thought Original Star Trek Barbie was a good find at $10. It’s still worth only $10, and I don’t want them around anymore. So much to do. Either Ebay or Goodwill. I’m getting tough on it tomorrow.

Then I need to see how to get this room efficient. Any suggestions?

 

 

Craft Room: Painting . . . or what not to do

This is my first painting project ever. It has been my personal 2-day nightmare. Okay, the first day was the nightmare.

It is important to read everything you are about to buy. I knew I needed an edger. There was a handy little item that looked like a more substantial one than I was looking for. It even had on the tag it was made by women for women. I figured this meant very cool edger. It was not. I don’t know what it was meant for. It had sides on it, which made me thing it was an edger giving clean edges. In fact it was just a sponge roller paint  . . . thing. After using it the sponge would shrink just a bit (with all that paint and the pressure of moving it) that the sides would scrape down the wall. UGH.

I had to go out and get a real edger. But not until 4 hrs later. For some reason I thought I’ll just make do. My parents didn’t get that fancy edger thing until the late 80’s, I can paint through this. It was a more work than I should have done. Once I got the fancy edger product, it went quicker. Of course, I was not done.

Today I started again (10 am) and was done by 3 pm. It was a much easier day. And while it doesn’t look at all good, I was told for a first time it wasn’t bad. That made me feel a bit better.

Here are the almost finished pictures of the craft room. I will wait 48 hrs before I take the blue tape off and start moving in the furniture.

 

 

It’s funny how  the picture by the door looks so much lighter than the other pictures. The shade is called Pale Daffodil by Behr. The shade I expected is the one by the door. In this picture it looks light. The color you see by the windows, the bright “in your face” lemon is what it looks like in real life. Luckily, I wanted a more “In Your Face” yellow, but knew better (from past experience) to go one shade lighter.

I may put wallies up for a border, I’m not sure yet. I’m really not sure how much more money I want to sink into this. I have about $120 in it so far. Much more than I expected.

My next task is arranging the craft room. This is where the organization will really come in.

 

 

 

Craft Room Organization: Part 3

Ugh! This is so much work! I asked my husband how long it should take to paint a room. He said it would take him about 3 hours. Well, it took me about 2 hours to put up all this tape!

 

 

Here is a picture before. If you look at the left side you can see all the paint marks. These were left from my daughter though all the time she painted canvases and stuff in this area. Because I hated the wall, I didn’t take such a good before shot. I really didn’t think it’d come so clean.

 

Here is the after picture, the wall is on the right side of the picture. Those ‘magic erasers’ did the trick. Although, I had both Mr. Clean and Big Lot’s generic type. The generic worked just as good. The more expensive ones with the blue scrubbies were the worst. The blue ‘scrubber’ was useless and there was less of the useful white part. Just for cleaning the wall it took an hour and a half, and that was with help. My daughter helped with the painted wall and Frankie my cat was our supervisor. He is very good at his job, jumping up to show us where we missed.

Tomorrow I will start painting. Hopefully, it will only take me 3 hours. For the rest of today I am going through my scrapbook materials. I will get all the ‘scrapping’ done tonight or it’s being tossed or donated. My patience is gone! Too many things I’ve been meaning to do and they all add up.

One super wonderful thing I found is my new favorite Jelly Bean! Gimbal’s Bumble Beans. They are all different shapes and flavors. They say they are gourmet, and they taste it! I really like the fact that these are the jelly beans that didn’t come out of the mold perfectly. Some look quite funny. They are awesome delicious and at Big Lots. Big Lots, if you haven’t noticed, is my new favorite store.  I should be a spokesperson for them.

 

 

Craft Room Organization Part 2

I am completely overwhelmed. I’ve been doing about an hour’s work at a time all week. This morning I did nearly 3 hours of work and here it is. Ready to be painted.

 

Picture 1: This is from the back of my craft room towards the door. I’ve taken down the cork board. Not sure if I’ll put that back up. It was old and ratty when I got it. I did by a white board. It will be more useful considering I sell so many magnets.

 

Picture 2: Here is the little ‘entrance’ to my craft room. This little spot always seems like a waste of space where the closet juts out into the room. I used to have a toy box full of fabric. Now I have a shelf. Not sure which is better. It still seems like a waste of space.

 

Picture 3: is from the door looking into the room. I’ve got nearly everything in the middle ready to paint.

Picture 4: I realize I have to move that shelf. I had to move everything from in there out into a clothes basket. It’s not the sturdiest shelf. I bought it at Big Lots.

I have plaster on 2 holes and have to clean around the floor boards and frames. By tomorrow I should be painting.

My closet is now a packed mess. I did take a lot out, but what was left inside the room had to go there. After my paint is dry things are either going up on Ebay, Etsy or Goodwill. I’m done with almost all of it. I’d love to find a good home for my fun fur, though.

When my daughter was younger I had loads of different art forms for her to try. Now that she’s older and has settled on a few, there is no need for all this stuff I have accumulated. I worried that I’d miss something I gave away. And wouldn’t you know it, two weeks after giving away tin serving trays I could have used them. No matter! I found something else. I can’t believe all the things in my house and I’m not anywhere near a ‘hoarder’. It must be truly overwhelming to get rid of that amount of stuff.

 

 

Organization and the Craft Room

This is my summer of Organization. I’ve tried to do it before, and not made much headway. This year I am actually giving it my all. It may not look it from the pictures, but I really did take out about 100 pounds of ‘stuff’ from my room so far. If it wasn’t worthless, I donated it all to Goodwill.

                          

 

This is just a heap of ‘stuff’. Much that I use, but mostly I don’t use. When my daughter was younger this was the room we did all of our art. I really think it’s important for kids to express themselves with all sorts of art. The mannequin head in the background on the black shelf is from her mask making days in high school.

On the shelves is my attempt at scrapbooking. I’ve always loved the idea of scrapbooking, but I never really liked the trend. It seemed too . . . I don’t know . . . it doesn’t say a lot and there is a lot of empty space filled with expensive paper. I love to see lots of pictures on a page and lots of descriptions. When I started with the scrapbooking it was about framing one picture to a page and putting one word or so, like DREAM or SUMMER. It didn’t convey a message. It looked like the start of a Hallmark Card.

The stereo has to go, it takes up too much room. There are Legos and other toys that need another place. I have a sewing machine but rarely use it. Perhaps because I have room to lay out fabric.

Early this year in January I bought the white shelves to try to bring order to my chaos. As you can see, it didn’t quite work out the way I hoped. Last weekend I cleared out some of the clear drawers, but I ‘m not sure what I’ll put in there. The cork board on the back I’ve had forever and at one time it helped me bring order, but as you can see it is out of control now.

This is the left and right view of my closet. My attempt to bring some sort of order to my fabric was by way of a white shelf unit. You can’t really tell it’s in there. It looks like one big mound of ‘stuff’.  Some of the things in there are items I should sell on Ebay. I really got to get control of this area, too.

This is the area in front of the door. It’s a tough space. It used to be a toy box with all my fabric crammed into it. Because I couldn’t see the fabric I never used it. So now my fabric is crammed into the shelves in the closet. The things out here is all the paper products I’ve accumulated from my scrapbook attempts. I may not like scrapbooking, but I do love paper. On top of this shelf are more plastic things. I didn’t buy those new. They keep my cross-stitch stuff and a lot of containers for pencils, etc.  I love to cross-stitch, but my near vision makes it more difficult and that takes the fun out of it all.

In a way I wish I would have taken a picture in Early December, right before I started cleaning things out and making an attempt to organize. But I just couldn’t do it. My goal is to get my craft room in order by July 7th. I need  a finite amount of time or I procrastinate. I work a modified school schedule and July 7th is our ‘summer school’ time. I really want to get this all done by then.

Things I need to get done:

• Paint the room. I want to paint it in the colors of my Etsy shop, The Lemon Daisy.
• Clear out the clutter to the bare minimum. I need room to work.
• Get rid of my stereo
• Find another place for the black shelf
• Rearrange the room so it’s more craft friendly for the things I do now.

Wish me luck!