Have you ever experienced your own form of a Craft Room Obstacle course? 😉 I have and when you buy crafting supplies, you need to figure out where you are gonna store them when you get home. In my case, I live in a tiny home -- basically it is a two bedroom cottage. I LOVE looking for storage ideas and gadgets. So I thought I might share some of my favorite ideas with you. Some have been gleaned from another post called "My Best Tips." I decided to put the storage ideas in a separate post as I will be sharing them with a new crafty friend.
DATE: June 29, 2010
I love all the newest gadgets, but can't always afford them. So the next best thing is to crank up the ole creativity and repurpose an old gadget into a new one. I found this stainless steel holder thingy at a thrift store for about 50 cents (I had no idea what it was in its old life at the time, but later my husband told me he thought it might have held pipes, you know the smoking kind). Anyway, I brought the new-to-me gadget home, cleaned the dust off of it, looked it over (it revolves!) and added a few things to it and wha-la – on the top shelf, it holds all kinds of scissors, hole punches, pliers, a hammer in the center, and in the bottom spaces where I guess the bowls of the pipes went, is just the perfect size for embossing powder jars. And it has a handle in the center, so if I need to move it to clean off my table (yeah, right, in the next century), I can!
P.S. The above might also be a revolving spice rack. Looks very similar to something I saw at a thrift store this last weekend with all the jars in it. This is the mark on the bottom -- MADE IN CHINA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. MMII M, KAMANSTEIN, INC., ELMSFORD, NY 10523
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DATE: 17 Feb 2011
Post - God Richly Provides!
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DATE: 25 June 2011
Since I save all the used ribbons that come my way and have purchased bundled, spool-less odd lots at a local children’s museum teacher’s resource room, one year I asked Santa for a ribbon iron and my son purchased this Tulip Mini Fashion Iron for me. It’s so light and easy to whip out from the little zippered pink makeup bag (also purchased from thrift store) to iron those ribbons flat. I found the cute little ironing board for $2.50 at a our local salvage store. It’s for ironing collar and cuff seams when sewing clothing, but it makes a dandy counter ironing surface instead of having to drag out my big ironing board to set up. If your husband is handy in the workshop, he might be able to saw you a little ironing board from a picket fence board (16” long) which you could cover the top with old cut up potholders to give it a little padding, topping with fabric and stapling it on. The legs on mine are like the big ironing board legs that let it fold up flat, but your hubbin could attach dowel rod legs that screw on to the bottom. I would also slip on rubber chair tips on the ends of the legs so they don’t mar your counter surface & would give it a little gripping power as well.
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DATE: 12 Jun 2012
I found this cartoon in my news feed on Facebook and thought how appropriate it was when applied to my “craft room” which is actually a corner of my kitchen. I’m not going to enlighten you with a photo of the mess in one-half of my kitchen, but there are some of my crafty friends and I’m not naming names, like you Amy, who are in the organization mode. You can celebrate Christmas (or Hanukah) more than once a year when you decide to clean out, that is, finding goodies you “forgot” you bought! *smile*😁
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DATE: 1 Jul 2010
I was looking for an easy way to store my extra die-cuts, stickers, and assorted stamped images in one place. My husband worked in a computer warehouse and at that time brought me a bunch of extra CD envies home that they were going to throw out. I repurposed them to hold my extra bits and pieces in this shoebox. As I've been digging through some of my drawers in my craft corner for the extras that I've squirreled away, this box has gotten fatter and fatter, so much so that I think I'm gonna have to divide it into two – one for card bits and another for scrapbook ephemera.
Update: Since my husband no longer works for that particular company, I use zip-loc baggies to store my images in. I still slide them upright into plastic baskets/shoeboxes though. I like the baggies because they are clear and I can see what I'm selecting from the basket. The best baggies are the kind that have a space for writing on the front and a permanent sharpie marker is perfect for writing on it!
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Date: July 19, 2010
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I found a plastic three drawer shoe keeper at Walmart and started keeping my cards in it. The top drawer holds all-occasion cards (mostly blank inside), the middle drawer – birthday, and holiday cards. The box on top holds the envelopes. If you slip the invitation sized (A2) cards inside the drawer with the fold towards the top, you can keep approximately 150 cards in each of these drawers.
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DATE: 12 Sep 2012
Post - Artist Hoarding Disorder
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DATE: 25 Dec 2013
Post - Tools from the Past
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DATE: 3 Jan 2015
TUFF SHED UPDATE (2022) = While we still have this building, I will give you some things to think about when considering whether or not you should move out to your backyard to an arts and crafts studio she-shed --
1. How many out-buildings does your city/county allow in your yard? (Our city allows for 2 and we have that many, this craft barn and another smaller shed for gardening tools, camping equipment, etc.)
2. How big of a building can you afford? (This one cost about $6,000 bare bones. It was built for us on Valentine's Day).
3. How many people are you willing to share the building with? And will they respect your space? (My dream was to have an arts and crafts studio with room for a few friends to come craft with me, but since my husband decided he wanted to realize his dream too, for a library/office -- think Rex Harrison's library in "My Fair Lady" movie, that has never happened.)
4. Is it going to have running water for washing up and perhaps a toilet (We don't have running water in the barn. What I did have was a large drink dispenser with a spout on a small table and our house has a back door for access to the restroom in the house.)
5. Are you going to have electricity for lights and electric crafting tools? (I do have electricity for lights, electric tools and a small heater and/or fan via the seasons. It took a while for me to get a large heater for the space. The building was insulated on the walls and ceiling when it was built and carpet was placed on the floor, but we forgot to add insulation under the building, so the floors get cold. We were trying to build it on a shoestring.)
6. How are you going to heat or cool it? (Tiny homes have the same issue. Many of them are going to a wall mounted heater plus air-conditioner similar to a built-in that hotel and hospital rooms have.)
7. Are you going to have built-in cabinetry or free-standing shelving? (We didn't have a Restore store back then, so we went shopping at thrift stores for bookshelves.)
8. Are you going to have enough space to invite a few friends over for a crafting party?
I don't get as much use out of it as I thought I would. It's basically a storage shed and I have my YouTube table set up in the corner of my living room and a few supplies in two 3 tier, rolling carts. I'm very protective of my corner and hubby gets to run out to the shed for me when I need something. 😁
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DATE: 22 Jan 2015
I had been using transparent plastic shoeboxes (see above) . Right now all my spool ribbon are stored in cardboard shoe boxes. With two guys in the family who are hard on shoes, I have a steady supply of them. I was given a big sack of sewing trims and bias tape and I found they fit perfectly in these three metal index card catalog boxes. I really like the sliders in the bottom to keep the trim cards standing upright.
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DATE: 22 Jan 2015
Post - Studio Shed Storage
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DATE: 8 Mar 2015
Post - Shed-Oh!
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Date: 26 Nov 2018
Post - Baby, It's Cold Outside
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DATE: 3 May 2019
Yes, my husband is up to collecting stuff from the trash bin again. He brought home a bunch of heavy duty cardboard tubes that were at the end of the roll of label stickers that they use in the warehouse where he works and asked me what I could do with them, so here's one of my ideas. I also had squirrelled away a couple of wider tubes from crochet thread, so those got glued down in the center of the ramen noodle cardboard soup box and then I inserted the smaller tubes around them until I couldn't fit in anymore. I like the color of the cardboard so left them au natural, but they could be painted before gluing. I tied a strip of denim cut from an old pair of jeans that my husband or son gave me into a bow around the box, inserted my crafting tools into it and wha-la - a tool-box!
Later, I found a basket at a thrift store with two large dowel handles on the sides that the box fit down into perfectly. Easy to carry from place to place now!
-------------------------DATE: 3 Dec 2019
Post - Homeschool Arts and Crafts
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DATE: 15 May 2021
Video - More Happy Mail! (my video shows an ATC storage idea)
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DATE: 15 July 2021
In my Best Tips post, I mentioned these "sponge applicator tools." Around our house, we have a never ending supply of these little bottles, so we use them as storage containers for tiny beads, nails, and tacks, etc., after all the pills are gone. This is my newest idea -- a two-in-one storage/tool handle for Tim Holtz's replacement sponge applicators. I use a long forceps/tweezer tool that I picked up at Harbor Freight to grab and pull a sponge out of the bottle to add to the lid (click on photo to enlarge and see the Velcro hook tape circle I glued to the top with E-6000 to hold the sponge applicator.) Then I use the "handle" of the upside down bottle to pounce ink from the moist sponge onto a piece of paper. Handy-Dandy!
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DATE: 17 Dec 2021
When I homeschooled our son, I was a unit study gal. I loved pulling everything together that we needed to study one thematic lesson with. Well, that seems to be my thing and I found the perfect solution to do just that with my craft supplies. I was watching Possum Patty on YouTube and she was organizing her craft room. I asked her what those large sacks she was using to slip her 12 x 12-inch scrapbook paper tablets into, and she said Hefty's 2.5-gallon slider bags. The 12" x 12" paper pads fit into them just perfect, and I was on a roll after my husband picked up two boxes for me at Walmart. This is my largest sack of farmhouse goodies to date.
My main themes so far are:
Black and White (stamped & patterned paper)
Boy (could be titled Male, too)
Celebrations (Birthday, Holiday & Seasons)
Colored paper
Cute! (Knockoffs, Mary Engelbreit, MacKenzie Childs)
Dolly (my Teesha Moore inspired, art journaled zetti-doll stuff -- her faces, clothing,
background, printable body parts, hair, accessories, quote sheet, etc.)
Girl (could be titled Female also)
Farmhouse (includes Western)
Heritage (vintage like Graphics 45, Tim Holtz, etc.)
Kitchen (housewife, farmhouse, & retro)
White CS (plain white cardstock)
I might add more categories after I see what I have out in my craft barn.
In addition to the large Hefty Sack, I added a basic three smaller plastic zipper bags in a quart size for those things that could get lost in the bottom of the larger sack. So those sub-sacks are labeled: Images, Scraps, and Words (alphas & tags), however, I added an extra sub-sack to both the colored paper and white cardstock called Die-cuts. These are the items that you can sometimes cut down from the 12 x 12 paper packs to use as images, tags, and alphabets that coordinate with the paper pads.
I also went through my stash of stickers that I picked up at Scraps KC awhile back and added those to the category sacks. Tonight, we went out and bought a large plastic tub at Walmart that was wide enough at the end (about 14" wide) and about 12" deep to use as a filing cabinet of sorts to store the ephemera in, in all their sacks and it didn't break the bank! 🏦＄😊
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