Craft Room Makeover

Since the last week of December I've been working on re-organizing my craft room to make it more efficient and easy to just sit down and make a card or two without much effort. I started out by organizing my paper. That was a task. I had a HUGE selection of paper from solids to patterns and most were tucked away and still in there original bindings. I went through each sheet and tore them apart and organized them by gender and whether they were patterned or solid. I now have a large crate with my 12 x 12 paper organized with dividers. I have a 6 x 6 mini crate organized the same way and my solid colored 8 1/2 by 11 paper is organized by color.

This above is more organized 12 x 12 paper. Each sheet is now easy to just pick up and use instead of having the thumb through pages that were still adhered to their folders.

My solid 8 1/2 by 11 paper organized by color

6 x 6 paper organized with dividers by gender and whether it's patterned or solid.

I also did this with my 8 x 8 paper. I just forgot to take a picture of it done.

On another day I spent the whole day organizing my ribbon. I started about a year ago storing them in glass cookie jars but over time I bought a lot of ribbon and got behind in putting them in there. I would unwrap them from their original containers and roll them each onto a wooden clothespin and store them color coded in the cookie jars. Well after I finally got them all done, I realized I had more than what the cookie jar could hold, so I went out and bought these really nice jars with lids since they are stored on top, dust won't get in the jar.

Then came the big change. I organized all my crafting drawers. Purchased a lot of drawer organizers at the Dollar Tree and went to work. Took me an entire day and a half to re-arrange everything and use the organizers to help me put everything in a good place to make it easy for me to make cards quickly.

After all the organizing I still didn't like how it looked from the outside. I could still see inside the drawers because they were see through and even though they were organized it didn't look like it through the drawer faces and from the side. So I lined each drawer face with beautiful decorative scrapbooking paper and then sewed a fabric side/top cover for the sides of the drawers. The finished product looks awesome and it really makes my craft room look more elegant instead of a plastic storage bin area..

Before

After: with the paper and the fabric lining on the side

Before

After. You can't see the fabric lining really well on these two sets as they are tucked away next to my bookcase. These are two drawer sets stacked on top of each other. I lined each set separately in case I ever decide to move them.

Before

After

Before-Another view

After- Another view

Here is a couple shots of the fabric lining when I pulled the drawers out from the wall. Doesn't it make the plastic containers look so much nicer. I'm very happy with the results and had fun making some cards this evening now that everything is all done..

You can check out my cardmaking blog @ Creative Cardmaking.