FiLoMa's Craft World: FiLoMa's Craft Room

Well I've finally got around to taking photos of my craft room. I am slowing changing over my storage items, which will make my craft room more efficient for working in.

View 01 is of the entrance to the craft room. It is lined with bookshelves on either side. The main reason for this is that I didn't have anywhere else for my bookshelves to go. Having the bookshelves there is handy as I can place items on top for storage, but the bookshelves themselves do not have my craft magazines. The craft magazines/books that I get are on the tressle table next to the bookshelves that you can see on the right of the above the photo.

View 02 is of my creative memories, Stampin' Up, Bazzill and other A4 cardstock in the filing cabinet, my cardstock & paper off cuts in the green plastic draws and excess mounted stamps in the blue plastic draws. The white draws and shelves are part of the new storage system that I am going to. This particular unit is called a "double mini". I currently have 12"x12" paper shelves, 1" & 2" draws. The 1" and 2" draws are currently being used for mounted stamps, paper/card off cuts in particular colour ranges and punches. My plan is to move all my craft storage into these types of storage items. The double mini is on wheels so I can move it around if I decide to change the layout of my craft room. My goal, though long term, is to have a double mini for each colour family I've identified - 12"x12" paper trays with a 2" draw for the scrap off cuts, double mini's for my mounted stamps - a combination of 1" and 2" draws, double mini's for my punches - small, medium & large. At this stage I haven't worked past that, but will look at possibly including ink pads and you can get inserts for the 1" and 2" draws to put embellishments in, which I plan on doing for some of my embellishments. The other items in the corner are just other draws I have with bits and pieces when I don't know where else to put something.

View 03 is of my craft table that I work on. I have it set up so I can either work facing the window or with my back to the window facing my computer - this is so I can watch DVDs or Music clips etc. In the corner are my different types of paper cutters, as well as my A3 laminator and cricut machine - both siting on a 1.8m tressle table, which will eventually go when I get my new storage systems in place.

View 04 is with my back to the window facing the computer. As you can see, the table that I work on is quite large (1.5m in length and just short of 1m width). This table was originally designed for me to do my 3000 piece jigsaw puzzle, but large stamps need a solid table that doesn't bend/flex when you are pressing on the stamp, so this table was relegated back to my craft and another tressle table is being used for my jigsaws (but not my 3000 piece). The storage items on the tressle table I plan to replace and put the contents into the plastic dividers that I can get for the 1"/2" draws of my new storage system. You can also just see some of the shelving that I have on the wall.

View 05 is looking back towards the entrance of the craft room with the window behind me. You can see that I have 3 shelves on the wall. The first shelf holds my 12"x12" papers, all sorted into colour ranges. I also have my pens/textas/gel pens/chalks/watercolour pencils and H2Os on this shelf, plus Creative Memories stickers and ABCs - many left over from when I was a Creative Memories consultant. The second shelf did store all my cooking books/magazines, but I am slowly moving them back into the family room close to the kitchen for ease of use. The magazines that are still there currently share the shelf with my ribbon & brad/bling storage containers. These containers are great, the best I've come across so far. The blue storage containers hold my ribbon and the purple ones hold my brads/bling. I have 2 ribbon storage containers and 3 medium for my brads/bling and one large one which holds my adhesives and other misc items. My plan is to have 1 medium purple container per colour set of brads/bling. They are currently sharing one for pink/blue, another for red/purple and the third for yellow/black/clear/orange/green, these of which I don't have as much of. Finally towards the end of the shelf are the 4 folders I have that store my unmounted stamps. I also have my own stamp catalogue which is located between the cooking magazines and my ribbon containers. It makes card making so much easier when you are looking for a design to do, you can see at a glance what stamps you have and if you want to use a particular companies stamps, for example Stampin' Up, then I can go to the relevant section, let's say Fauna & Flora, look up Stampin' Up and see what SU stamps I have within that category to use. The top shelf is not visible in this photo.

View 06 is the same as view 05, but it shows the top shelf of my wall shelves. The top shelf is basically for spare storage items or items that I don't use frequently. I also store all the crap that I collect, which should really have been thrown out, such as empty chicken/vegetable stock cans; chocolate gift boxes.

View 07 is just another one of my working table, the tressle table with embellishments in the containers and my computer.

View 08 is another one of my paper off cuts storage as well as the new "double mini" storage system I am going over to. You can just see that I have labeled the draws of my new storage system. The only negative about it is that the 12"x12" paper trays don't slide out, but that isn't going to stop me going over to this system, it is still the best that will work for me.

View 09 is again of the paper off cuts, but this photo is really trying to capture the white board sitting on top. This board is what I use to keep track of the swaps that I am in. The white board has the headings of:

Mail Out - Swap Type - Swap Quantity - Swap Group - Swap Name - Other Info

This system really helps to keep me on track, but occasionally I do fall behind by a day or two. However, I do always let the group/my swap partner know if I am running late and the reason why. So far this system has worked well and I've been running with it for about 6 months now.

View 10 is basically just looking out my front window. The table that the plant is on holds my Sizzix, Sizzlit, Xyron's, Paper Clay & moulds as well as my ATCs that I've received, other stamped images that I've done using friends stamps, templates and stencils. These are all in the binders on the bottom shelf, which you can just see a white binder. The plastic storage item to the right of the table is what I was storing my mounted stamps in. However, it is now a temporary storage for my ink pads, my all-in-one zutter items as well as all the items that I used as part of my participation in the PCD 2007. Having them all in one place made participating in that great cause so much easier.

Well, that's about all from me on my craft room. As you can see I have a lot of storage containers. However, I know that the room will look better, more organised and basically neater once I have my new storage system fully operational. I'm hoping that I can get it done within 2 years. If you live in the ACT or surrounding area, the supplier for this storage system is:

Keep It Simply Stamping aka K.I.S.S

Lana Murray

Phone: 02-62540661

Email lanamurray "at" bigpond.com

Please clearly state in the subject line that you are after the "Best Craft Organiser Furniture". To see the range of storage products, check out their web site at:

http://www.bestscrapbookshelf.com/index.html

If any of you have a great storage system in place or an idea I'd love to hear about it. I am always on the look out for improving my storage system that will allow me to find what I want quickly, which would make spending time in my craft room very efficient, which means more time making cards/craft rather than looking for &/or remembering what I have.

Cheers FiLoMa

Sunday, 18 November 2007

FiLoMa's Craft Room

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