How to Keep Your Craft Station Organized

Christmas is officially THREE days away! I am surprisingly stress free because my husband and I got pretty much everything done nice and early this year (thank you Amazon Prime!). Since I'm hoping to be getting some new goodies for my craft room for Christmas I have started to attempt to clean, organize and purge in preparation. Today I'm bringing you some tips and trick for how to keep your craft station organized!

How to keep your craft station organized 

If you are a crafty person and you like everything from embroidering and sewing to DIY decorating projects done from scratch, you are probably spending quite a lot of time on your craft station. This holy place for you must be quite crowded and cluttered. If you are feeling like making some change and take things under control, there are a few things which can help you to keep your craft station well-organized.

A Beautiful Mess

Start with cleaning

The first and most important part of the organization is throwing away all the things which you don’t need. Pull everything out and take a good look around. I am sure that there are some materials which you will never use but you will need to clean and some of your supplies must be quite old and probably unusable. If you have a certain style of work and you use only certain materials, you might want to throw away all the fabrics you have kept just because. 

Get rid of all the dried-up paints and markers which may need to be cleaned later and slow you down.

The Crafted Life

Make a plan

If you like to experiment in different styles and craft, you can make a plan to separate the material depending on their purpose. Put all the papers, washi tapes, ribbons and stickers to one side of the station and store all the fabrics, pins and sewing threads to the other. This way you can always easily find the items you need, according to the project you are working on.

Best Friends For Frosting

Use everyday objects for storage

As a true crafty person, you can make a storage place out of things you can easily find around your home. Jars are very helpful to store pens, brushes, scissors. Bigger plastic boxes can store other items you need to put away. Putting stickers or labels on the boxes can make the access to your crafting instruments much easier. If you don’t mind working on another DIY project which can help you with the organization of your craft station, you can cut a PVC pipe into a few smaller couplings and glue them together. You can store your paints there and if you put them with the bottoms up, you can easily see what colour of paint you are grabbing every time.

A Beautiful Mess

Assign a place for every object

One of the best way to make sure that your craft station is always well-organized is to keep everything at a certain place. Adopt the habit of assigning a specific place for the items you use in your projects. This can assure that you will never loose your crafting instruments and you will be able to access them easily.

The Crafted Sparrow

Organize by color 

If you want to be able to find everything you need easily and make your crafting space look fun and colourful, you can organize your tools by colours. This method is both practical and fun at the same time. Forget about the struggle to find that particular ribbon or washi tape that you want to use for your new project. This colour-coordinated method can solve your problems. Even if you keep your items in drawers or boxes, you can put colourful stickers to be aware of the colours of the tools inside them.

Polished Habitat

The organizing of your craft station might take some time and effort but if you use these tricks, you can make the process much easier and enjoyable. Once your station is well-organized, you will be able to enjoy a clean and cozy place for work. If you keep the order in your crafting space, you will always be able to concentrate on your projects and forget worrying about the mess around you.

This was a guest post from Nicole. Nicole currently resides in London with her family. She is a co-owner of a small cleaning company and enjoys reading and writing.

For more craft room/office inspiration be sure to check out my pinterest board!

Craft Cave Makeover // The Inspiration

So, lately I have been SUPER motivated to revamp my craft room (aka the craft cave). If you don't already know, the cave is my garage turned craft room that I've turned into my own little crafting sweatshop of sorts haha. It has its positives and negatives. I love it being in the garage because if I'm working on a project and have created a mess, I can leave it and no one has to see it. I definitely couldn't do that in the house (not if I wanted to keep my sanity anyways). The negative though, is that, at the end of the day, it IS still a garage, which means there is no heat or A/C. So during those sweltering So Cal summer months it's like a sauna and during the winter I have to bundle up like an Eskimo to work out there. (Yes, I live in California, but I get cold ok!)

As with most of my project, I have started with an inspiration. 

Source

This workshop space from Design Love Fest is so dreamy! So bright! So airy! So crispy and clean! The cave will likely never look like this (it's called the "cave" for a reason) but, a girl can dream can't she? As always, I put together a color palette. 

One of the walls, and my peg board are already painted using Mischievous by Behr so that was obviously going to be part of the palette. I also recently ordered a new mini fridge for the cave from Urban Outfitters that comes in the most adorable peach color, so that had to be incorporated as well. I incorporated gold (duh) as well as a bold black and white stripe because, well I love it. (If the palette looks familiar, it's probably because it is basically my wedding. Apparently I know what I like!)

I also went ahead and made myself a little mood board full of a healthy mix of items I already have and items I want to incorporate. 

Source List: Ikea Table // Coral Chair // Rug // Spun Fiberglass Chairs (a vintage find) // Mini Fridge // 2-Tier Basket // 3-Tier Basket // Wire Basket // Pom Pom Pillow // Hanging Chair // Bar Cart // Mint Filing Cabinet // Typewriter // Craft Cart // Record Player // Chair Cushion 

I have already slowly started operation Craft Cave Makeover by going through and cleaning out all of my craft supplies. You'd be surprised how much one crafter can accumulate over a lifetime of crafting! I hope to have the cave in tip top shape soon because I have been dreaming of having fun crafting workshops with all of my girlfriends! 

Stay tuned for more on Operation Craft Cave Makeover!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning that I receive a small commission for items purchased through my blog, at no cost to you. All items advertised are items that I actually use and all opinions are 100% my own.

Fresh Look Friday!

Danica and I moved into the house that my husband and I call home five years ago this summer. It's crazy to think about because it feels like only yesterday and yet, in those five years so much has happened! Not long after moving in, we invited our friend Stefana to also move in. Danica eventually got engaged and married and moved out. We got another roommate who also eventually moved out. I got engaged and Sam moved in. Then when Sam and I got married Stefana moved out. 

Being that it is now our home as the little family that we now are, we have been making little changes and improvements to make it more "us" (who am I kidding, I'm just making it more "me" and he's living with it, haha.). 

The latest of these endeavors has been the garage, which, as most know, is lovingly referred to as the "craft cave". For years I have wanted a dream work space to make all of my sewing, hot glue guning and Cricuting dreams come true. I have found, on my search for the perfect space that generally creative spaces are one of two things either beautiful or functional. There are some that are GORGEOUS but everything is so impeccably neat that you really couldn't be creative in the space. Then there is the opposite, where craft supplies are everywhere but its a complete and utter disaster. Why is it so hard for a space to be both? So that became my mission. A space that was both beautiful AND functional. Jen over at Something Turquoise managed to do it, and so would I!

My inspiration was this wallpaper from Anthrolopogy. I've been drooling over it for months (along with many other admirers I'm sure). 

Obviously, at $148.00 per roll, it wasn't something I was going to be splurging on anytime soon, HOWEVER, I could still use it as inspiration, right?

First, was finding the perfect wall color. I knew I wanted to find a muted mint color, (after my wedding colors, is it any surprise?) and came across Mischievous by Behr (and who can resist that name, right?). 

I only wanted to use the color on one wall so I chose my "display wall". 

The way the "craft cave" was built, it was actually added on to an existing two car garage so technically, the wall we painted, at one time, was the exterior wall to the original garage. We didn't know how the stucco would take the paint but the final product ended up actually better than we imagined. (Side note: when I say "we", I am referring to me and my kick ass mom who LOVES a project. She has been my motivator/slave driver through this whole process.)

Before Paint

And After

It's just a slight and yet impactful change. 

(Hutch was a $60 Craigslist find.... love me some Craigslist)

While I was doing some sewing my mom styled the hutch for me with some of my wedding decor, it's still a work in progress but loving the direction it's heading in.

At the end of the day it IS still a garage so making it totally beautiful might never be entirely possible, but I'm hopeful. 

The next project we tackled after the mint wall was the red shelving on the opposite wall. I'm kicking myself for not getting a good before photo but I dug this one out of the archives from when Danica, my mom and myself very first went to look at the  house before we moved in to see if it was something Danica and I were interested in. 

Yes, five years ago I had short blonde hair, but more importantly, there is the red shelving. 

I had been using it as a catch all for all things garage, like Christmas decorations, old paint, etc. 

Since pegboard is an extremely versatile and functional use of space we decided to keep it and mirror the mint wall by painting the pegboard mint as well. 

Then it was time for the shelving. Now, the shelving wasn't just wood that was painted red... it was laminate. Red, plastic, laminate. We weren't about to attempt to rip it all off so paint it was the option we opted for. 

The Rust-Oleum Universal claims to cover wood, metal, plastic and masonry so it was our best bet. To prevent paint from going everywhere we spent a good chunk of time basically tenting off the paint zone. Now, I haven't seen E.T. probably in over two decades but I feel like it vaguely looked like that scene from the end of the movie where the house was essentially quarantined. If you've ever used spray paint before you know why this was necessary and if you haven't... well, just trust me on this. 

Here was the final product. The paint seemed to cover well, we will see how it lasts. A few scratches have already been made and some red has shown through but... it's better than the whole thing being red. Visiting 5 different Walmart's in one day is how I found my collection of storage bins, but wouldn't you know, the right side is an inch smaller than the left, so the hunt for properly sized bins for that side continues. See the white on the ground... yeah... that is where the the plastic didn't quite cover... I'm telling you, spray paint is no joke. Speaking of... because I was in a confined space with the paint, we took major precautions to make sure I wasn't just in a tent of toxic fumes. 

 I had decided to make curtains to hide the storage and, using my Anthropology inspiration, I found a fun floral pattern that had punches of coral, pastel pink, and of course... GOLD. 

Because the floor is uneven, getting the curtains flush just isn't possible, but I'm happy with the way they sit. 

It's still a work in progress, but the progress so far has been awesome!

 Next on the to-do list:

                                   Paint the rest of the garage (white)

                                   Possibly paint the floor

                                   Clean and organize all of my craft supplies

                                   Utilize as much of the pegboard as possible

                                   Get back to CRAFTING!

Four MONTHS?!

So, as you can tell I havn't updated the blog in over four months. I'm so disaapointed with myself but I DO have my reasons.

I have been SUPER busy recently. I started working at my parents office, along with my job at the bar AND babysitting my cousin twice a week AND making baby clothes AND since the last time I wrote Danica and I moved! It has left me just enough time to do some facebooking and tweeting but not much to really sit and do some decent blogging.

Another reason I've kept away from the blog front is because I have been camera-less :( I have had pretty terrible camera luck in recent months. First, I had my camera stolen at a friends birthday party at a club, being strapped for cash I bought a hundred dollar replacment camera that I lost the charging cord for I guess during the move. Buying a new one pretty much cost the same as the camera so I didn't want to do that. My Canon Rebel SLR has been acting up so I haven't been able to use that either. Long story short... well.. not really at this point, I got a new camera!



It's waterproof, dust proof, shock proof AND freeze proof! If you know anything about me, I'm not real "outdoorsy" but I figured having a durable camera sure couldn't hurt.

Some more exciting news: Since the move, I relocated my "office" to our new place! We have a MASSIVE garage so I packed up all of my "craft room" from my parents garage and hauled it over to its new home. (photos to follow)

Here are some of the pieces that I've created since my last post. Bare with me, all of these are from my phone and for some reason the sizing and placement is a little weird but.. you get the idea.


Go Green Baby!


Go Green on Grey


Cement Truck


Long Beach Baby


Sailboat


Anchor


Dia De Los Muertos Baby


Egg on Purple


Navy Egg


Pink Leopard Locket


Popsicle


These are my new favs. I've recently become a huge fan of making what are called "yo-yo's" which I put on the onesies. The buttons that you see are actually faux buttons made of felt.


Pink Yo Yo


Orange Yo Yo


Beige Yo Yos


Navy Baby made for my friend Pilars son Keaton



"K" Onsie


Keaton in his "K" onesie


Itsie Bitsy Teenie Weenie Orange Polka Dot Bikini


Alhambra Fire Dept Girl


Alhambra Fire Dept Boy


Alhambra Fire Dept Twins (Front)


Alhambra Fire Dept Twins (Back)

I have much more to catch everyone up on but I'l leave it at that for now so that I have more to write later :)



Shea