A peek at my craft space....

I've had one of those awkward moments when you literally fall over the heap of craft stuff that's piled up on the floor. Time for a clear out, so I thought I would take some photos to show you my craft space. I really am very tight for space and have had to make the best of the available space without sacrificing bedroom or living areas. We have one of the bedrooms in our three bed house set up as a study with a sofa bed. This end of the study is supposed to be craft free, but I am gradually and sneakily taking over......

The bookcase has gradually been emptied, and I have taken over about 50% of the space. In the aluminium CD case I have my Flexmarkers. The cases below I picked up from Poundland and use them to store (some) clear stamps...

I had a load of clear sentiment stamps that had strayed from their original packaging and were abandoned in a drawer. The very fact that they made it out of the packaging in the first place meant that they were useful stamps, so I organised them into the plastic document holders. I stuck them onto a sheet of acetate and stamped the image in the corresponding place on a sheet of copy paper which sits inside the case....

Right, here we are at the business end of the room. There was a large built in wardrobe (closet) and I had it adapted to be my work space. The 'desk' has a fold down flap, so when we have guests staying the flap goes down, the chair folds up and the doors shut (well, almost..). I had a second shelf put in, and had a light attached to the underside of the original wardrobe shelf. Plastic shoe tidies hang on each of the doors and are filled with all those essential bits and bobs. I have three drawer units under the desk, one holds 8 x 11 cardstock, a drawer for each colour, another has wood mounted sentiment stamps, embossing powders, coloured ink pads etc, and the last one has all my Design team papers, ongoing projects etc....

Those Ikea rails are useful for punches and the containers have paint brushes, glue dots etc. My Scan N Cut has ousted my Cricut as my machine of choice, and the sewing machine lives there as well. 

I have my distress inks and the foam blenders sitting on a small shelf - I would love a couple of the Ranger holders, but just wouldn't have any space to put it. I screwed a tin tray from Poundland to the underside of the shelf running across the cupboard, attached magnet dots to the bottom of my stickles and they hang upside down from the tin tray....the bit of paper on the wall in the bottom right of the photo has dots which correspond to dots on the plastic document folders that I showed you earlier, so I know that my Heartfelt Creations stamps are in the box with a green dot, and so on....

Pattern papers are kept in those useful boxes on the shelf. They are in some sort of order, but it's a bit it and miss. I have them grouped by colour 

I have a lazy susan turntable thingy with all my tools close to hand - amazing how much I cram in there, pencils, bone folder, scissors, fineliners, distressing tools, picks, you name it, I've got it in there!  

One quite big bit of storage which is indispensable is the shop display unit for  ProMarkers that Letraset gave me. It is on a turntable and needs a whole side of the cupboard to allow it to turn, but I love it, it gives me such instant at-a-glance access to my pens. My big archival black inkpad and Fiskars stamp press sit nicely on top!  

I've even crept into the en suite bathroom of that room. Behind the door I have one of those plastic towers, they hold gems, spare adhesives, watercolour pens, more wood mounted stamps, stencils, more ink pads.....

and on top of that sit a couple of storage units, one with little drawers filled with all sorts of rubbish stuff (that I will probably never use), the other a smart storage box which is filled with acrylic paints, ink sprays, glimmer mists and all things painty. So guests can sit on the loo and marvel at all the junk I've collected. The apron hanging behind the door is a Papercraft Inspirations one that I was given when I went to help out at their stand in Olympia, London, it was a great couple of days, and I can't bear to throw it away!

So there we are, I hope you've enjoyed wandering around my crafty space, now that it's all tidy again I must get down to work.......see you tomorrow x