A fresh start....

A couple of weeks ago we moved back to our old house in northern California.  Here is my craft room after the strong moving guys carried everything in:

 The room is about 12 ft by 11ft - bigger than my former craft room in the other smaller bedroom.  It was about 10 x 10.  Here i have room to line two walls with black metal shelves and have a ton of space in the middle.

As you can see you can barely even go INTO the room because of all the boxes. Turns out (despite being properly labeled) a box of toiletries was in the middle of this pile - there was my missing hairdryer!

My BLANK work surface is under a nice east facing window with views of the vintage oaks.  Well, and the roof of the garage.  But also nice trees and sky.

Can here it is now:

 Ok - so everything is OUT of the boxes and literally thrown up onto the shelves.  It still very much needs to be organized. This will be the PAPER wall - all ephemera, clippings, scrapbook paper, books and magazines will fill this wall.

 This wall will have all the doodads, ribbon and fibres in drawers, images and cards, buttons ands stamps.  Thanks to my friend Mary for the comfy new chair!

 Here is the desktop - already spilling forth with stuff i am collecting for my latest swap.

Another view of the paper wall - toward the door.

And finally a peak into the closet.  For now i just moved in some drawer towers filled with tools and other supplies.  I am very excited to get to work.

Bookcase of the day?

I have been living in our new condo for 5 months now, so there really is no excuse for not having a completely organized and creativity enducing space. But you know, i had so much chaos in the move that although everything had been unpacked and "put away", it was not really sorted and workable. Sure i could create a few things here and there, but for the most part i avoided the space entirely.

But now, is different. We'll have guests! So a complete overhaul was in order. I spent all weekend consolidating supplies and tools and labeling drawers so that everything would be user friendly for my niece Erica, who is visiting this weekend, along with her mom, my sister Donna, and my mom. I have dubbed the event Craft-a-Pallooza! Above is the last of the "misc" bins and totes i finished sorting.
One of my first projects was to sort my books. I have several categories: how-to books on collage and altered books; vintage tomes to become altered books someday; and reference volumes like dictionaries and foreign novels, that i use to tear pages out of; and ones with pretty pictures, like travel guides. Fairly easy to indentify and sort, right? So why did i choose to disregard these themes entirely and sort the books by COLOUR? Because it looks awesome!

I think i got the idea from isuwannee, a blogger who posts the bookcase of the day. But i have since seen it many places, including decorating magazines. You gather up your books and sort them by colour family. I did green - blue - pink - white along one shelf, and yellow - red - orange - brown - beige along the other. No room for black - they're on the other side.

I am so pleased with this i just had to share. Will this make it harder to find a certain book when i need it? maybe. But since my craft room has to double as an office and guest room - i wanted it to look nice.

Craft Room Transformation - part 1 of 27

Ok - so it is not nearly done. But here is the "office" section of my new craft studio.

We switched out my old craft desk base for the office. The actual craft part is on the other side of the shelves. I temporarily attached two Cavallini posters to the wall using the extra sticky stuff that comes with those removal plastic hooks. Once i get over that we are renting and start making holes in the walls - i will put up some of my artwork. The books are by no means organized. They are a mix of magazines, art books, books to alter and books with cool stuff to rip out. Later once i know exactly how much space i'll organize them. Oh yeah - and this is about 1/4 of what i have!

More to come!

The New Craft Studio

The craft room "before"
(and where we slept our first night here!)

I started a new job in So Cal April 1st, so i moved with a coupld of suitcases and a tote of art supplies. My husband packed up the whole house and flew down here to join me and we moved into our new home, a swanky condo in Pasadena, June 1st.

The craft room "during"

(this is only a small portion of the stuff)

How amazing is it that i have a dear friend, Z, who PACKED ALL MY ART SUPPLIES for me? She also packed all my crystal and china, and not a single thing broke, she did such an awesome job.Anyway, last weekend i spent the day with my husband trying to make some sense of the gigantic pile of boxes. We erected 7 black metal shelving units and loaded them up with all the boxes. So at least they are no longer in a pile on the floor. I cannot say i know where anything is, nor is it at all functional, but i can say that it looks terrific - and I cannot wait to get crafting.In our old place, we had a separate office from the craft room. Here we have to share. So we created a sort of room within a room where the shelves create a divider. In a way it makes it easier - everything will be at my arms reach while seated at the desk.

But before i get started - i need to cover up the white wall to wall plush carpeting - this is a rental, afterall!

Craft Room Spring Cleaning

Well it isn't quite spring, but the time had come to deal with my mess. I am really really bad about "putting things away" when i work on a project. Or i assemble a bunch of supplies in tote bags to take with me to the school or a friend and never quite unpack.I want everything at my finger tips, but then it just gets tossed aside. Well, the clutter had reached critical mass. Bags and boxes of supplies were spilling out into the hallway. I could not step around the papers to reach my other papers without risking injury. So it was time.In the interest of full disclosure and in the hope of saving others from humiliation - here i am to lay bare all my crafting indiscretions.
But look - here is my craft room completely cleaned and restored to pristine beauty.
or is it?
Is that the top of my workspace? - with room to work?
YIKES. Did all the crap, i mean treasures, make it up off the floor of the craft room and get magically put away, by little elves?no - not by a long shot. Here are my the bags and boxes and bits and pieces now spread all over a king size bed. And on the floor too.
I spent about 8 hours yesterday sorting through everything and maybe, just maybe put away HALF OF IT. To be fair, i am being as organized as humanly possibly - with a place for everything - sorting magazines by title in holders. Separating stickers in categories like words, butterflies, flowers. Solid paper by colour, printed paper by theme. Tools and adhesives with a designated drawer. Canvases, boxes, yarn - all carefully sorted.
Eventually you get overwhelmed by the things with no clear desigation. Sure stamps by country, keys, playing cards. that's easy. But what to do with small pieces of paper? The seamingly endless array of doo dads that you just know will be perfect for an assemblage project. But what good is it if you cannot find it later? Saving every little piece of paper scrap means you must have a system to catalog it - so you know where it is!

stay tuned....