Crafty Space Makeover Challenge!

Here's one of the "before" photos for ScrapbookCompleted, who's joining me on this Crafty Space Makeover Challenge!

For more photos, check out her blog posting.

AprilInk has also committed to this challenge. I'll post a link to her blog after she's had a chance to take some "before" shots. Both of these crafters come to us from the etsygreetings team.

Welcome aboard!

I love the idea of having some support and camaraderie along the way -- please let me know if you're interested in participating as well. I'd love to have you on board! If you'd like to do this, take a before shot of your crafty nook and let me know about it. I'll post a link to your blog from mine and we can try to root each other on to crafty space perfection.

A note about my own ideas with my own makeover: I love the idea of reusing things that I already have. I can get a lot farther on crafty space perfection if I can find inexpensive ways to do things. I was surprised this weekend by how many things I already owned that I could put to excellent use: 

• I had some great plastic bins that used to hold the boys' baby clothes that I washed out and used to store my envelopes in (nicer than the cardboard boxes they were in before)
• I already owned a number of pretty glass jars from Goodwill (purchased when I was making moss terrariums right and left) that are great for storing supplies. 
• I really needed a bigger crafting desk because my current one wasn't big enough to fit the big papercutter I'd purchased. I actually went to Ikea to try to find one that I liked, but then my husband suggested that we could swap the craft desk with our computer desk, which is bigger. This worked GREAT!
  
• I have an underused laminator that I used to make some cute labels for some of my supplies.

Not all my needs can be met with existing finds, but you get the idea: I don't want to have to spend a ton of money or buy a lot of new stuff to put into our already crowded house to do this. I also am emphasizing functionality over cuteness. 

While I really would love to have a perfectly tied-together, cute craft space, the bottom line is that all my tools and supplies have to be stored in such a way that makes it super easy for me to create. For me, I know that if I something is tucked away out of sight, I'm unlikely to ever use it. I'm really visual and have to be able to see everything, so open shelves and clear glass or plastic containers are really going to be key to my success.

This is just me, though: everybody has a different way of doing things and a different solution to the craft organization dilemma. The key is to figure out how you work and try to tailor your space to that.

Happy Elephant, who started this whole thing by making over her own craft space, sent me these tips that worked for her:

1. Those little nuts and bolts draws are perfect to organize your embellishments.  And the drawers can be labled so you know what's in it at a glance. 
   
2. An old filing cabinet is great to store your smaller 8 X 10 cardstock.  I have mine catalogued in folders of matching colors according to the rainbow.  For my bigger papers I use those standing folders you put together (I got mine at Oriental trading for cheap) and that sits right on top of my desk.  I also organize those in rainbow hue, and try to keep like companies together since they tend to match. 
   
3. I stamped all my stamps in a notebook so that I could then put them away.  Now all I have to do is grab the notebook and leaf through to see which ones I want to use. 
   
4. I put my buttons in a container I had when I was a little girl and loved to make those silly braided friendship bracelets (it used to hold all the thread needed to make those).  Now it holds all my buttons, which are color coded. 
   

Do you have some organizational tips? Let me know!