Craft Room 2015 Q&A

Good morning friends! I woke up to a very full inbox asking questions about what I didn't cover yesterday on some small details. We are artists. The small details are everything. For every question I have received, I thought that I would share with all of you the answers. Some of you are extremely astute and took notice of everything.

I received a tremendous amount of questions about additional storage, especially how I store items throughout the house in other rooms. For instance, I have an apothecary piece with 16 drawers in it. It's not very big, but it looks great in my master bedroom and I have my envelopes in all sizes and colors stored in there, SU's 4-bar size card paper packs, my thread for my sewing machine and my SU and PTI Baker's Twine on spools. I have several large antique wooden thread spools that hopefully I will wind my SU Baker's Twine up on one day as the SU packaging leaves a kink in the twine. It would be a pretty display behind the baskets on top of my large antique cabinet. I also have a lot of large spools of twine from The Twinery that is in a large pretty basket right now in my foyer and I have another basket next to it that has all of my single wooden stamps in it.

I will have to give you a tour of other parts of my house and garage. I definitely have a good storage system for that kind of stuff.

1. What kind of mat is under your desk and what chair do you use? I've never seen that kind of mat before.

I found this wooden mat that folds at Office Depot. It's great, sturdy, and much less expensive than the traditional plastic mat that cracks. I love it and think it's awesome! You don't have to worry about the edges coming up, it not lying flat. Nothing. I purchased my fabulous chair on sale for $99 the same day I saw the mat. It's a Serta chair, as in Serta mattress, so you can imagine how comfortable this is. It's the most comfortable chair I've ever had. I have lupus and rheumatoid arthritis that has decided to make its permanent home in my back. 77 procedures in 4 years. Fun, yeah. The lumbar support is great. It just hugs you everywhere. It's not super big or bulky either. It's just the right size. Anyhow, the wooden mat is the same size that most of us use under our desks to protect our carpet. Additionally, it doesn't have those spikes on the back of it to supposedly hold it in place so it doesn't shift around and leaves little holes in your carpet. It stays put very well. I do have to move it every now and then, but who doesn't have to move their mat?

2. You have a lot of stuff. Where did you get all of it?

I do have a lot of stuff and it's very overwhelming, but it's more of an accumulation since I started crafting in late 2007. Going through what I do have and no longer use will be part of the process when this room finally starts to come together and there will be some serious, serious purging, a lot, and I'm guesstimating about 75%. A lot of people hold onto stuff because they "might use it one day." Usually, that day never comes. I've decided to go by a 6-month rule. If I haven't used it in 6 months, it's gone.

I'm also very blessed to receive close to 90% of my products directly from the manufacturer. I am not paid for this and only use products that I like and believe in based off of their quality and design, company ethics, what my readers like to see and if I can work with them easily. I have a certain signature style and sometimes some products just do not work with that; however, I also use this as an opportunity to challenge myself and get out of my box, which is beneficial to me as a crafter to become more well-rounded.

3. What is on top of the storage unit with the glass doors?

I have 3 lined wire baskets up there that house my Gelatos and paints. I try to make everything easy to grab to bring to my desk.

4. What do you do with your seasonal items?

With my Tim Holtz products, I keep them all inside year-round. His products are so versatile that you can use them all year. With my other items, I have the several large wire chef's kitchen racks in my garage (exactly what Tim Holtz has in his awesome craft room that I absolutely covet) that are very uniform in size and how the shelves are arranged. I have Rubbermaids that are the same size, store items in there by season or holiday and use my Dymo label maker for easy access. For items that I do use all year but don't have the room in my craft area to store items such as fat quarters, burlap rolls, my hundreds of glassine, muslin, burlap bags, large May Arts rolls of ribbon, etc., those are also in a Rubbermaid in the garage labeled for easy access. I know that they are out there. I do believe that less is more and you have to be more creative with less, which requires a lot of creativity and imagination to make what you don't have. I've seen many people make leaves using a circle punch. That is creativity to me. You have to think. Now, you just grab a leaf punch or die-cut.

5. You said that you liked everything tucked away and out of sight is out of mind. Which do you like? Doesn't that stiffle you?

Yes and no. I do like things to be tucked away and orderly, and as you can tell, that is not my current situation. On the same token, I would like an industrial cool and productive space, much like Tim Holtz has where everything is out and he can see it and use it and look at what he makes because he does fully utilize everything that he has. He finds the coolest pieces, such as his vintage something or another (I forgot what he called it) that he purchased off of Etsy. I would love to have that! Tim's craft space is actually the master bedroom in his home. My space is maybe a 10 x 12, but doubtful. I have some odd wall space. However, I will never be the caliber of crafter that Tim Holtz is. He has everything perfectly organized and his space is very inspiring. The out of sight, out of mind is not in my favor since I'm a very visual person.

6. How do you know what you have? Do you have a reference binder of any sort?

I do not have an inventory reference, unfortunately, except for my TH Bigz dies that comes with the packaging. I have them on a binder ring and clipped to the shelf where I store his dies. I just look through it to see what I have and want to use. Like I said yesterday, I really do wish stamp companies would come out with catalogs. You can make your own, but in all honesty, who has the time for that? Especially with many companies having large releases every month. If you kept up with it monthly, then you could keep it updated. It's a little to late for me to start, but once I purge, I might give it a try. I know The Stamps of Life has a checklist for their inventory. My Favorite Things used to have a catalog but the last time I saw one was in 2010 or so, but they've experienced phenomenal growth, which is a good thing since I love their products. Usually I go to the company website and do a search. However, if I'm looking for a little accessory stamp that is buried inside a large stamp set, I do not have any luck. SU, of course, has a catalog for all of their products. Our Daily Bread Designs has a catalog, which is fabulous. Lawn Fawn puts out a catalog every year for the products that were released that year. If I'm missing any other companies, please accept my apologies.

7. What is your view from your desk?

Directly into my back yard, which is nice. I can keep an eye on Bella when she's outside. It's very peaceful. I do have 2 bushes, I don't know what type they are, that really need trimmed back to let more light in. In the summer from about 3-5 pm, I get an awful glare in here and it gets hot. I just close a few of the plantation shutters. I try to work in as much natural sunlight as possible, but will turn on my baby OTT light if I'm coloring something to stay in the lines 🙂

8. Exactly what is stored on the 3 white shelves above your Copic markers? I'm especially interested in your glass jars that you have your paint brushes in. What is above your Spectrum Noir markers?

Target bath section. They were having a closeout on the glass plates that the round glass jars sit on that are actually toothbrush holders. Three glass plates and 9 jars can fit on one shelf. I have to find the other one as I only have 2 up right now, but the rest of the space has just stuff on it and I really need that 3rd plate with the extra 3 glass jars since my other jars are pretty full. I have my tools in one, such as my craft picks; paint brushes water color brushes in another; texture paint spatulas in another; my QuickStik, Quikie Glue Pen and other items of that nature in another; my White Signo Gel Pen and large Faber-Castell Pitt Pens that I use frequently in another; and the last 2 have my metallic pens, such as my gold leafing pen, chalkboard pens, blender pens, etc.,; and, of course, Tim has his own jar for his splattering tool and other tools. The 3rd shelf is wasted space right now with stuff on it that is a bit useless to me except for the antique spools that I was talking about earlier. They are more decorative than useful at this time.

Above my Spectrum Noir markers is this fun pair of scissors that I found somewhere along the way with hooks on it. I have my TH stencils on a ring along with his texture cards, and other company color collections, such as Studio Calico and Flourishes. I also have my Victorian scissors hanging up too. I love those scissors. They are very precise and sharp and almost too pretty to use. I have my Prima Oil Pastels sitting on top of my Spectrum Noir Water Color Markers in their box and I will leave them in their box.

9. Will you show us the inside of your drawers?

Yes, when I get them all organized. Nothing is working for me right now except my TH storage and I still have to put stickers on the top of the new sprays and paints. That is a total I'm bored sit on the sofa job with a garbage can next to you for the backing of the sticky paper.

10. How are you going to afford a new craft room? I've seen the craft rooms you mentioned and they are very expensive.

I will be receiving organizational items from the manufacturers for their promotional purposes. I'm also fortunate enough to have, of all people, my high school principal, who lives around the corner from me, and a friend, to build anything that needs to be built and the design services of my high school principal's daughter-in-law, who also works at the most prestigious design company in town. Anything that needs painting or staining, my friend will take to his shop.

I am so looking forward to having a real craft room again. It's been a very long time and I want to be happy when I create something in an organized space. That is so important.

There were a lot more questions, but I tried to group them and hopefully this covered a lot. I'm always happy to answer any questions that you might have and really appreciate your interest. As everything falls into place, I do plan on doing a series of videos of my craft room rather than one long video so I can section it out to paper storage, ink storage, all sorts of storage. I just really want a place to create that inspires me and is a happy place to create. It's not happy right now and it shows in my work. I'm really looking forward to 2016 in many ways and having a clean craft room is one of them.

Now I'm going to go back to yesterday's post and get my links in and then I will make a card. It's been a few days.

As always, thank you so very much for stopping by to see me today and God bless. Have a great day!