De-stashing and re-creating my craft space - Pt 3

Y'all, I don't think I've ever been more proud of myself in any of my attempts to clean and/or organize my craft room and supplies than I am right now!!

I say that because I am FINALLY able to de-stash, I'm really starting to feel a breath of fresh air about what I still have in my supplies/room, and am getting super excited for my goal, and the fact that I'll actually be reaching it SOON!!!!


As a reminder, this is where I started after we moved in to the new house...

A little bit of progress in, and I'm starting to see floor, and more importantly.. can get to the closet!!

 

I went ahead and started putting stuff in the closet that I'm keeping, or at least, to set aside until I can gather all of a hobby/item to sort through, and while waiting for hubby to make me a shelving solution.

Even more floor open, yay!! Also, you can see an empty large 3-drawer Steri-lite that I've cleared out of give-away fabric...EEEK!!

Here's the shelves we figured out. I used hubby's chop-saw to make the boards and the braces, and then painted them, for hubby to attach to the wall.

I figure for now, this is a good enough way to store my spare Aida (cross-stitching fabric) still in their tubes, and my knitting looms, just like they were in the old closet:

Even more open floor space, and more cleared out drawers. We can start seeing less of those Steri-lite containers in fact, as I continue clearing them out of stuff I'm not keeping and/or stuff I've decided to organize differently for storing:

Look! Open space!! ZOMG!! 😂

This is the closet as of writing this post right now. Notice I moved my 2 french horns off the top shelf (definitely was wasting space); the boxes are what's left of my fabric I'm keeping, including a whole box alone that's project fabric for my mom's requests... 

I've also gotten ALL my embroidery floss organized into 2 of the containers I use, but the box to the right and everything on top is in some way related to my cross-stitching, so I still need to figure out the best way to organize that bit of stuff (printed patterns, extra fabric scraps, foamcore and frames for framing finished projects, etc). 

I also haven't quite figured out  my replacement bead storage since I ditched ALL 4 of the hardware drawers I had on the pegboard before (WHOOOP!!):

This is now where I'm at; although the 2 boxes with hearts in the middle, and the bag to the left are all Care Bears I plan to try and sell on Ebay (they're the only ones in my collection I saw on Ebay sold for anything, so I'll give it a shot myself!!). 

The box to the left of that is actually a serger, practically NIB that a friend gave me years ago and I've never used; the last of my extra fabric on top. The fabric I will put in one last box to put in the closet on the top shelf, and the serger I want to take out and put in the travel sewing case I have (you can't see as it's in the corner under the foam pieces, but example of what it looks like below). 

And this is the floor space I have as I walk in, and around my two sewing tables! Sooo exciting!!

Again, my goal is to have just the 2 sewing desks in the room, and on the opposite wall, have the ability to display all my finished art pieces, maybe finished cross stitches, and whatever else looks nice up there to be able to really enjoy what I've made!! It'll also be the wall with my art table (below), with the wall to the left in the corner, next to the closet door, being where I want to have a few shelves and can store all my spare canvases, brushes, paints, and all other painting supplies!

This is the table I want for my art wall/station, that I can also use to cut bigger pattern pieces for sewing, and can do puzzles and such on!!

In all this de-stashing, I've given away a LOT of crafts and craft items I finally decided I won't use anytime soon, and/or would be better put to use otherwise. I also bagged/gave away a LOT of the jewelry I've made over the years, if I felt I wasn't going to wear it anytime soon. To get an idea of nearly all I've given away, here's a picture I took of most of it...





There's 2 15-gallon trash bags full of fabric, plus another couple smaller bags, there's 2 bags full of yarn, there's a bag or two of jewelry and/or beads, perler beads, bottlecaps I'd been collecting to do a resin sealed table, but changed my mind for now, there's stickers, papers, foam puff stickers, and a bit more random stuff thrown in to these bags. There's also a home decor bolt of burgundy damask-style solid pattern fabric that I don't even remember where I got!!

There's also the pile of boxes and such of Goodwill give-away:



As well as all the Steri-lite drawers I gave away, the 3 bookshelves that were in my closet before that just didn't fit in this one, and a little 2-shelf in regards to furniture.
All in all, I believe I'm nearly there, and all that's left is simply getting my art supplies shelved/organized, the table, and then just working through the desk supplies I have (couple of boxes of pens, notepads, stickie notes, tape, etc), getting my keychains squared away, the 2 boxes of photos I have stored away to do a memory book some day, and a few other little things, and then I can simply focus on  last pass organizing in my closet, and can finally start crafting comfortably again!! 😁

I'll share final pictures once that's all done, but now I can start sharing all the crafts and projects and such I've done over the last year, as I catch up from my hiatus!!


Craft ya laterz!!

De-stashing and re-creating my craft space - Pt 2

Now let's hop over to the new house and what I've been working on in regards to organization, shall we?

First thing's first.... PAAAAAAAAAINT!! I got to paint my walls finally, since it's our house!! YAY!!

We were both soooo bored with white walls, which is typically what you have when you're renting someone else's house. so the first thing we did (after having a little 4th of July hurrah, caveman-style with lawn chairs and no furniture or appliances, 😁) was to paint nearly every wall/room in the house!!

I'm excited about the front bathroom, and that will be another post, but my craft room especially super excites me!! Why you ask...??? 

Because it has glitter in the paint!! 

Not to mention I HAD to re-paint my craft room because it used to have this...



Don't get me wrong.. it's cute? Except it was poorly done where you could SEE the pencil outlines around half the flowers/leaves/birds, and it had really rough edges... blah!!

But now:



Aren't these such super fun, bright, colors! It's just kind of hard to photograph the glitter, but you'll be able to see it here and there in other pics, I promise!

I'm also super excited for the fabric I got for my curtains of the window that's in there.....

Wanna see? Of course you do! See how well it goes with my wall colors!! 




Don't you just LOVE the colors and the print together?! And that print is just hilarious, I couldn't resist! I gave my hubby options, and he told me I had to get that one, and I couldn't agree more! 

Anywho, the room itself is a good size, with the closet being right in front of the door by way of a turn on the wall, so I will have wall space to decorate or not right as you walk in, but then you turn to the right to get to the room. This is how it is laid out; pardon the painter's tape, this is still in the process!!





Problem with the room, the only one really, is that the closet is NOT a walk-in like the last house was, which means I will have to figure out what to do with the lack of storage space and how to organize my stuff super efficiently!! EEK!!


This is pretty much what my room looked like once I got ALL my stuff in there from the old house...



Yup, I couldn't get in there AT ALL.

Yup, there are things in here that don't belong, but we just didn't know where else to put them at the time. 

Yup,.... this is absolutely nuts!!

As soon as I could though, I started going through the bags, the boxes, the stacks.... and started putting aside anything and everything I felt I could live without. 

See, with having this problem for soooo long, I've finally just gotten to my breaking point, and am DONE with the constant stress of being cluttered, having to clean up/organize, or just not feeling motivated, or like I could simply go in my craft room and, well, CRAFT! I know I've said this before, but keep reading!!

My goal? To de-stash so much that I can store all I'm keeping in my closet here, and have my sewing table, my mother-in-law's sewing table, and then a craft table that I can fold out or fold in as needed, with that being the main table station I use for my art, and my canvases/paints/brushes being the ONLY supplies really stored out in the open, so the only exception to the closet rule. 

In order to get to my goal, I have to take this:




And fit everything (but art supplies) into this:





I definitely have a hefty task ahead of me, but I'm already making such great progress!!

Here's a sneak peek....

My entire stash of regular size perler beads I'd collected over time....

And what I ended up keeping; basically only 1 fully packed (condensed where I could) each of each color, with extra black, white, and gray of course, and only 8 or 9 of the boards!

Then there was my yarn supply, which was about 3 overflowing reusable bags from the grocery store, all dumped out...

These are the skeins I kept:

These are the skeins I decided to get rid of!:

This is only a sampling of what I have set aside for give-away, and how I'm doing it; gathering all my supplies in one place of a certain hobby/kind, then doing a quick decision of keep/give-away. 

So far, it seems to be working, and I don't miss the yarn yet!!

I'll leave you with this for now, and will show more of my progress, as well as the growing pile of give-away piles as I keep going!!

Craft ya laterz!!

De-stashing and re-creating my craft space - Pt 1

Over the last 7 years, we rented a 3-bedroom house where one of those rooms was my husband's office (since he works from home), and the other was my craft room. 

Having lived at the same house that long, and knowing my affinity for learning new crafts, wanting to make sure I'm supplied craft-wise, and not being willing to get rid of any supplies EVER for fear I might need them... some day.... maybe.........

You can only imagine that my craft room got CRAZY over-crowded and full of just too much STUFF!!


Some examples of how messy my room was at the old house are below...

There's plenty of other pictures I've taken/shared in the past, but this just gives you a sample of the mess I can get to, and then have to clean/organize up.

There's also full other blog posts here, here, and here...........Beware, there's some pretty gnarly pictures in those posts, but you can only imaging how much more stressful it was for me to actually have to live with that, and how unhappy I was that I couldn't ever craft anything!!

You can also tell I've gone through many times of clean attempts, and I've had versions of organization in the past...... But the biggest thing to notice is just the sheer amount of STUFF I have!!

Also, I seem to have had an addiction? to those Steri-lite plastic drawers for most of my storage solution... yay? I had the 3 large 3-drawers for most of my fabric (there was still overflow 😕), there were the 3 small 3-drawers on top of the 5 4-drawers, and then of course, the hardware drawer organizers that were attached to the pegboard....


So when my hubby and I purchased our first home (YAY!!) this summer, it was super frustrating to have to move all this.. junk... to the new house, but I have grand plans on how I will be storing, organizing, and handling my hobbies in the future!

Stay tuned for part 2................

Craft ya laterz!!

Storing Fabric Ideas - Mini Bolts!

I know we go to the store and usually buy fabric, take it home, and until we use it, it's stored...in a drawer, or just on a shelf, yes? Well, for a lot of us, that's maybe what happens, and if you've read my blog for any extended period of time, you remember when I've shown you the large 3-drawer sterilite containers I keep my fabric in, shown here.

Raise your hand if you know of all the "wonderful" sales that Jo-Anns tends to have, all year round, but particularly during holiday times? (All of you I'm sure should have your hands raised at this point....lol)

Well, last Xmas season, when Snuggle Flannel went on sale, I maaaaaaaaaaaaay have gone a bit crazy with buying a bunch of different kinds, in 2 yard increments where possible, to make either scarves for friends for Xmas presents.

I ended up not getting to make them as soon after, I lost my job and was super stressed out, but I still have the flannel, and have yet to decide what to do with it!

I didn't have room to put the fabric in my drawers, so I decided to put to use a bunch of chipboard sheets a friend gave me, and.....

Tada!! Mini-bolts of my flannel that tells me what I have on each!!

Here's some of the flannel I bought:

And here's how I did the bolts with labels on what the fabric is and how much of each I have in stock!

What do you guys think?

For the time being, since I don't have much in the ways of shelving in my room, below is a little shelf with some of these bolts. It's not perfect, and particularly not as clean on the rest of it as I'd like, but hey, it's a start! 

Thoughts? How do you store your fabric?? I'd love to hear in the comments section!

Side-note, is anyone interested in a pair of flannel pajama pants, or maybe a comfy pair of shorts to wear around the house?? Just reach out to me and we can make it work! :D

Craft ya laters!