New Craft Room Cabinets!

Dee and I have been working on redoing our craft area - it desperately needed an intervention! We couldn't find things when we needed them, and so we would then purchase duplicates; every time you needed something you had to move 15 things to get to it; and because nothing had an assigned place to be returned to it was just basically, an incredibly unorganized mess! Frustration does not lend its self to creativity.
Last Christmas (2007) we asked for gift cards from Home Depot so that we could purchase cabinets to personalize for our space. And we bought them in January 2008 on sale. They sat in the garage for about 5 months and then they moved to our dining room during the rainy season (our garage has a tendency to flood!). And they sat, and sat, and sat. This Christmas, we received a Lowe's gift card from our dear friend, Jeanne, that enabled us to purchase the materials needed to build stamp and other craft storage drawers. (Thank you, thank you, thank you, Aunt Nene!) On New Year's Day we started assembling cabinets! By Monday evening (Jan. 5) everything had found a new home.

We emptied a huge open cabinet, a smaller enclosed cabinet, a 7-drawer and 3-drawer storage cart, a Cropper Hopper (scrapbook paper storage), a rolling scrapbook tote, a Creative Memories sticker tote, and relocated things stuck around the house into our new, enclosed craft area. To say that I'm excited is not enough! I'm ecstatic to have all of our craft stuff housed in one area -- organized, labeled and ready to be used. We discovered so much stuff that we didn't even remember we owned!


The biggest THANK YOU goes to my partner in "crime", crafts and life -- Dee. She is the most incredibly talented crafts person . . . and yes, she hires out! Not only does she build craft cabinets, but does all kinds of home repairs and renovations (tile, carpentry, minor plumbing, painting, etc.).


Grab a tissue or napkin and check out our new crafting space -- the tissue/napkin is for drool . . . drool and keyboards don't mix!

On the left side -- the 21 custom drawers that Dee built house all of our rubber stamps, stamp pads, embossing powders, stamping tools, and paper punches. Above the drawers are all of our paints, brushes, etc.


The middle top cabinets provide a home for our eyelets, brads, buttons and tons of other embellishments; adhesives, pens, markers, colored pencils, dry embossing stencils, and misc. tools.


The bottom cabinet drawers -- top drawer is home to all of our paper cutters and scrapbook cutting system templates; the middle drawer holds four storage boxes with one for glue guns and glue sticks, another for watercolor pencils, blenders, and watercolors; a third for stencil paints and brushes, and the last one holds misc. supplies for baby/wedding favors; the bottom drawer is home to all of our envelopes and cards in progress.


The other bottom cabinet is home to our paper scraps, embellishments, stickers, die cuts, and empty albums.


The tall cabinet on the far right is paper and ribbon nirvana! The top two shelves hold all of our 8.5 x 11 paper and card stock, as well as 12 x 12 paper packs. The bottom is ribbon storage on the left and 12 x 12 paper storage on the right (24 slots for paper!)


The counter top holds our Sizzix and paper cutting dies, a Xyron machine, and our frequently-used-tools caddy. On the very top of the cabinets are overflow storage boxes, our big paper trimmer and the TV. To the left of the entire cabinet is a rolling cart that holds our 4 year-old's puzzles, games, coloring books, beads and her craft supplies. The Cricut and its cartridges are over by my computer (not shown).