My craft space

Crafters always seem fascinated by other people's crafting rooms / dens / whatever, so having tidied up the lean-to yesterday, I thought I would introduce you to my crafting space.

I'm lucky to have a dedicated area with a view of the garden. Our lean-to, which was euphemistically described as "the garden room" in the estate agent's particulars, is my crafting area. It's a bit cold in the winter (I now have an electric heater) and I compete for space with the white goods and an astonishing number of pairs of John's training shoes, but at least I have my own table - an old kitchen table - and my various storage "solutions."

On the table I keep three boxes filled with inkpads and embossing powders; wooden mounted stamps and assorted brads/buttons. In the window sill I have two jars from the local pound shop, one filled with blooms and the other with chipboard alphabets (this was not a good idea - I have to empty it out when I'm trying to build a title, and inevitably I realise I haven't got an "E" by the time I got to the bottom). Next to it is a tin I painted and stamped on which I use for my card labels "hand made by Gail."


I have a three-drawer plastic chest on wheels I got in The Range. The top drawer (top right) is used for my tools: rulers, Fiskars shape templates, paper piercer and so on. The middle drawer (top, centre)has a plastic pizza box full of my favourite papers (the least favourite papers are in a basket upstairs!), a folder labelled Scrapbook Embellishments, another labelled Scrapbook Stickers, and a folder for alphabets. There's also a pizza box for Bazzill cardstock.

The bottom drawer is for card-making. It contains card blanks, stencils, templates, acetate and freebies from magazines.

I also have two free-standing plastic storage boxes. In one I have a concertina type filing thing which contains elements mostly for card making: decoupage, serendipity, men's cards, Valentine's cards and so on. To the side of the concertina is a shoebox full of ribbons. In the other box I have a large tray for my paints, brushes, chalks and pencils, and a box for my glue and pasting requisites. I keep my Gelly Roll and souffle pens in a stripy pencil case, usually on the table, and my Twinkling H2Os in a little gold make-up bag that was free with a magazine.

Finally under the table I keep another Tesco concertina file which I have learnt not to overfill, otherwise it won't close, and in this I keep hand-made paper, vellum, acetate and rub-ons, by colour, mostly for card making and matting.

I do have a bit of an overflow problem so upstairs in the spare bedroom I have some large baskets from Ikea in which I keep my albums, unliked paper and laminator, and I have some white Ikea boxes for layout ready photos. In the home office is the PC, scanner, printer etc.

My main challenge is keeping the lean-to tidy. I leave crafter's "droppings" all over the floor and I tend to do my embossing on the fridge so it's usually covered in glitter.