New craft space

I know how crafters like to see each other's craft space, so here's my new den. We've relocated the home office to a new conservatory, so I now have the box room as my own craft den. It's quite small but as DH says, at least he can close the door on the mess (!). Anyway, it's quite tidy so far. But I haven't done any crafting for weeks because my stuff was boxed up in the transition. I'm waiting for a new unit from Storage4Crafts which will go under the desk.

Keeping the desk for the bare essentials: Curttlebug, glue, cutter, Copics

Although there are quite a few boxes, everything is pretty much to hand

I wanted to display some of my wooden stamps

My flowers and ribbons are on top of a cupboard

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.