A decade of crafting in Connecticut and my craft area has gone through more iterations than my hairstyle – by far!  I thought I could share with you what was, what is, and why it works for me.  I hope you don’t laugh too much, as I share my stumblings.  I also hope that you find something useful in my journey to craft in an organized space.

In the beginning, there was a living room that had no furniture.  We moved to Connecticut from Florida – and our home decor was SERIOUSLY out of whack with the center-hall colonial we had purchased.  We were a wicker and rattan couple in a wood and leather world.  LOL!  The first thing to go was our family room furniture.  The seafoam and coral print on whitewashed rattan now resides in storage — and our former living room furniture became our family room furniture.  Thus, an empty living room.

In 1998, my daughter, Brianna was born – and I began scrapbooking.  Well, like many scrappers, I was living out of a tote (ok, more than one!) in the dining room, aka craft area.  I was putting all of my crafting things away, for the most part and mostly scrapping when my husband was out of town on a business trip.  One week while he was out of town, I came across a double-sided slatwall unit which was for sale at a scrapbook store.  The owner sold it to me and her husband and his friend brought it over to my house.  And that is how the living room became my craft area.  A couple of tables in the corner and I had a crafting home.

Why did I love that slatwall display?  Because ever since discovering paper crafting, rubber stamping was an absolute obsession.  And this unit was the best way to store them so that I could SEE them.  I’m a visual person.  I cannot deal with stamps in stacks, in drawers.  If I cannot see them, I cannot envision how I want to use them.

Only problem was, you need a LOT of wallspace if you want to display your collection.  And hence came the drywall corners.  These things are fabulous, easy to install, and inexpensive. 

But you really don’t want cheapie boxes for your sets.  They don’t support them well enough.  So I combined hubless video boxes with the drywall corners. And ended up with a vast amount of inexpensive collection space.

Underneath my tables I had Safeco rolling metal carts.  For some reason these things fit 12×12 file folders PERFECTLY and much cheaper than any of the alternatives.  They were also very sturdy.  So I put my cardstock and kits into the carts.  What did I NOT like about them?  I was always digging underneath my tables to find things.  Not comfortable.  Not efficient.

I also came up with a million other containers for my things.  Buttons, for example, were stored in a handy hardware case from Target.  I have enough nuts and bolts for a lifetime, but once emptied out, the plastic storage cases were great for sorting colored buttons and beads.

I stored my inkpads in this handy hardware case from the Home Depot.

I stored my inkpad reinkers in a case found at Costco.  I still have no idea what the case was designed to hold – but it was sectioned off and really great for storing the reinker bottles.

All my other embellishments I stored in tilt bins that I purchased from Home Depot.  I haven’t seen them there in a long time — but I have seen these, in black plastic at Staples.  These bins are one thing I still highly recommend.  I have added a lot more to this system which I will show later.  I’ll add a few more pictures though, which I still find hysterical.  You see, in 2000 my twins were born, and the living room became a playroom for all of us.  I had to wall off my portion to keep the small folks out.  So the kids would toss blocks in at me to play with.  Sort of the animals running the zoo if you will.

I hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane.  And I hope you have found some of my intial storage ideas useful.  In the next posting I will show you how my storage has evolved, and why.  Thanks for looking.