Craft Room Tour

So a really wonderful thing happened a couple weeks ago. After much debating and waiting (anticipating) Brett and I decided to pull the trigger on an Ikea purchase we'd been lusting over. Some new office furniture for our workspace downstairs, specifically. I'll probably show off some photos of this later, but what I'm most excited about is what I'm going to show you now. 

I love to craft. I like to sew and paint and gift wrap and crochet and make wreaths and do all sorts of other projects that are potentially messy and awkward to do on the living room floor. However, as you might know, that's exactly what I've been doing. The other caveat of being a crafter is that you start to accumulate lots of supplies. While this tends to be a good thing because you don't have to buy everything new every single time you want to complete a project- it also becomes a bit of a storage issue. 

I'd tried to create a reasonable storage space in our second bedroom closet by putting up some extra shelves and setting up a TV table for my sewing machine, but I'll be honest, that just was NOT hacking it. Anytime I wanted to get something out, I had to unstack a big pile of stuff and it was cramped and awful and really not at all functional. 

For a long time our second bedroom has also been barely functional. It's a quasi guest room, man cave, storage space, and headache. While it's still sort of all of those things, we've decided to make it do all those things a little better. Brett is good at piecing away at furniture and decor that improves his space and makes it more enjoyable. I decided to take a page out of his book and create a functional craft space that I could use and love.  With the addition of some extra furniture, I was able to have space in the second bedroom for crafting, but not intrude too much on the other functions we needed it to serve (guest room, storage, Brett's man cave). 

One of the wonderful consequences (intended purposes actually) of getting a new desk downstairs was freeing up the table we had been using. We hauled that bad dad upstairs (it is heavy!) and with the addition of two new Ikea shelves, suddenly my craft room was in business. Shelves make all the difference people. 

My sewing machine is always accessible and is available on a big, clean worktable. I've got nooks for each type of craft supply on my shelves and a big bulletin board for ideas and inspiration. 

At this point, it's not that beautiful aesthetically speaking. I don't have any cutesy bunting hanging up, or cute jars for my brushes and pens, or adorable animal figurines and so I'm really missing the hipster mark that I usually like to achieve with my general living, but IT IS FUNCTIONAL. And so we have a start. (Stay tuned for bunting.) 

Bonus Content for Readers Who Hung in This Long: 

Look at this cutie patootie. 

He was totally scoping out that Crate and Barrel mailer. "Two deers and two houses!"  (He was really just fascinated by the gel adhesive, but it was still cute.)