Inexpensively Spruce Up Your Craft Room Organization

You don't have to spend a lot of money to organize and spruce up your craft room. I like the price of plastic storage bins but really didn't like the look, and because my craft space is in a very visible area in my house I wanted it to look good. 

Here is all that you need to complete this project:

• sturdy piece of cardboard
• scissors
• fabric
• hot glue gun (or duct tape)
• ruler

 Here is what the bins look like before

 Step 1: Measure your storage bin and cut your cardboard slightly smaller (to accommodate fabric)

Step 2: Cover the cardboard with fabric gluing or taping down in the back. You can cover the back also with fabric for a more finished look on the inside but since I am the only one who is going to see that I didn't think it was necessary :)

Step 3: Place in the front of the plastic bin and you are done. Easy peasy! Depending on how the front of the bin is structured the cardboard piece may rest easily on its own but if it doesn't I just take a piece of clear tape and secure along the top of the bin. You can just do a small strip, you don't have to do the whole piece.


Below are some more pictures.

The black bins I got from Wal-Mart (find them here cheaper on Amazon) and the clear folders are for organizing scrap paper from projects.

The cute pink bins I got from the dollar store and the Black Storage Box I got from Michaels (I think)

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This Week's Inspirational Craft Room: Organization Ideas

Ah I can't wait until I can have a whole room that is devoted to crafting. The video below shows a great craft room that is not only pretty but you can tell that it functions very well. There is a place for everything and everything is in it's place. I especially like the way that she stores her punches. You can see everything at a glance. This is how I like to organize. 

 

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National Craft Month - Why Do You Craft?

I saw this question - why do you craft? -posed on Twitter and it got me to thinking. For me, crafting comes naturally as my mom is a seamstress so I was always surrounded by creativity. Not only that but crafting brings a sense of calm and immense pride when I finish a product and love the results.

One day I hope to have the ultimate craft room. With enough space for all of my machines (sewing machine, Sizzix Big Shot , and I have my eye on that Cricut Expression Personal Cutter). And of course lot and lots of counter top space so that I can spread out and not have to worry about moving stuff around.

So why do you craft? 
 

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Organizing Your Scrapbooking Stickers

I just had an a-ha moment (as Oprah would say). I was browsing the Internet on goodhousekeeping.com and came across the very simple and inexpensive way that I am now going to start storing my scrapbooking stickers. 

I don't have a lot of space now so a peg board with hooks was out of the question. I had tried putting them in sticker holders but that was too cumbersome (I hate digging through things). But the idea above was so easy!

I am off to Wal-Mart tomorrow to get me some 3 ring binders. I have some cute fabric from Hobby Lobby that I am going to cover it with (will post that project at a later date) and I am going to get subject dividers so that I can just flip through the notebook to find what I want.

I will probably put a little tape along the top of the stickers when putting them in the page protectors so that they stay in place and I can see at a glance what is in each protector without them crowding behind each other. Can't wait to get started on this! 

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So What Is Pinterest?

While on etsy, I noticed that some of my items were found on pinterest.com. I also started seeing it in some seller's profile. So naturally I started to wonder just what this site was. I went to the site and was immediately hooked!

Basically the site allows you to "pin up" things that you like. The idea is kind of like putting it on a message board. You can have different categories so that you can organize them.  For instance, right now I have: 'Items I love', 'Books I Love' and 'Newest Items For Sale'. More categories are to come :) You can view my site here

The cool thing is that you can add the pinning feature to your bookmarks so that when you are on a site that has something that you want to put on your board. You just "pin it" and they will capture the picture as well as the site address so that when someone clicks on the picture they will be taken to the original site. Cool!

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Great Valentine's Day Layout Ideas

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!! :)

Remember today is not just a day for lovers, so grab your sister, brother, best friends, parents, kids or your dog and give them a big hug and let them know you love them! I went looking on the web for some great layout ideas. I have some premade scrapbooking pages and some Valentine's themed scrapbooking albums that are pre-decorated in my etsy shop as well.

The above examples are from on scrapbooks ets website. Click the link to see all 37 examples of layout ideas.

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Developing My Latest Scrapbooking Layout

 

I love creating scrapbooking layouts for my etsy shop but sometimes I get a stuck on what I want the layout to look like. When that happens I open up my Adobe Photoshop Elements and take look at what stickers I want to use.

For this page I knew that I wanted to use the three title stickers for sure. Because I wanted to use them all on one page I thought that it would probably be best to use three 4x6 photos. Once I laid all of this out on my computer screen, I decided that I needed something else so I added a title element above my vertical 4x6 photo. 

Here is what I came up with:

You can use the same process using pre-cut out shapes made of card stock and just move them around until you get the layout you want. To see more free sketches you can go to my scrapbooking website here.

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