My Work Space IV

This week I'm going to tackle the (now clean) third wall of my new Craft Room. This will be the last segment in  my work space series. FYI the fourth wall that I'm not documenting is just an ancient couch I have up against the windows. The windows and couch pretty much take up all useful space there.

This is what I'm going to tell you guys about this week:

This space is opposite the storage units I described in Part II of My Work Space series. Try and ignore the coloring clutter from my Kindergartener which you can see on the corner of my workbench there (I will also not be photographing and showing my workbench; as the largest flat surface in the house I don't think it's been clean since we brought it in the house. =P) Following the left to right pattern I've been using to go through this room, I'm going to start with the drawer towers on the left hand side of the wall.

The white tower of drawers was an excellent find at Ikea and also happen to perfectly match the drawers on my art desk, which you can see more closely in my last work space blog post. What really drew me to this unit is that the drawers are fairly shallow. I use these to store a myriad of craft supplies ranging from paper crafts to polymer clay to quilting supplies to jewelry and accessory cosplay supplies. I like that the drawers are shallow because 1) I can't store too much in them which means 2) the drawers can't become as over-cluttered as I'm prone to letting things become thereby making it so that 3) I can find the supplies or tools I need when I actually need them (as opposed to two months later when I no longer need them but need something else instead). The stacking paper organizer on top of the left tower currently holds important papers (like reservation print-outs for conventions later this year) and some patterns, mostly print-outs and small (thin) books. Eventually these will be filed in the black filing cabinet to the right. The large stack of plastic containers on top of the right tower is my collection of DMC thread. Most of this was handed down to me from my Mom; it is in need of sorting since I still haven't mixed my thread in with what my Mom gave me, and on top of that, several of the containers got dumped out by my youngest boy (2.5 years old at the time--he's 5 now, so yeah, that was a while ago). XD The black filing cabinet next to the towers is the newest addition to the room. I was a little sad I couldn't find anything practical in white, since pretty much all the other furniture in the room is white. All things considered, you can't have everything, and that's really a small detail. Each long drawer contains two sets of bars for hanging files. I plan on using one drawer for tracking business related papers like receipts, travel info, and all that boring but important stuff. The other drawer I plan on using for all my sewing patterns--I am hoping I can fit this in just half of it. The other half I want to use for other patterns--crochet, knit and cross stitch mostly that I print offline or have put together myself or are books that are just too thin to put on a bookshelf.

Next up we have the cabinets, counter, and shelves I recycled from my last two attempts at putting together a Craft Room. When I first got these, the shelves and counter were longer, and the cabinet units were spaced to fit a stool between each one. This was where I used to keep my sewing machine and laptop (or at least where they were supposed to live; practically it didn't work very well having them there). When I moved this furniture into the rental house we lived in last year, the counter and shelves were shortened to fit in the space I had for them and the cabinet unit on the far left was turned perpendicular to the 2nd cabinet unit leaving only one gap between the cabinets. When we moved everything into my new craft room, I originally set things up the way I had then (you can see what the set up looked like in this post--the picture is at the very bottom). With the addition of the filing cabinet, having the one cabinet turned became impractical since the filing cabinet made it hard to open the cabinet doors. Since I wasn't trying to fit a stool between any of the cabinets we decided to simply turn all the cabinets facing forward, put them next to each other, and leave just a small space on the right end. Ostensibly the space was there so I could access the electrical outlet there, but it's also turned into a nice little nook for storing my little ironing board and my larger cross stitch frames. Right now the cabinets themselves just hold shipping supplies for my Etsy shop and a few other odds and ends. All that I currently have on the counter is my paper-cutter and lamination machine which I use to make my badges and bookmarks. So far the counter is mostly clean--here's hoping it can stay that way. I have my doubts.

 The shelves above the cabinet primarily hold display and inventory for my Artist Alley table (and Etsy shop =P). Starting on the top shelf, I have my panda collection and the three bins holding my badge inventory. On the middle shelf, I have what's left of my ready-to-ship tarot card decks, bins of mistakes (items that have either not laminated properly, have typos or otherwise have something wrong with them and I need to eventually list as clearance items but haven't done anything with yet), bin with my adhesive collection, box of bookmarks, and box of tarot card decks that are not ready to ship (I need to sit down and make more of the little books to go with them). The bottom shelf holds my table display stuff, what's left of the Anime RPG books, my print inventory, and my husband's chain mail jewelry supplies.

So that's pretty much it for my new Craft Room. I love my space. I hope to get to use it more in the near future; it's kind of sad that I have this space now and haven't been able to use it really since I got it. =P I'm sure that will change though as we start settling down into more of a routine here in the new house with the new baby and the new school schedule and curriculum.