My New Craft Room

Hey peeps, how's it going?  I got distracted yesterday working on that cookbook project, so I don't have a new card to share today.  But I do have pictures of my newly organized brand new craft space so let's look at that instead!

Yeah, my little buddy has devil dog eyes in this picture.  Anyway, the craft room is basically the entire basement level of our townhouse (well, except for the laundry room and garage) and it's on ground level, not below so I do have windows on that one side.  The room is actually huge, so there's a big open space which is where I was standing to take this picture.  On the far left you see the door to a closet (actually an unfinished bathroom space) with some punches on it.  Next to that is the door to our teeny backyard area (a.k.a. Sadie's favorite door) and then there's my crafty space.  This is kinda the before shot, although I'd already gone through a lot of stuff so this is a lot cleaner than it really started out.  Actually it started out with all the furniture in different places and I convinced the hubs to move it all for me, which he did with a minimum of complaints.  He's a keeper.

There's a progress shot of me getting my stamps organized, this time with both dogs in it (they were no help at all).  This was taken from right next to the craft table so you can kinda see how big this room is.

Ahh, so much better.  I got the punches organized so the current ones are on the closet door on the right (closer to my crafty space) and the retired/non-SU! ones are on the left door to the laundry room.  And then there's my crafty hutch in the middle.

The top of the hutch is home to my collection of Maleficents from Sleeping Beauty.  Because she's awesome.  Next up are some assorted pictures and artwork, stuff that makes me happy.  And the short shelf on the bottom there is where I keep my larger Bigz dies for the Big Shot and also where I photograph my cards, unless they have a dark background in which case I take pictures somewhere else with a light background.

My Big Shot used to live on a sewing machine that was next to this hutch in my last craft room, but they're not next to each other in this room so I had to reorganize stuff.  Now the hutch is basically my Big Shot station, with the Big Shot itself and some boxes with dies and embossing folders on the top.  I have cutting plates and an extra platform in the left drawer (I use the magnetic platform for Framelits, but I still need the multi-purpose one for embossing folders).  Since this is right next to the back door, the dogs' leashes live in the right drawer.  The cabinet on the left holds my Sizzix alphabets, and on the right are my completed scrapbook pages and a few other things.

And here's my little buddy Vader.  Yes, my floor seriously needs to be mopped, don't judge me.  We need to put something on the floor just inside the door to help keep the dirt from spreading around everywhere.  I swear it rains twice as much here as it did in England, if not more.

Ok!  To the left of this is the door out to the garage, and just to the right is that door to the laundry room, and obviously these are my bookshelves.  We have two more upstairs in the living room, and another two three-foot shelves in other rooms, plus one more six-footer which you'll see in a minute.  But I'm in the process of skinnying down my book collection because moving it every couple of years is the pits.

So there's my crafty space all organized and pretty.  There isn't an overhead light in that end of the room, which isn't much of a problem if I'm crafting during the day thanks to the windows, but I do have an Ott Light on my table too.  That IS a fireplace behind my craft table, and then in the very far corner is that sewing machine that used to hold my Big Shot and now has my caddy of retired ink colors and my embossing gun.  Then there's one stamp cabinet, two file cabinets full of 8.5x11 cardstock (which are much the worse for wear...the file cabinets I mean), and then the other stamp cabinet.  Then the big Tinker Bell you see is actually a little blanket that I have covering an open shelving unit where I keep my 12x12 cardstock and DSP.  I thought I'd use the blanket to cover it so that the paper wouldn't fade from me having the windows open all the time.  And then on the far right is the last bookshelf, which has photos on the bottom two shelves and cards organized by theme on the top two shelves, and a mix of those on the middle shelf.

And here's a closer picture of all that schtuff.

And I don't know if you noticed, but Carlos and Consuela are on one of my stamp cabinets.  I love them!  Lee was hoping I would "accidentally" trip on the stairs and drop them when I moved them down here, but really he can't complain since I didn't put them in the living room where he has to look at them.  Though I bet they would look very nice on either side of the TV...

And there's what is behind my craft table.  On the left is a plastic storage drawer unit with my acrylic blocks on top; I've got lots of scissors and adhesive and markers in those drawers.  The narrower drawers have other things like my address book and stamps, envelopes, lots of pens, various tools and embellishments, and sponges.  Then some binders that I use for various things, and another plastic drawer with things I use less often like my Prismacolor pencils.  Then some more junk :D

The sewing machine on the left stands over a tub with some non-SU! stamps, and the basket has retired ribbon.

And finally, this is my view when I'm sitting at my craft table.  That giant open area would be easily big enough to put a queen-size bed in, except I don't know where I'd move the hutch and we have a guest room upstairs so it doesn't matter anyway, I'm just saying that's how big it is.  And there's a dog bed in the middle of the space.  The room was already painted that kind of olive-y green when we moved in; not necessarily my favoritest ever shade of green, but I like it okay and the hubs is relieved I don't want to repaint in here.  Haha.  The powder room we painted last weekend is at the top of the stairs, and then there's a few more steps up to the right which leads to the main floor (living room, dining room, kitchen).  The bad thing is that the computer room is on the third floor, so it seems like I frequently forget things up here that I need in my craft room (like, uh, the camera!) so I'm constantly going up and down.  First world problems, y'all.  At least I'm getting a leg workout!

So yep, that's where I now do my crafting.  I have no idea what we'd do with this space if I didn't have so much crafty stuff.  Whatcha think?