Craft closet review... How it has held up the last two years

 

I finally took some time to clean out my craft closet, now if I only would find the time to do the same for my poor kitchen! Since the creation of the craft closet (two years ago!) and then the revamping of the craft closet this poor space has seen A LOT of action. It may or may not have gotten to the point of the door refusing to close! ;) I took an afternoon to "organize" (organized chaos is my specialty) the space and it made me think that you may want an update on some of the pinteresty storage ideas I tried and if they worked or not.

 

 

First up, meet the workhorse of my closet. If you only have a little space to store your things I definitely recommend an over the door shoe holder. I have seen this idea many many times but usually they are using one with clear pockets, which looks a little more clean and allows you to actually see what you stored in each pocket. We already had this lovely green one so no easy clear pockets for me. I store my elastic, trims, zippers, glue, and jewelry supplies in this.

 

I also LOVE my peg board. I originally planned to hang a HUGE one but I changed my mind last minute, thank goodness. I don't have a ton of things I would want to store on it but I do have a few things such as my scissors and rotary cutter, that I use all.the.time., that fit perfectly.

 

I forgot to take a picture of just my hanging jars for this post but you can see them in the first picture and you can kind of see them in the pic above. The tin cans on the magnetic strip is by far one of the cuter features of my sewing space, but also one of the most useless. I knock the jars down all the time and they can not hold very much. Maybe it would work better if the magnetic strip was stronger, I don't know.

The three jars that are hanging from the shelf are super useful for holding needles and safety pins but I totally "screwed" up by not using two screws when connecting them to the shelf. For some unknown glorious reason this has mostly corrected itself, but at first they would spin like crazy and I could hardly get them to unscrew to actually use them.

 

The cork board is new. I wanted a place to hang list and pictures/ fabrics that inspire me.

Thread anyone?

 

I also commandeered a shelf sitting beside the closet that use to be filled with old Cd's and DVDs and filled it full of treasure.

 

 

Patterns

Paints and stamps

 

I still wish I could find the perfect size storage containers for the bottom of the closet so it could look just a little nicer but I don't have high hopes due to the closets weird depth (one foot!) I also read the best tip the other day but I can not remember where, that if you share a sewing space with another used area of your house (my dining room) then you should keep a tub for your work in progress and all the supplies you need to finish it. I love this idea because it allows me to keep my dining room neat and also actually complete projects. One day I may show you a picture of my dining room with my sewing machine and serger in it, but not until I magically figure out a way for it to not look like a dining room with sewing machine in one corner and a serger in the other. (I know that sounds crazy but you know what I mean!)

 

Happy sewing,

 

Rachel

 

Craft closet!!

Do you ever feel like your life is spiraling out of control!?

I am not talking about the times where you loose someone close or go through a major life tragedy.

I am talking a little bit more mellow dramatic like-

You wake up one morning and realize that your new baby will be here in EIGHT WEEKS

And you have not done ANYTHING to prepare.

So you go on a mad dash to get everything done in one week (yeah right)

and you are like the abominable snow man to live with.

Biting heads off.

Breaking in to tears.

Laying on the floor catatonic.

Pretty much being 3rd trimester pregnant and NESTING.

like a crazy woman.

Can you tell I speak from experience?

Have you guessed that I have been living in this daze for the last several days?

Thank the Lord- very literally- for giving us a rainy day today that completely screwed up all my plans and made me slowly fall out of the fog.

I love creating rooms for my child(ren).

It was one of my favorite things to do to prepare for Zadie.

I want to enjoy creating her big girl room and personalizing the nursery for new baby just as much.

I don't enjoy anything when I am in the nesting funk

BUT

I did get a lot of REALLY annoying projects done yesterday.

Pretty much my cute little spare bedroom got Completely emptied and became this.

 We painted the room Benjamin Moore's neon celery (what a terrible name!)

 I LOVE all the naturally lighting in the room and I really wanted to play it up with a clean crisp paint color.

 Our house was built in the 50's which translates to: no storage space. So, this closet was FULL of everything that we needed more often than to be put in the attic but less than to be kept in our bedrooms.
Needless to say we are having a garage sale this weekend :)

So now begins the decorating.

We are planning on building a window seat first with toy storage.

Be on the look out!

Now on to today's project.

I finally put the finishing touches on my craft closet.

I was kind of pressured to because I found A LOT more stuff that had to fit in there when I cleaned out the spare bedroom.

For such a small closet, and I mean small, it is about a foot deep and 3 feet wide, I really think it turned out great.

If you did not see what it originally looked like go here.

 My sewing machine just came home from the doctor and now she is all better ;) I thought she deserved a nice home after that ordeal!

 We added these shelves up the side of the closet today. There are two more under the sewing table.

 I saved a few jars over the last couple of weeks and just screwed the lids to the top shelf of the closet.

 I originally did a HUGE peg board over the door, but the shoe organizer held everything so neatly that I donated that to my hubby and just hung up a scrap piece to hold a few things that I would need regularly.

 Old sample paint cans with fabric hot glued on them turned into SUCH cute storage! I bought the magnetic strip at Lowe's in their organization section.

 Don't you just want to get to work on there!?

 The fabric shelf (my favorite part :)

 The other side of the closet.

Isn't she a beaut! ;)

The chair even folds up and fits in the bottom!

Would you ever guess the oasis that awaited you behind this plain jane hallway door?!

Now to USE my crafty space!

~Happy crafting!

Sidetracked... Craft closet

If you read my post yesterday you read a very motivated pillow maker sharing some ideas. When that motivated pillow maker got off the computer to begin working she came to a very sad realization. She had no place to sew :( If you read my post on the pallet shelf then you saw the picture of the desk with my sewing machine on top. Well that desk was sold this weekend and my sewing machine lost it's home. I have known this time was coming and I have been trying to come up with a solution. Then, one day, while scrolling through pintrest I had an epiphany! Why not make that weirdly shaped storage closet in the hallway a small sewing closet. I measured, sweet-talked the hubs, and then got to work. Here is a picture of what we started with.

I cleaned the closet out first.
Then I painted it with some paint that we bought last year at a yard sale for like $.50. Then we cut another shelf and painted it. The board for that shelf was about $6.

It loos good huh!?! Brent even made a little cord hole for me in the shelf. Sadly we woke up poor Zadie in the process of installing this shelf.

She was not very pleased with us! My goodness this little girl sure does make life more exciting!
Here is the finished project so far.

Pretty good for a day's work! So far this sewing closet has cost us about 7 bucks. I am pleased with that!
But we are far from done! As all of you crafters out there know the space is only the first step; now we are on to storage. I played on pintrest for a while last night and created a craft closet board. I really like the idea of the peg board on the door, the baby food jar storage, and the magnetic paint cans. As you can tell, I am far from finished! So look for future posts on the Craft closet!!

Currently, Brent and I are debating lighting for the closet. I, being the frugal momma, want to get a couple of these tap lights.


And Brent being the "buy better and only buy once" type wants to buy these lights.


He will probably win because he is usually right about these things. You better NEVER tell him I said that though!
Now that my sewing machine has a cozy little home be expecting those cute little pillows!
~ have a cozy little day!