Craft Room Organization and stuffs - -

 Creativity is not always working when you have time in the craft room but putting things away, organizing, or moving things around can sometimes help to get the creativity flowing again. . . Been working in the craft room this weekend, reorganizing and moving things around. . .  again . . .

To start with DH recently went to one of his swap meets and he came home with large glass jars with lids for me for the craft room. Awhile back he had built me two holders for my mason jars that I have clothespins in and when he saw the larger jars he thought I would be happy to have those as well. Here is a photo of one of the holders he made for the mason jars for me using wood from a free pallet:

In June we attended the NC301 Yard Sale that covers over 100 miles. One of the sellers had a lot of the old wooden crates that soda came in. I picked up an old wooden Pepsi tray for $10.00 and brought it home for the craft room. DH lightly power washed it to clean it up and I brought it in the craft room but was not sure what I wanted to use it for. Once DH came home with the large jars from the swap meet I knew they would work well together. I cleaned the jars and the lids but for the most part the lids were covered in dirt and rust so after I cleaned them up DH lightly sanded them and we spray painted them red and I put them to use shortly after that. Here is a photo of them:

I took all my beads/jewelry supplies out of the drawers of the Alex units and sorted everything into clear bags into the jars. With the jars being clear I can see at a glance what I am looking for and it has worked out well since I moved everything to the jars. An earlier trip to Hobby Lobby they had their "Spring Shop" items on sale for 66% off so I bought two of the metal containers - a medium and a larger one. The medium is in the bead tray and that holds all the jewelry making tools - pliers:

The larger container holds my corner chomper and my eyelet setter (with direction sheet for sizes):

My eyelets are in the drawer nearby so having these tools in this area is a good idea. Plus since these tools and the jewelry tools/pliers are heavy the metal containers work well. While I was moving things around and sorting I decided to centralize my hot foil system and supplies.....

I have the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil machine and of course with that comes all the supplies you need..... so I decided to clean off one of my Ikea Raskog carts and put all hot foil supplies together:

Foiling is very pretty but you have to be mindful of dust particles so I decided I would keep everything covered. On the bottom part of the Raskog cart is a clear container with a snap on lid from Walmart (sold in the office supply/school supply section) and in that container is the Glimmer Hot Foil machine and cord.  On the second shelf are two containers with lids from Ikea (Kuggis brand) and I have the hot foil rolls in there. They are all out of their store packaging in these containers and I labeled the inside of the rolls with the package bar code and product colour so I can reorder easily when they are gone. I also have a soft brush to brush away any dust on my card stock before I foil it.  These boxes are very sturdy and stackable so that is nice. 

The top part of the cart has a larger Kuggis container and I have all my hot plates w dies in that. I used the We R Memory Keepers tab punch board and made dividers so the plates/dies are organized. Behind that bin is the Spellbinders foil trimmer that my PIC (stamping Partner In Crime) had gifted me and I keep it there for easy access. I keep this cart right next to my table DH had built for my die cutting machine so when I want to hot foil I can just wheel the cart over to the table and all my supplies are together for foiling. The cart makes it easy to move around as well as to keep all foiling items organized and together for use. 

I do not have many but I do have a few of the ink pads from Catherine Pooler. Altho the ink pads stack nicely there is no labeling on them so when you stack them you can only see the top of the top ink pad so you do not know what the colours are. I used scissors and cut apart small Avery labels I had in my craft room to label the ink pads. I used a dauber to put ink on the label pieces and then put them on one end of the ink pads. At least now I can see what ink pads I have:

Always happy when things move along and happy to say I got a lot accomplished.... always more to do but sometimes we have to stop the organizing and moving things around just to be able to craft again -- working on some Fall projects so at least those are getting started:

Busy weekend in the craft room and things are coming along.... but are we EVER done???   ;0)