Decorating a Room Around a Few Pieces of Furniture - The Idea/Planning Stage

Hello everyone!

I'm looking forward to transforming my space into a space that not only works for me, but one that inspires and reflects me.

It's probably too early in the morning to be thinking about this, it's 7am here in Pennsylvania, but I'm in the ideas/planning stages of redoing my craft room and just laid awake in bed last night thinking about it. The rooms in my home are casual with a beach theme running throughout, but I would like to do something special for my craft room. I considered doing a very sleek and clean surfaced, modern room, but I find it sort of boring (uninspiring). I'm also drawn to a Shabby Chic - French Country look, but I've had no idea where to begin. I need to cover up the clutter I'm living with currently.

Recently a friend of my husband's was giving away two nightstands and a vanity. When I saw them I fell in love and my mind was made up. I want to go with a cozy, fresh, feminine room with soft colors and flowing curtains that gives off an atmosphere of history. The new furniture was the perfect start. Gorgeous!

Each piece is heavy, well made, with large deep drawers that I can organize my craft materials in. They were the owner's grandmother's furniture and that felt special even to me. I still have to clean them, but below are a couple of pictures of one of the pieces.

 There are two nightstands and the color in the photo is quite true to the actual color. I do not want to paint them as I love the softness of the overall color and the hand painted floral motif.

 

 Each drawer is different and I love that about it.     

 I used the flash to show the details of the flowers and leaves. The flowers are bluish with a slight turquoise appearance. These are the colors I want to focus on. I'm a huge fan of shades of blue.

Now on to what I have and what I would love

The problem I'm running into is that although my space is a decent size, my walls are blocked from end to end with mismatched furniture pieces. The only way to redo my room is to redo my furniture by making it look cohesive and softer in appearance. Like most craft rooms, my room is also filled with plastic containers, plastic drawers, boxes, organizers of all colors and shapes and boring filing cabinets. I need to do something about those too.

Below is a photo of the bookcases in my room. As you can see, although I have some of my crafting materials contained and organized on these shelves, the overall appearance is not appealing to look at. The shelves I added above them don't even match. There was a point that I felt proud of how organized and thrifty I am, but I completely missed the boat on attractiveness. For whatever reason I didn't even consider appearance at that time.

Yesterday I came across this decorative idea for my plain white bookcases from Just a Girl and Her Blog where you can see a step by step tutorial. I think she did a super job giving her bookcases a fancy and feminine appearance. This is something I want to do in my craft room that I think will be a good start to the look and feel. 

I like the color she used as her backing for the bookcases, but I'm looking for a color with a bit more blue in it. Like the picture below.

I think this photo is absolutely beautiful from the blog Lyckoslanten. I'm looking to hide the majority of my craft materials, but I love the soft feminine color. 

Compare the photo above with the feeling I have in my craft room. It feels horrible! I hear cheerleaders shouting the U. G. L. Y. cheer.

My craft materials are at arms reach and conveniently in sight, but my room is embarrassingly dark and ugly. My ugly clutter is dragging me down. I'm not one to want a room like those in magazines. After all, they are usually staged with accessories, color, perfect lighting for the camera and so forth.
How many people have their craft lace partially unrolled from a wooden spool and intertwined with a fern or keep an expensive doily with pearls on their work surface while they paint, glue and cut or even at all unless it's for a photo? These people could be out there, but I personally don't know anyone who does these things. 

I'm grateful to have what I have and do what I do. I just want a room that reflects ME and not my craft materials.

So I leave on a on a good note - I'm going into this with realistic expectations and I love to craft and decorate so this is right up my alley. I'm looking forward to transforming my space into a space that not only works for me, but one that inspires me. I hope you will join me on the adventure as I would love to hear any suggestions from you, your experiences and look at ideas you would like to share. I would also like to see your craft room do-overs and what works for YOU.

Happy Crafting!

Repurposing: Turning a Queen Bookcase-Headboard into a Craft Desk and 6 Organizational Tips for Your Craft Room

      My craft area is not some white, light filled, dream room. In fact I'm surrounded by dark stained woods, so I have overhead lighting and multiple lamps to make sure I can see well. My desk is made up of a big slab of pine for the table top, two file cabinets to hold it up and a queen headboard is being used as the tower to my desk. Yes, I said queen headboard. It's screwed into the pine and the wall and is heavy as heck, so it's not going anywhere. It was my daughter's headboard. She decided she didn't want it anymore and removed it from her room. In the end I found a good use for it and was glad she didn't want it. It holds a lot of the craft items that I use daily and was a nice step up from the small desk I used that shared space with my computer, junk mail and bills.

In the photo below I numbered the different items I keep on it and while going through it I was surprised how much I have stored on there.

1. Small flowers with stems  2. Metal embellishments and items for mixed media collages  3. Moss and leaves  4. Holiday embellishments  5. Wire and wire crafts  6. Wood embellishments and Popsicle sticks  7. Plastic embellishments  8.Small stuff like beads, rope, strung pearls, glass pieces, sand and buttons  9. Ribbon for card making  10. Pearl-Ex Powders  11. Lace spools and larger ribbon  12. Alcohol inks  13. Glue  14. Craft scissors  15. Embossing powders  16. Paper punches  17. Containers of small items like loose pearls and brads  18. Regular scissors, rulers, hole punch, tweezers, etc.  19. My homemade glimmer mists and paint sprays  20.  Hot glue  21. Glass cutting board.

6 Tips:

Tip 1:
Make sure your hot glue gun has a special place of it's own away from your other craft items. I use a small glass cutting board under it that I bought for a dollar and the lid of a glass candle jar to catch all the hot glue drippings. There is a plug-in strip attached to the right side of my desk behind the hot glue gun and by having it so close and the chord secure I know that no one will trip on it or knock it off. If your looking for a hot glue gun with a small nozzle and high/low temp option, I got mine from Walmart and love it. The one I chose is the Ad Tech for around $10.00. It says cordless, that's not really the case. You'll have it plugged in 99% of the time but it is convenient when you can unplug it at the gun handle for a few minutes for hard to reach places.
Ad-tech-2-Temp-Full-Size-Cordless-Glue-Gun


Tip 2:
I use an old glass cutting board from my kitchen on my main work surface. It doesn't easily break, can take heat, paint, inks glue, gesso and they all come off of it. There is a rough side and a smooth side, use the smooth side as it cleans up easily. If you have glue or paint that has hardened on it just take it to the kitchen sink and use a spoon to clean the surface while running under hot water, it will come off easily this way.

Tip 3:
I talked my son into giving up a few of his Connects pieces and they worked out perfectly for organizing my small spools of ribbon because they're quite light. I was afraid it would not be strong enough, but I use the ribbon constantly and have not had a problem. In fact if I need to remove a spool I find it very convenient to pop out one side of the Connects holder, take the spool off and reconnect it. The connects hang from cup hooks on both sides and one in the center.

Tip 4:
A Lazy Susan is perfect for holding glimmer mists and paint sprays.

Tip 5:
I found some pie holders at the thrift store. They came in a stack of three. I don't bake pies and didn't know what I would do with them, but knew I would think of something eventually. Well, they're perfect for holding bottles of acrylic paint. I placed it on a Lazy Susan as well, stored it on a shelf beside my desk at arms reach and it works great.

The photo below I found on a Google search and is from MarthaStewart.com. Which leads me to mention that I've heard Martha Stewart's paper punches are the best out there. If you have used them, please let me know about your experience with them. They looked very pretty hanging in the store.

Tip 6:

If you have the same size bottles of paint which when all stored give you a level surface and you're short on room you can stack the pie holders. Just make sure that what you put on top is not extremely heavy and can be easily supported by the paint bottles.

-You can also paint them to go with your decor or decorate them with something that gives you inspiration-

That's it for now, but come back for more craft storage tips as I will be posting them soon.