The Final Push: The Scrapbooking (Craft) Area

Now keep in mind that my scrapbooking area is simply a CORNER of the multi-purpose room that I claimed for myself when we first moved in.

I'll show you "pretty" first. This is probably the first thing many people see when they look over in the corner. Colorful plastic jars of ribbon help to make things look pretty and organized all at the same time. On the other side of the desk, there is another jar of (purple) ribbon and then a jar of all sorts of paper & material flowers.

The middle shelf of the desk is a nice place to actually display things. Here, I have displayed some memorabilia. Not shown here, but I often display my latest lay outs too by standing them up behind the glass jar. The scarf, the frog & the ceramic poppouri pot were all gifts from friends, and the jar is filled with various trinkets & charms we've collected over the years. (Where else do you put that crap anyway? This is a nice way to display it because it is, at the very least, colorful.)

                   

When I bought my desk, I purposely chose this type because I thought it would provide a nice organizing system for projects and books. There are 4 slots on each side of the desk. I have it categorized like this:

Magazines

Resources (x3)

Current Projects

Current Supplies

Incubator

Ongoing Project Supplies

                            

Embellishments for pages (and for any project, actually) are kept in this basket. I never had many embellishments until last year when I finally starting buying some here and there. This basket was the first size for my growing collection, but recently it has started to overflow a bit. Behind the basket, I keep my Cricut (a die-cut machine) and I just pull it towards the front of the cabinet, plug it in and use it, when I have more than a few things to cut at one time.

I mentioned the incubator above when I showed the desk shelves. Each month, I collect non-photo memorabilia in a ziploc bag and keep it for a few months. Sometimes, it gets used on a page. If it doesn't, I need to eventually decide what to do with it. Incubating helps this process because it gives me some time and distance to decide if that "thing" is important enough to keep around forever.

If it is that important, I will file it away in one of the memorabilia boxes. If not, I will chuck it. I can only fit about 3 incubator bags on the desk shelf at one time, so theoretically, everything gets a 3-month incubation period.

I recently added this magnetic strip to my desk where I can house some extra embellishments. It's cute, but not quite as useful as I imagined it would be. I think I need to change what is stored in there.

This is a small craft tool box where I keep everything I need for my current projects. It's portable, so I can take it with me to Craft n Chats, to the coffee table in the next room, to the floor of the multi-purpose room, etc. Yes, admittedly, my scrapbook desk is often too crowded to work at so I use the floor sometimes.