Craft Area Storage Tips

Find Your Space
The first thing you need to do for craft storage is figure out where you’re going to do it. Look around your home for a place that is spacious enough to hold all of your crafts, but cozy enough to make you feel relaxed and comfortable while you’re crafting. Let your personality come out in whatever area you choose.

• Desk Designing: One of the most important parts of your craft workspace is your desk. It doesn’t have to be a “traditional” office-style desk and, most likely, it won’t be. Any countertop or table in your home can serve as a makeshift desk with a few tweaks and personal touches. Try to find an area that is cozy, comfortable and is large enough to serve as the center of your work.

Tip: Consider building a desk from materials you already have on hand. For full instructions, read Filing Cabinet Desk.
• Mobile Materials: Sometimes it just isn’t possible to find a large enough area in your home to fit a large crafting desk, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create your own crafting space. Try using something mobile such as a baker’s rack or a rolling cart with storage space so that you can take your craft station with you wherever you need to. Use your kitchen or dining room table as your personal crafting station whenever you want and, when you’re done, you can pack away your materials with ease.

• Use Your Walls: Putting wall-mounted organizers in your room is a great way to maximize space, keep things tidy and give your space a fresh new look all at the same time. Try storing colorful yarns in your wall-mounted organizers to add a splash of color to your surroundings.

• Your Own Little Tool Chest: Use a set of hardware drawers or a nail and screw-sorting chest to organize small items. Make a colorful label for each drawer. Many of these chests are clear so you can see what’s inside without opening up all of the drawers.

Organize Your Crafts: Putting all of your supplies in a manner that is both easy-to-use and decorative is one of the most important parts of creating your craft storage. When you know where everything is, you can spend more time doing the things you love instead of rummaging through boxes and bins trying to find the things you need.

• Jazzy Jars: Try using jars to hold tags, embellishments, pins, and other special trim. While clear plastic bins are practical, there are plenty of other containers that you can use to spruce up your home organization. Use glass bell jars or old coffee tins to add a more homemade touch.

• Decorative Labeling: Use decorative gift tags so you know which supply is in which container. If you’re using tins or boxes to store items, complement the gift tags by tacking an example of what’s inside to the outside of your container, be it ribbon, fabric, buttons, or yarn. It’s decorative and organized!

• Take Your Crafts Anywhere: To make your arts and crafts supplies more mobile, use baskets or mesh bins that you can see inside of and take with you to another area of your home.

• Personalized Papers: Organize decorative paper by color, patterns, thickness, or however you wish inside of file folders. You can cut a small square of each one as an example and glue it to a corner of your folders. Use a paint pen or permanent marker to label what’s inside and express yourself.

• From Ground Pepper to Glitter: Use a spice rack to store bottles like paints, glitter and glue. This way you can keep them from spilling or leaking and arrange bottles by color and type. Wall mounted racks are great space-savers and rotating racks make it easy for you to grab what you need.

• Color Coding: Try organizing your arts and crafts based on their color for an easy to use system of craft storage. Color-coding also gives your room a neat look that will make you look and feel prepared to tackle any project that comes your way.

Inspiration Through Organization: It is important that your workspace not only makes your craft supplies easier to find, but also encourages you to come up with new and exciting ideas to use while crafting. Here are a couple of suggestions for things that will make your space organized in a way that can get your creative juices flowing:

• Board of Creativity: Many artists have “inspiration boards” in their studios. These boards are a place to put all of the little trinkets and keepsakes that inspire you so that have plenty of ideas to draw from. Use your bulletin board to tack up fabric swatches, images, photos, magazine clippings, or anything else that inspires you to make great crafts.

• Work In Progress: Make sure to set aside a space for all of the projects that you are currently working on and the materials that they require. This way you won’t have to go hunting around the room for that one piece you need to complete your craft because you’ve already got it in your work area. Also, having a pre-set work area will keep your incomplete projects in plain view and give you further encouragement to have some fun finishing them.

Organizing your arts and crafts supplies doesn’t have to be a chore. With a little enthusiasm, inspiration, and a positive outlook, putting your supplies in order will become an exciting project all its own. Let your creative side shine through in the ways you organize your craft storage in addition to the crafting that you do.