Laura's Scrap Space
I am very fortunate to have my own scrap space in our house. About two years ago, I moved up to the loft area in our upstairs. It is a fairly large open space and from there I can see all the bedrooms below. I share the loft area with my two girls. They have their computer desk, a TV and a big comfy chair, the foosball table, and extra floor space to play and I have all my scrapbook stuff. So even when I'm creating in my space, I am still hanging out and chatting with my girls at the same time. I love it.
My large black shelves are from IKEA, and I just love them. I had a really long wall on one side of the space, so I put two of these shelves side by side. I love that I can cram them full, and they don't look too busy. Or I can spread things out and make it a little bit more decorative. I love storing my supplies in baskets. I have a mix of wicker baskets, silver metal mesh baskets, and black metal mesh baskets. I organize in several ways. Some things are by product type. Like chipboard letters, letter stickers, rub-ons, etc. But I also have some things that I organize by manufacturer. I pretty much know where everything is. However I do love just dig around, going through baskets and bins till I find what I'm looking for. And more often than not, I will find things that I wasn't looking for that work perfectly too.
The rest of my furniture was all built by my mom. I'm lucky to have a very handy mom, and she can make me whatever I want to fit the size I want. I just come up with the dimensions that I have in mind and the style, and then she does everything from there. This island is one of my favorites. It is huge, 4 by 8 feet. The front side of it is actually for my girls and their scrap stuff, which would explain the messy side! When I don't have anything big going on, I keep the top pretty clean. I have a large black cutting mat, my trimmer, my embellishment box which holds all my brads, and two desktop carousels (one for me and one for my girls). When I am working on projects, the entire island will usually be covered in product.
On the long side of my island, I store all my paper and cardstock. I use horizontal paper trays for all my cardstock. The majority of it is organized by color, but I also keep some organized by collection or textures. I store my pattern paper in vertical paper holders, organized by manufacturer. I also have lots of 12" x 12" plastic boxes that hold different projects that I'm working on or need to work on. I have a few three-drawer plastic containers that hold my paper scraps, organized with a few colors in each drawer. The small white plastic bins directly under the desktop hold my tools, random adhesives, and stamping supplies. They are really easy to pull out and grab what I need, and then push the basket back in.
Another favorite of mine is my "embellishment shelf", also built by my mom. This shelf is only six inches deep, but is four feet wide and about six feet tall. It has nothing but jars, filled with every sort of embellishment you can think of. I find that if I can see things, I'll use them more. So when I am at the point on my projects where I'm ready to embellish, I simply walk over to my shelf and start scanning the jars for ideas. These jars are mainly organized by manufacturer. Although each manufacturer may be broken down into several jars. The bottom two shelves are all my random ribbons and buttons that I've collected from the craft store. But I also keep separate jars with ribbons and buttons from specific manufacturers.
In the corner of the space, I have a simple computer desk and my printers. I also have this large red cabinet that my mom built me. It has two sides to it, with four doors on the front. I used to store all my finished albums in there, but have recently moved those out. Now I use it to store supplies that I don't use that often. Spray paints, extra adhesives, foam stamps, extra albums and refills, my sewing machine and larger tools. On top of this cabinet, I have some really large jars that are filled with all my Making Memories ribbons. Like I mentioned before, I love storing things in jars. And the ribbon is one of my favorites. I will literally dump all the ribbon out onto my desk and look for the perfect one to match, and then in one big swoop it goes back in the jar. I also keep a few smaller jars of fun embellishments up there too, whatever I'm loving at the moment.
That's it for now.
