Christmas Notebook

I started this blog post to tell you about a few more ways I store embellishments near my craft desk. I got a little off track talking about the room itself and how it’s set up. Bear with me and I’ll get to the point eventually… You may want to read

the top of my desk where the crafting happens (part one of the tour)

craft desk tour part two ~ drawers

Most of you have probably seen my craft room. It’s a great room with lots of storage space. Cabinets, drawers, a big counter. And it has a great view over our back yard.

This is a usual winter view from the craft room. We haven’t had snow yet this year, though.

Springtime

Autumn

It’s a wonderful room, but, due to recurring health issues, I am not taking the long trek up the stairs right now. Not even to craft. But, as I explained before, I am crafting downstairs at a desk DH set up for me. It’s been great to have my own space downstairs. Today I thought I’d show you what I’m using for extra storage space. The room itself doesn’t offer much in the way of storage. It’s an odd room, in that it has a door in each wall and windows in two walls. The room is 15’x15′ with little space to place shelves. We call it the “music room” but only because it’s where the piano is. It’s not really what you might think of when visualizing a music room.

This is the west wall. The door goes down two steps into the 1960 addition. That’s were the downstairs bedroom is. Also a bathroom and the laundry room. The spot the green dresser is in, is where my desk now sets. The door on the right goes into the library / family room.

North wall. Just to the left of this picture is the doorway into the library.

The east wall…not much going on here…

You may note Clark in his currently favorite box. The door to the left is the door to the front hall. The green door you can see through the doorway is the coat closet door. The white door is to the kitchen. Behind the white door is a heavy duty folding table that I can set up when my BFF comes to craft with me.

Here’s a picture of the south wall. At least, most of it. The doorway goes into the kitchen. This picture was taken in 2011. DH is painting the big chalkboard on the wall. To the right of the window is just enough space to put a small bookshelf which holds a lot of my Christmas books and a few garden binders. And maybe a genealogy binder or two…

Just because I like this so much, I want to tell you about the door to the addition. This door came from the house DH grew up in. His paternal grandparents built the house. This was the front door. Now it opens into the addition where the downstairs bedroom is at the end of the hall. It looks like an odd angle because the addition is two steps down from the original house. The house has 12′ ceilings and the addition has 8′ ceilings.

Funny thing…in the attic, the door we use between the finished part of the attic and the unfinished part was the back door of the house I grew up in. It also has a window about the size of this one. Well, I have gotten sidetracked…back to storage, now that you have the lay of the land.

I have a rolling cabinet that I keep next to the desk.

If I need it, I can swing it around the edge of the desk.

The top drawer has embellishments for Christmas crafting that are too large to keep in my organizers. Back row: soldered ornaments that are finished, mini bottle brush trees, larger bottle brush trees, nativity bits and pieces, glitter and another neat light bulb. Front row: larger pieces of ivory colored embellishments, wired string (great for use as neck scarves on tiny snowmen, wreaths, bells, miscellaneous animals and two gnomes. Up against the right side of the drawer is my clear acrylic ruler.

The middle drawer keeps extra clothespins at hand, extra mini ornaments, and a range of pipe cleaners.

When I spread the pipe cleaners out for a picture, I realized I am out of red tinsel pipe cleaners. Time to order some.

The bottom drawer is actually a file drawer. Here I where I keep roping, yarn and other embellishments that take up some room. It’s deep enough to store a bottle of glass cleaner which I use when cleaning finished soldered ornaments.

I have a rolling utility cart that I use for storing bulky items. Having them on a wheeled cart makes it easy to roll them out of the way if I have company. Usually this sits right behind me when I’m at my desk. The top shelf holds some of the boxes of Christmas cards I’ve collected. I have more upstairs in the craft room. The middle shelf has the drawers for my floral embellishments plus one more card box. The bottom shelf holds four bead boxes and two embellishment boxes.

The cardboard boxes are labeled with the colors they contain. On the drawers, I placed bits of Christmas cards to help me remember what each drawer holds. Left side: top drawer is red, middle drawer is greenery with snow/white, bottom drawer is silver. Right side: top drawer is red berries, middle drawer is greenery with ice, and the bottom drawer is plain greenery.

And finally, last but not least, are my Bead Storage Solutions trays. DH gave me three for Christmas and I ordered three more after I realized how many beads I actually have. I use four trays for beads. The general catagories are pearls, miscellaneous, metal and seed beads.

I use two trays for Christmas embellishments. One for those I use more often…

… and the other for items I don’t use as much.

These are great storage trays for small items. Everything can be seen at once. Nothing mixes with anything else. If the tray upturns, no problem. Instead of thousands of beads on the floor, you have the boxes to pick up. The individual boxes have indentions so they are easy to lift out with your fingertips. The trays also have clear lids that cover the boxes, yet still allow you to see what’s inside.

The individual boxes come in four sizes. You can buy a tray of assorted sizes, a tray of the smallest size, or empty trays. You can buy boxes in a pack to fill one of the six rows in the tray. That way, you can assemble just what you want by mixing the kinds of boxes you buy.

The individual boxes have flip open lids. Easy to use.

The storage trays are pricey, but worth every penny if you are a serious crafter. The best price I found was on amazon.com. Jo-Ann Fabrics (check online for store coupons) and Wal-Mart have them, as do other craft supply stores. Check around for prices. They range widely. Wal-Mart was nearly the same price as Amazon. Most other stores were much higher.

It took a while to write this post. And I meandered a bit. But now it’s done. I hope you find it helpful. Or at least, fun to read. 🙂

~~Rhonda