Craft Room Furniture! This is Finally Happening!

Hello! It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm afraid to look at how long. If you were reading my blog before, I'm sure you thought it was dead. I meant to keep blogging. I never meant to stop. But, I got very busy trying to be Utah's sole source of actresses between the ages if 17-35. I think I was in every community production In Utah County in the last year. If I wasn't, I saw it or knew someone in it. I got sucked into the vortex of community theater and almost the only crafting I did was sewing my costumes for productions. 

Recently, I was Ms. TeaVee in Willy Wonka. Using a mash up of vintage patterns, I made this dress: 

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. What I really came to post about is this disaster: 

Yep, my craft room. Sad, isn't it? And, this is after cleaning up for a while (a long, long while--and paying one of my kids $10 to help me). A huge part of it is that I have no workspace, so stuff ends up everywhere when I'm working. (Also, I have too much stuff, but I'm pretending that isn't a problem.)

Well, my friends, that is about to change! I recently came into a very cool couch and about $100. I want the couch to fit in this room so people can hang out with me while I craft, and the $100 is perfect for building a huge desk.

Last Saturday, David and I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore looking for kitchen cabinets to use to make this desk. We got a big fat zero, and they were more expensive than I was hoping. I could have cobbled something together, but it would have eaten my entire budget and nothing would have matched. Nothing would have matched! It was not working for me. So, on the way home I got the bright idea to look on KSL (basically the Craig's List of Utah--no idea why everyone posts there, but we do).

And there it was. Some guy remodeled four matching kitchens and was selling off the cabinets for $10 a piece. And he was home when we called! And didn't sound too eccentric! We were wrong about that last part, but that's okay. 

So, we go to this guy's house (which is upgraded in every possible way--the doorbell chime lasted longer than Beethoven's Symphony No. 9); he makes us remove our shoes to walk across the hardwood floors. Then we ride his elevator (yes, elevator) down to the walkout basement four car garage where he has the kitchen cabinets. We pick out six of them, and pay the guy. We was a perfectly nice normal guy. I'm not sure why he had an elevator, but I'll go with it. Our daughter was with us, and she thought it was cool. 

So, here they are, my new cabinets. 

The dude who sold them to us told us there was nothing wrong with them; that they were just outdated. Dude might have an elevator, but he was wrong about that. They are stinky--like old apartment smell--and greasy and damaged in spots. The hinges have plastic pieces that were breaking apart. There is some nasty gunky on one of the shelves that I am not even going to attempt to clean off. That thing is just getting replaced.

However, they are perfect for what I want them to do. More on that soon. Very, very soon. 

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Dealing with Those Pesky Sewing Patterns: Organizing Solution

This is Part 4 of my How I Organized My Entire House for $0.00 (Really!) series.
Part 1 (Intro) is here.
Part 2 (Simple Rules to Create Organization that Sustains Itself Plus Master Bath Organization) is here.
Part 3 (Inexpensive Organizing) is here.

Did you think I abandoned my organizing project? Oh no, I have not. I have only stared into the abyss that is my craft room, and it is not a short thing. It is a long, multi-part thing.

I started with my sewing patterns, which is what this post is about. I recently started crafting for a great company again, you know, on a professional basis, and that means lots of time in the craft room. And that place is scary. We don't have a garage, so storage is a rare and precious commodity at our house. Stuff that has no where to go ends up in the craft room. If a kid comes to me to ask where something goes, it's usually phrased this way, "Where does this go? The craft room?"

David has started calling it "the junk drawer." I know another crafter who calls hers "the room of requirement."

I have slowly started to change this. It was a major milestone when I could reach the closet--which by the way, is right next to the door.

I've also started changing my habits. I don't craft the same way I used to. I put things away as I go. It's a novel concept, I know, and more about how I made it easier to do later, but it does make my brain more clear. I spend a lot less time looking for the scissors (or other craft tool) that are somewhere on my table and clean-up afterward is so much easier.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the patterns.

I picked up a huge box of retro patterns at a garage sale a few Saturdays ago, and nearly doubled my pattern collection in one go. I desperately needed a way to look at what I had and also find what I had.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Unfinished Craft Project--Finished! 1 of One Hundred Thousand Six Hundred Three

I have organized my poor (it ends up being the junk dumping room, since we don't have a garage) craft room  so many times since we moved in a year ago.

This is what the closet looks like when it's organized (if the closet is put away, the rest of the room does ok). Which is never. Because to find anything, I have to take down all those stacked boxes. And you can guess how often then make it back up into a stack (hint: never).

And it occurs to me that Flylady is right and that you can't organize clutter (or in my case, excessive amounts of craft crap). I tried to get rid of some of it, but my brain kept thinking up uses for it. Stupid brain.

Anyway, I pulled out all my unfinished projects. Every single one. Well, not counting scrapbook pages. I'm trying to motivate myself here. Not send myself to craft place-where-there-is-fire-and-brimstone-and-unfinished-scrapbook-pages-scream-at-you-all-day-inducing-high-levels-of-guilt. I don't mind the scrapbooking I haven't done--I never intended to scrapbook every photo I ever took. It's the scrapbook pages I've started and never finished that get to me. But that's another post for another day.

Anyway, I did manage to get rid of a few projects that I no longer wish to complete, but here is the list of projects I still want to complete. These are strictly projects I've started, not projects I want to start. That list is significantly longer. Some of these are biiiiiiig projects.

Spray paint frames (I'll show you these soon)
Tree tote bag (look below for pictures)
Pettycoat skirt (also coming soon!)
Ampersand (this was my last post)
White floaty scarf
Pink shirt refashion
Wrap around vest refashion
Crochet fingerless gloves
Repair pink and grey hair flower
Hexagon quilt (Somehow, I stopped working on this one)
Thanksgiving wall hanging
Rehang crochet butterfly in kitchen (See the butterfly almost the bottom left-hand corner? My kids keep knocking off the wall and breaking the glass--need to put acrylic in it or something)
Garden quilt
Grandkid silhouettes
Gold sweater
Yellow flower/pink flower/pink felted flower/purple headband/pink cuff
Yellow rosette pillow
Curtains (They need to be a tiny bit longer)
Green knitted buckets
Painted linen skirt
Braided rug (I got sidetracked on this project too)
Patches on jeans
Mom's messenger bag
Santa Claus wall hanging
Box purse
Grandma Jensen quilt--blues and purples
Crochet beaded bag
Let out Citrus halter (Aubrey never wore this much and it has some room to let it out--she could wear it as a top now)
Sew pom pom on poncho
Butterfly embroidery
Blue and brown hoodie
Wool scarf
Cross stitch Noah's Ark
Blue and Pink diamond quilt
Orange and green diamond quilt
Mom's Christmas present albums
Bag embroidery

Hummm, maybe it just seems much bigger in my mind? Because that list is looking quite do-able right now. I'm hoping I can have most of these done by the end of the summer. Maybe?

Crossed off items are ones I've already finished!

Speaking of finished, here's one I finished yesterday!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.