Scrapbook Room Tour - Design Team Member Maja!

Today I'd like to invite you to my craft room again. After more than a decade of using my tiny room I think I finally got to the version I always wanted :-) I started here 11 years ago with a bunch of mixed pieces of furniture that had only one feature in common - they were all white. But besides that they were just what I had or could afford at the moment. But at last I got time (and, well, money) to cut it to my measure. The whole process started more than a year ago: I designed my furniture, talked it over with our carpenter, paid the advance...and then the pandemic happened, which delayed everything a couple of months. Can you imagine the anxiety? :-)) But finally! it's finished and I can show it to you too:

As you can see, it's still tiny (3,5 x 2,5 m, or 8x11 ft), but I did my best to utilise the whole space available. I think for such a small space visual order is  very important, so I chose a fixed colour palette of white, black, gray and mint (I repainted the previously arctic blue wall) to reduce the colour chaos where possible, and closed the lower part of the storage unit with doors and drawers as well as used boxes to store the hundreds of small items each scrapper has ;-)) So here's my large storage unit on one of the walls:

The top of each of the three parts is an open shelf on which I store boxes: large ones for my layouts (they are usually dimensional, so won't fit in regular albums) and the smaller ones for things I use least often. One box is dedicated for assembled 3D chipboard pieces that I use inside exploding boxes:

Now, the first part of this unit is mostly for papers (and I have thousands of them gathered throughout the years...):

As I mentioned, I used up each inch of space ;-) so here's my guillotine:

 ...and the scoring board and stamping platform:

When I designed this storage unit, I took into account the organisers I had, among them the paper racks and boxes. But they are not normally available in Poland, so I decided to showcase those I have on open shelves and store the rest of papers in boxes or file bags below. I also managed to squeeze in my binding machines and the laminator ;-)

 Here's the middle part:

Here I keep boxes with felt, ephemera, chipboard pieces, ribbons and stamps in their original packages.  The light grey "linen" boxes store the cards I have for sale, divided into categories.

In the lower shelves behind the door I keep my paper DT boxes:

And here's the last part of the unit:

The boxes on the upper shelf store more embellishments, the black boxes - flowers by various categories...

...while in the file binders I keep all my DT stamps, stamps for colouring and some sets:

Like many of scrappers I have tons of embellishments and tools to store, but I thought keeping them in the lower part in boxes would not be very comfortable, so I designed the last part with drawers instead of shelves. And as the "paper part" was designed with my organisers in mind, so were the drawers :-)

Here's how I store the bling ;-)

And here's my "organising solution" for vintage seam and sequins :-)

In the next drawer I keep lace, pom-pom trims and waxed strings:

Whenever possible, I like to have some pre-made elements for my projects. For instance, I use waxed string bows in most of my cards, so when I watch tv or a film, or while traveling, I often make them for future use and keep in here :-)

I have a lot of embossing powders from one of my previous DTs. When you keep them in a drawer, you just see the caps, and I like to sign them with markers, but these caps are black, so I punched circles from sticky paper and wrote the names on them :-)

OK, if you're not fed up with the "tour" yet, turn around to the other side ;-) It's my working area which used to look like this:

...and I was really tired with that hotchpotch of random shelves and add-ons, so I designed a single desk top unit, again with particular things to store in mind:

And I think it looks so much better now! Even though it takes up more space of the wall it doesn't look overwhelming and designing the particular shelves to fit the storage elements I had makes them blend in and look balanced despite the abundance of colours. 

The Alex drawer units from Ikea and the table top are the only "old" elements, I just added two more pieces under the desk (a lot of stuff, I know, but I still think it's OK as the last change to the room was made 6 years ago!). 

So here's the tall Alex unit in which I store my metal embellishments, most of my ribbons, washi tapes:

...and as part of my job is making cards for sale, I also keep here stamped card bases, envelopes and foil packaging:

I don't mean to bore you with the contents of each drawer, so I'll just show you how I store paper scraps: one drawer contains ones that are large enough for a card background, the other - smaller ones:

One of the drawers is the home of my Distress inks ;-)

As I already mentioned, I desgined the shelves for particular organisers I had, like the racks for inks and markers or the small drawer unit:

Now, I love those nice fancy brand craft organisers, but they are seldom available in Poland and even if they are, they're quite expensive, therefore I always try to find something similar but on a budget, and often look up for things in regular stores, like the nail polish display that I use for storing glitter glues, an office stamp spinner for ink blending tools or a small parts garage organiser that I store brads in - all of them for a fraction of their "craft equivalents" prices. 

Here's the room for my Big Shot, some cardstock, more drawer organisers for small this and thats, and more shelves. On one of them I keep some small stamp sets and my most used dies, for which I'm now changing the storage solution. I used to keep them in album bases, on adhesive magnetic sheets, but after a couple of years they started to deteriorate. Now I'm moving them to D-ring binders that I secured with eyelets:

In one of the small drawers below I keep all my glues and mounting foam:

...and in another one - pre-coloured images and die-cut elements for future use. I often stamp, colour or die cut in bulk just to save time on another occasion. The die-cuts are in those plastic boxes - they were just ordinary jelly beans boxes that I decorated with patterned paper ;-)

As my room is so tiny, I really use up any space available, so there's some storage under my desk too :-) I keep Prima mists in the metal basket, there's also a bin (it's dirty because I use it as a spray box too ;-)) and a folding stool so that I can reach the top shelves.

So that's my craft space. I know, to some it may seem ridiculously full of stuff, but remember I scrapbook for 13 years, it's part of my job and also I've got lots of things from my wonderful generous DTs throughout the years. I didn't gather all of this in an instant either, sometimes I waited for a really long time. For example, when I imagined my perfect craftroom I had a particular chair in mind. It took me 3 years to find exactly what I wanted, but it was so worthy of waiting!

So remember, you don't need all of this to be a great crafter, all you actually need is paper and scissors, and also remember even the most beautifully equipped room doesn't create, it is YOU, so imagination is the most important tool you need to have and everything else is just to help you speed up the process of creation.

Thank you for joining me on this tour, and happy crafting!