The Studio is CLEAN!

A "before" picture first. We had tried to sell the house a couple of years ago. Literally, we put it on the market one week before the bubble burst and ended up deciding we would stay a few more years. We had packed up a LOT of stuff and had it in storage. I have picked bits out little-by-little, but this summer we took it all back to the house and I just got around to really getting re-organized. I like to look at everyone else's creative spaces and thought I would take pics and share mine with everyone also (during the 2 minutes it stayed clean!)

Viola! a few hours later and it's ready for the creative juices to flow again! I actually enjoy the process of organizing. I can't stand it when I can't find something, so I LOVE my labeler! My Mom and daughter also use the space down here sometimes and I try to make it so anybody could find what they're looking for. The box on the floor is used for spray inks like glimmer mists, so it is actually there on purpose even though it's not pretty. I would love to change the color of the walls, but we had just painted the entire basement bright white for the sale of the house and it was a pain in the butt, so I really don't want to paint again right now even though it is rather uninspiring. I also need a new office chair desperately!

This is the other side of the room. My stamp storage and larger punches and some of my embellishments/ribbons. The bookcase houses most of my magazines and books on varios crafts - beading, scrapbooking, cardmaking and general papercrafts. The shoeboxes on top are holding some of the many cards I have made and a bleder I kept for papermaking (even though I still do not have a deckle yet!) The stamp shelving is a bookcase I got for free from work when they did a little re-organizing there! Always remeber it never hurts to ask! They can only say "no"! I sold StampinUp! stamps for a few years so most of my stamps came from there and many of my embellishments and inks also. I have also slowly aquired many other company's products as well and love having the options. I felt a little obligated to use only SU! products and now feel like I have more freedom in my choices. The closed closet door is where Mom's stamping/scrapping products are as well as some of my stuff to use: cans, jars, bottle, boxes, etc to decorate and/or keep my stuff in.

A closer look at my desk area. I am the type that needs to SEE my stuff or I forget I can use it. Or even HAVE it! I have a very high concentration of stuff right within reach at my desk and the wall units I have managed to find are SO great without taking up ANY space, really. Just a few inches off the wall. The ink holder I bought off of a website from someone who makes them. The octagon thing is a shadowbox I bought years ago and just put up when I did this clean-up. It was an ugly shade of gray/black and I spray painted it silver. The main cupboard/shelf is from Making Memories and I bought it at Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon (NEVER pay full price for your bigger-ticket items!). I LOVE it because it holds a great variety of things right in front of my face to keep me inspired. I think the carousel was Making Memories also -got it at Archiver's with my 30% off coupon! :0) The towel bar and buckets I won at a SU! meeting but I know they came from IKEA. The presentation was on ways to organize your craft space - LOL! S-hooks hold the scissors. On the right of the desktop is a silverware tray to hold my double ended markers that need to be stored flat and on the left are my inks and embellishments from SU! The filing cabinet houses all my 8 1/2 x 11 paper and is metal so magnet clips work great for displaying ATC's and cards/etc. The desk itself was a FANTASMAGORICAL find at Jo-Anns - it is 2 bases and a desktop - which I got piece-by-piece using my 40% off coupons - and the bottom drawers hold 12x12 paper!! (("aahhhh!" -> that's the angels singing)). The nice shallow drawers -3 on each side- are great for my ATC cards and smaller pieces of paper, stamp cleaner pads, cutters, embellishments etc, etc -you know what I'm talking about!

The tiny drawers are from the tool aisles at Wal-Mart and house some of my beads. I haven't been doing much beading and really want to get back into it SOON. Hopefully now that I am re-organized...! I also have one of those great handled-suitcase travel tote thingy's by Crop-in-Style that has the rest of my beads in it. (bought at Jo-Ann's with my coupons - of course!) The cart with drawers is an old medication cart from the hospital where I worked. They used to have a "garage sale" in the summers and I bought 2 of these heavy-duty, wheeled carts for $10 each one year!! I think they are my favorite thing down here because they speak to who I am so well -a nurse, a crafter, a bargain-shopping recycler and an organizing junkie! This one houses my smaller punches in the shallow drawers and adhesives and BigShot/Cuttlebug along with the folders and dies in the deeper ones. The other cart holds all my glitters, embossing and mica powders, watercolor paints, wheeled stamps, lightbox, etc. The closet at the left (also seen above) is full of small drawers and Iris carts with yet MORE embellishments, paints, fabrics, sponges, blah, blah, blah. I keep one Iris cart on wheels that I can pull over to my work area that is just full of the paper scraps that can/should still be used. I don't keep them by color, like many people do, but buy the size of the scraps. The really big scraps (like half sheets) DO stay in the file cabinet with the full sheets. I am a big recycler and a couple of the drawers hold parts of packaging that I have kept -Many chipboard packages are very pretty -Kleenex boxes, to name one. I keep them to use for backgrounds. Maybe I'll do a post about recyling while I'm "stuck" in the house. Yes, there is a MAJOR BLIZZARD going on right now and I'm loving it right now! Ask me again when it's over and I have to dig out!!

OK, Back to work. I am participating in a tag swap with one of my Yahoo groups and this is what I was working on right after I finished cleaning. I have since changed it up a bit and will post those pics later. Hope everyone is inside, safe and warm and being creative!.