Teri Anderson
Gather around, friends.
Let’s have a moment of heart-to-heart paper-crafting honesty. Brace yourselves: This Go-to Gal does not have one of those kind of craft rooms you see in many of the magazines.
Yes, you know what I am talking about: The room with the perfectly-matched furniture and all the latest and greatest (and coordinating) storage supplies.
Yes, that would not be my room. My room is the one that never appears in the magazines. It’s the one where things don’t always match up. (I store the bulk of my stuff on bookshelves and use a beat-up dining table as a desk)! But I’m proud of my little room because affordability and practicality are huge when it comes to how I store my crafting stash.
I thought it would be fun to give you a glimpse into my craft room and share with you some budget-friendly storage tricks straight from my bookshelves.
Ready. Set. Go!
I like to use an old bread pan to store misting sprays and paints in. If you don’t have one already in your possession, hit up the estate sales and second-hand stores. They are easy to find and are quite affordable. In fact, the one I use cost me just 25 cents! Score!
Recycle an old tin lunchbox. I keep a couple of these in my craft room. I store small pieces of felt in one and then use the other to store bottles of glitter, flocking, and embossing powder. So that I know what is inside, I put labels on the outside.
Convert a table’s place card stand into “Use it soon” stand for die-cuts and small sticker sheets. This stays at my desk as a reminder of small paper items I have pulled out and want to use soon. If you don’t have any place card stands, check out the local party stores.
Recycle a small pitcher into a pen and pencil holder. The beauty of this bad boy is it just sits on bookshelf, ready when I am ready to use pens and pencils inside it.
Store embellishments in ice cube trays. Seriously.
I found this little stack of three ice cube trays at a big box store for under $2. I store them on a bookshelf. What’s cool is each tray has 16 compartments and the three trays stack up! They are perfect for putting on a bookshelf.
Look for clear containers at the dollar store and use them to store things like decorative tape and items you have a large quantity of. I have a lot of these and tend to buy a few containers at a time so I can stack them up on my bookshelves. I use a label maker to identify what is in each one.
Use a shoe storage organizer to hold steel dies in. I found hanging shoe storage organizers at the dollar store. I hang them on hangers, fill them with my dies and then let them hang in a small coat closet off my craft room. It’s a great space saver and way to know where your dies are when you want them.
Got a cool storage tip? Please share it with all of us!
Would you like even more crafty storage tips and ideas? I’ll pick one of you to win a copy of Practical Solutions for Paper Crafters from Paper Crafts magazine. You have until Friday, June 15th at 5 pm MDT to respond.
Yours in crafty bliss,
Teri Anderson
Paper Crafts Go-to gal
These tips are so wonderful! I’m a great consumer and really need these kinds of things put in front of me to say “no, you don’t need to buy everything! Some things can be repurposed!” Thanks so much for the chance to win!
Sweet! My ice cube tray even has a sliding lid. I like the pitcher. I made pitchers in pottery class with sticking pens inside in mind. Thanks for sharing!!!
I’ve used ice trays for organizing earrings. I love reusing items for more than what they were made for. I reuse the Ferrero Roche’ (not sure I spelled that right) containers for alphabet letters.
Thanks so much for the great ideas!! Gonna go through my kitchen and look for containers that I can repurpose.
what great ideas! I’m also lucky enough to have had an antique business & so many of my old items make great “containers’ e.g. wooden cheese boxes, lovely old jars used for peanut butter etc., wire baskets and baskets in general. All repurposed!
I also use some of them items for my craft storage. I like my peg board which holds almost all embellishments. You can purchase them at local hardware store for a decent price. Thank you for sharing all your ideas there were couple I will have to use now thank you.
Love your ideas, I am sure I can use some of these as I am redoing my Craft Room. If I win I could sure use that book of ideas to help redo.
Great storage ideas! I have taken old potato chip cans, cut them to different heights, and covered them with a patterned paper. They are sturdy and hold my paintbrushes, scissors and markers. Love reusing items like that.
More crafty storage tips and ideas, please! … Patricia
I use plastic creamer containers without the labels for string or yarn balls. Thanks for sharing ur great ideas!
there is the curtain rod behind the door trick to hang punches off of, yeah
Oh, I love the ice cube tray idea to store buttons, I’ll have to go find some!
I use baskets for all kinds of things, and old jars hold my buttons. otherwise I need lots of help!
Use an inexpensive plastic case with compartments & sealed lid intended for jewelry makings to store my little sponge triangular pieces that I use for softening the edges of cardstock. It holds several pieces so I can keep one for every color ink I use for sponging. Love the great storage ideas presented here and look forward to more!
I keep thinking I need to reorganize my disaster of a craft area – love all the handy ideas!
My craft “room” is wherever I can stash something or move something else out of the way for the most part. I am fortunate to have a very big kitchen so I do have 2 tables permanently set up there for crafting. One is in a corner and the space under it is totally filled with containers. I have found the bottoms of Velvetta boxes to be super sturdy and great for organizing. Can even decorate them if you are ambitious. Also like the plastic containers that you buy mushrooms in. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
I would love to win the magazine. I am always looking for new ways to improve my organization and who better to learn from than “Real” crafters! I often wonder about those rooms I see in magazines where everything is in place. I am a simi-neat crafter, however, if you don’t make some kind of a mess it makes me wonder about the creative process….I’m just saying
~
Thank you for the opportunity.
Thanks!! Love ideas on a budget – this is so much more realistic.
I use weekly pill containers, the ones with separate compartments for each day, to store tiny embellishments like beads, brads, rhinestones and eyelets. They’re very inexpensive and they close securely.
Great ideas! I use used salsa jars for painting and used spaghetti jars for pencils. Thanks for sharing.
Katie B.
Thank you for the great ideas. I like repurposing things in my craft area. I would like to win the great ideas magazine to get lots of ideas. Thank you.
I still use plastic bags for my loose ribbons as then it is very packable, a mini tool cabinet for all of my buttons (sorted by colour), a spice rack works for my ribbon on spools and then the plastic draw units for lots of other stuff. I love the extra large Ziploc bags for sorting my paper (by colour) into and they also work in terms of storing my current page projects. Love some of the other ideas but I thought pens were suppose to be stored lying down so the ink doesn’t dry out?
I love finding practical solutions for storage. I use the little fabric bins at Target. Cheap yet cute and colorful.
Ohmygosh Terri. Such good ideas. I use cheap plastic food storage containers to keep my embossing powder in – one for each color. I put a plastic spoon inside so when I want to emboss, I open the container, scoop out the powder over my project and dump the excess back in the container! It eliminates the step of using a tray to pour the powder back into the original container.
I keep my steel dies magnetic folders I made. I took cheep 1/2″ binders, placed a piece of adhesive-backed magnet on each side, and my dies stick to that! I also keep a page protector on the rings to hold die cuts that I could use on future projects.