The first photo is of my general work space as you come up the stairs. The table along the right side extends almost along the entire side of one wall.
This wall is where I house most of my scrapping supplies.
I like to have everything within arm's reach and spread out while I work. You can also see my printer and my
embellishment carousel on top of my shelving unit. This is all right behind my chair.
And here is a close up of my desk. You can also see most of my papers along my
green wall.
I love this storage unit from IKEA. I bought two
of them. This one houses all my stamps, punches, ink, embossing powders, which
you can see in more detail in the next photo...
See what I mean?
:)
I keep all my mini and regular sized albums in
these shelves along with my ribbon.
This half wall is where the stairs are and you
can kind of see my kids' work area as well. This is where they do their
homework. Thanks so much for taking a peek at my space—now who's
ready to come scrap with me?
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For the last ten years, I've been a basement scrapbooker with the exception of the year we lived in a house with no basement. I've scrapbooked in a laundry room, in a partially finished basement room (it had pretty blue walls but no heat + a concrete floor), a carpeted basement corner wedged in between the laundry closet and the cat litter alcove, and most recently, the part of the basement in the home we're renting for the year that boasts the only two outlets in the entire basement. We move around a lot because my husband is in the Air Force—in fact, the photos I'm about to show you will be outdated in the next few months, because you guessed it—we're moving again (from an off-base rental house to a base house at F.E. Warren AFB).
In every house we've lived in, I've carved out a space for a craft room or corner—even if it comes with giant spiders and the inability to use lighting and a space heater at the same time. Someday I dream of a dedicated above-ground room with actual daylight streaming through actual windows, but I'm not complaining. I can contract or expand my space to fit whatever is available. Come see!
Here is the view when you first come down the stairs; I timed these pictures to coincide with the approximately one hour a day this area gets sunlight through the window. I am never able to scrapbook during this hour, in case you were wondering. I think it's the only hour of the day that the spiders nap. The rest of the time, they're lurking everywhere. I've appropriated one of Matt's old uniform boots as my most important scrapbooking tool this year. : )
There are two outlets in the entire basement. I have all the lights plugged in through a dangerous web (read: tripping hazard) of my own—extension cords and an outlet strip. I've learned the hard way that I cannot turn all three lights on at the same time as the space heater during the winter. If you've known me any length of time, you know that being caught in a pitch-black basement is enough to cause me nightmares for a month. Or a lifetime! I still remember running through my childhood basement at top speed to avoid the monsters. I haven't actually changed all that much since I was 7.
These faux-Metro shelves are a great solution for my hodge-podge storage. I can fit a lot of things in these three workhorses—paper, books, photos, albums, embellishments, sewing supplies, cards (I make about 200 cards a year on top of scrapbooking!), letterpress supplies, ziploc bags of scraps (two for patterned paper, five more grouped monochromatically), full set of Simple Scrapbooks and Martha Stewart Kids, partial set of How magazine, negatives, other crafting books, buttons, projects-in-progress, and other miscellaneous craft supplies. I make a lot of things besides scrapbook pages, and I try to keep all my supplies together. My goal is to reclaim the bottom right shelf which is currently being used by all the projects-in-progress I rounded up in last year's move. When I finish them, I can consolidate the items on the floor onto that shelf!
To the right of the window is my very fancy tool table. I haven't had room for a second table since the blue wall basement room I moved from in 2006; one of the benefits (the only benefit?) of an unfinished basement is that I can spread out quite a bit. The desk top used to have its own legs when it belonged to the library at Kent State, but it was discarded and found its way to me—only the top was worth refinishing and saving. Eventually I plan to attach better legs than the sawhorses I stole from Matt. I still haven't refinished my prized doors behind the makeshift table; that's on the list for this summer.
Did you hear that noise? That was the sound of Jody Wenke and Jody Dent-Pruks passing out and hitting their heads after realizing my IKEA mini-file cabinets aren't labeled. Heh. I'll get to it eventually. After many failed storage solutions, I realized that a rifler like myself needs drawers that can be opened and shut easily, with enough room for ransacking in the meantime. The cabinet to the left contains rubber stamping and printmaking supplies; I bought it from Home Decorators about ten years ago. Would anyone like to cough up $315 so I can buy the 14 drawer one? : )
And so on and so forth.
This house came with a built-in pegboard. I've never had a pegboard before and I think I like it. It isn't particularly well-arranged because I was on a mission to get the entire house unpacked after moving last summer in under two weeks—but I can find things on it, so it's fine. The table with fold-down sides (which, by the way, is the cleanest it's ever been since I purchased it at IKEA two years ago) has three storage drawers on each side—perfect for housing oft-used tools and supplies. The lazy-susan thing on top came from the kitchen section of Target; I toss any miscellaneous itty-bitty items left from working on a page or project in those two tins—it hasn't been properly sorted in, er, maybe three years? It's kind of like the Land of Misfit Toys—a stray rub-on here, a label there, some snips of unmatched ribbon...
To the left of the lamp is a three-drawer dresser my mom received at my baby shower from her fellow teachers at Stow High School—it's been with me for 37.5 years, painted one color or another. (The space heater is sitting on it at the moment). It holds paint and general art supplies. As much as I like my matching cabinets, I like that dresser even more : )
