Wanna see my room?

Hello, everyone! I guess you think that I haven't been creating but I have .. I currently have 4 DT projects that I can't reveal yet .. but I will soon!  Promise!

 So, since I did a bit of re-organizing in my office/scrap room last week, I thought I would give you the quick cook's tour!  I really struggle with wanting to keep my office area looking more like an office and less like a regular scrap room. But I am trying to find a happy medium and I think I am on the road to achieving that .. though it looks more crafty with each bit of re-organization!

This first photo (above) is what you see as you walk down the hall to my office. I have a couple of awesome cherrywood curio cabinets that I once had in my living area ... but they have migrated here and I dearly love them.  You can see Mr Cricky sitting there on old typing table from when my hubby was still in business .. he's now semi-retired.

Upon entering the room this is what you see next. (And please excuse the Native American artwork if you don't favor it  .. a friend of ours was quite an artist and I love keeping some her stuff where I can enjoy it.) 

 I used to have more of an L arrangement but this new U shaped working area is working better for me.   If I'm paying bills, I can focus, but if I'm crafting, I can look out the window and enjoy the view.

I use my cherrywood desk for office projects but also that is where I ususally sit to choose my papers. See all those drawers under my desk? Totally full of nothing but paper .. and that's not even all of it. I did actually purge last week but am hanging on to all my faves and then some.  I do have a glass top on my desk, so when I have to work there because the craft table is FULL at least I don't have to worry about ruining the desk.

The craft table is purely functional. I have been intending t switch this out with an IKEA table but for the moment, I'm pretty happy just using this.  My drawers mostly hold supplies such as my adhesives, my sharps as I call my craft knives and blades, 2 drawers are devoted to hold all my bling, one drawer is for my stamps (thanks goodness I don't have much of that addiction .. yet!). Let's see what else .. there's a drawer for my Stickles and Liquid Pearls, one for inks, one for cardmaking basics, one for holding white cardstock for my Imagine. The other 3 are misc embellishments. I have 3 clear totes where my kneehole is that hold my ribbons. I have tried lots of storage ideas but have found that what works best for me is to sort my ribbon by color and keep those colors in separate ziploc baggies. Then the  baggies go in the totes. I also have a few Iris cases sitting around that are for my kit club items that haven't been used yet. Once I start using them, I merge them with my other supplies.

Just another shot of the drawers under my desk where I have my paper sorted by manufacturer. I look through these frequntly, so don't feel that there is much out of sight, out of mind going on.  Okay, now it's confession time: see those 3 totes 12.7 qt size ... crammed full of my Prima flowers with a handful of Petaloo.  Wish I could say that's all I have .. I do have a few other jars of them here and there. (It's a sickness, I know LOL ..  but I love them!) They are sorted by color .. which works great.

This is where my Imagine (early birthday) is going to live .. if the replacement ever gets here! I had it for one day and then it went crazy banging and trying to pull the mat through and wouldn't do anything else. PC says I should have my I back early next week, ugh! I hope it will be worth the aggravation! Right now my Gypsy is sitting there keeping the table warm.

Oh, my! This is not a pretty sight! Remember, I'm still organizing! But here is where I store my mats and my cartridges although I rarely need them since I use my Gypsy. I have additional trimmers down here as well as another tote that hold my old, old punches. The drawer holds ink cartridges, photo paper and cables.

This corner needs some work too but I keep my cropper hopper tote there with extra albums, pages and protectors and things like that. The small bookcase hold reference material, Xyrons, my heat gun and glue gun. I store my old Sissix die cut machine there and use it occassionally for embossing.

To the right of the closet is another Iris tower cart that holds all kinds of things. Sitting on top of it is an old Creative Memories paper organizer which holds my solid cardstock  .. looks like I need to stand it up a little straighter!  The drawer beneath it holds the remainder. There is a drawer with paints and foam stamps, a couple of drawers of ,, you guessed it .. more paper .. but this is where it usually ends up right before it makes the give-away box.

Inside the closet is another one of these paper organizers which holds misc patterend paper that I don't sort by manufacturer. Once a set starts getting used up, it gets moved over here.

Hmmm, I said I wasn't going to show this but here I am doing it ... tons of chipboard on the left, photo boxes full of photos .. as is the expando file.  Off to the right is where non-scrappy stuff lives.  Well, and my old sticker binders that hold little used paraphelnia.

Thought I'd mention that this is where the albums are that I'm more "currently" working on.  There is a drop down desk which a great little work surface.  But inside there is where I keep my mists, paints, diamond dust and that sort of thing. I also keep my Cricut cartridge booklets and overlays in photo boxes there.  The rest of the credenza is for office supplies and personal things like my Willow Tree Angel collection. 

Here is where I have moved my Expression for the time being. 

The door beside the Expression is where I do have a clear shoe organizer to hold some of my favorite punches. I actually need to get another one of these.  My room is very broken up by 2 doorways,  1 window, and 1 closet which doesn't leave alot of wall space for hanging anything, especially since a large portion of the room houses the curio cabinets and computer armoire .. so I'm happy making do however I can.

I have hung a couple of layouts though.

This one has a magnetic board and I change it out quite frequently with the newest or most favorite layout.

Around the corner and in the formal dining is another bookcase on which I have stored more completed albums.  I have another one of these in my sunroom but I'm quickly running out of space and think I'm going to have to start giving some of my work to the kiddos sooner rather than later.

I hope you've enjoyed the tour .. kind of scary putting my "life" out there for everyone to see!  It's not magazine ready but it sure serves the purpose  for me!  I'll just keep tweaking as I go!

See you back Friday for Stuck on U Sketches reveal day!