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If you had your dream stamp room, what would it contain? What would be your must haves?
DH told me he wants to give me a *real* stamping/scrapbooking room. I want to get all the input, pros and cons from the professionals! ;) I want to make sure to do this room up right.
What would you include?....
__________________ -:�:- Lisa -:�:- Stampin' Up! Demo
I recently renovated my crafting space - things to think about for me were what color to paint the walls (I ended up taking a favorite piece of scrapbook paper into HD so that they could match the color to the paint for me!); storage - as before, I find that closed storage is great for me - I am more creative when my room is not cluttered - I have a closet with racking and the sterilite 12x12 3 drawer containers for storing ink pads, papers, embellishments and my stamps; a work surface and chair at the right height for lengthy hours; paper storage - I have paper trays from display dynamics on a peg board on the wall (found them cheap on ebay) - it looks pretty and you can store alot of paper in a very small space; I have the Expedit bookcases from Ikea - great for a scrapper as they easily hold 12x12 paper holders and albums - they also have the Branna (I think) baskets that fit the shelves perfectly for items I like to have on hand but not on show!; great lighting is important too...
I really need to take photos of my room one day soon!
My dream scraproom would definitely have a table or counter that was tall enough that I could stand to do my work. The walls would be blue, the trim would be white, and I would have a beach theme going. I would also have a really deep shelving unit that would hold baskets.
__________________ I got a Nikon camera. I love to take photographs, so momma don't take my kodachrome away."
Paul Simon
I would totally switch to closed cabinet storage and countertops if money weren't an issue. I also have fun colors in my studio and I actually display some of my favorite creations!
__________________ Connie Petertonjes
Proud to be an Artist-In-Residence for Art Declassified
Location: rockin' the pink mojo wig in Ottawa, Canada
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I am very fortunate to have a stamp room. Check out my gallery for pictures.
I suggest a desk or counter area that is free of clutter so nothing gets in your way of creating a project. As you probably know, once the project gets started there will be enough *stuff* on the desk...paper,ink,stamps,punches,ribbon,embelishmen ts etc.etc....
Good lighting is manditory, late night stampers can atest to this!
A label maker will be your best friend.
For me, having my stash stored in drawers, baskets and boxes (all labeled of course, hence the label maker) helps me stay organized. I don't waste time trying to find stuff.
Also, I find I am not distracted by *visual clutter* with lots of open shelving.
A table for additional seating is also nice if you have other stamping friends who can come to your house to *play*.
Bottom line, follow your personal style, and have fun!
__________________ Some call me Pinky, some call me Lori - I answer to both Pinky's Pictorial DREAM as if you could live forever, LIVE as if you only have today.
wow...okay... I would love Nicole Heady's room...only thing its missing is George Clooney in boxers waiting to clean the stazon off my inky stamps.... or to whack the eyelette setter with the little mallot :-)
I have paper storage units from Sam's Club recessed into my wall - 2 of them are installed so they are flush with the wall (pics in my tiny gallery) - LOVE that.
Plastic rain gutter storage for fibers and yarns (I do fabric collage also).
Ikea towel bar storage for punches.
Binder rings and craft ziplocs for ribbons.
Wall and base cabinets (with drawers) from Home Depot (Mill's Pride) for all enclosed storage. LOVE enclosed storage!
Also have a big "armoire" type cabinet that holds all of my machines and large items. (Also enclosed)
Counter top and table - high and low options for working.
Sink - strange I know, but I use it constantly!
I'll try to get new pics after I finish rearranging and labeling!
__________________ Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth. -Charles Anderson Dana
wow...okay... I would love Nicole Heady's room...only thing its missing is George Clooney in boxers waiting to clean the stazon off my inky stamps.... or to whack the eyelette setter with the little mallot :-)
Wha ha ha, that's hilarious.
The best room I've ever seen is Erikia Ghumm's from Scrapbook Etc. She uses creative things for storage like old suitcases, baskets, and the room has a less industrial look than plastic and metal storage bins. I blogged about Erikia's and my room here.
My ultimate room, though, would have maximum light and enough space to have friends come scrap and stamp with me in it. A friend of mine has what I call a stamping suite - a big room for her classes and an attached room for her personal crafting. And a big, ole window that lights it all. Yumm.
Not strange at all! My studio is in my basement. We had our basement finished about 3 years ago. The contractor is actually the one who suggested we put a utility sink in the small unfinished area (which is accessible through my studio). He heard me mention that I wanted a sink in my room and he suggested we put it in the unfinished area right off my room, so that when we resell the house, the room could be used for more than just a craft area. I love having a utility sink so easily accessible to my room. I use it a ton!
__________________ Connie Petertonjes
Proud to be an Artist-In-Residence for Art Declassified
well I am fortunate in that right now my scrap are is 10x20' and eventually will be be 20'x20. But its in our unfinished basement and eventually we will be finishing our 2 car garage that is under the house as a giant studio for me.
I won't have natural lighting but other than that it will eventually (when time and finances permit) be just what I want
I already have some kitchen cabinets for enclosed storage and a small 6' conference room table as my primary work area. I will be adding an Ikea Expedit to hold all my paper as well as several extra folding tables for friends to come and play.
Things in my dream room include:
-a sink and maybe even a half bath downstairs
-more counter space and enclosed storage
-cute storage containers
-over head Ott and other task lighting
-more electrical outlets. Between computers, printers, back up hard drives, scanners, my wishblade, camera charging, heat gun, desk and decorative table laps, tv dvd player....well you get the idea I ran out pretty darn quickly.
-a comfy couch for those rare occasions I might let me DH come hang out and watch TV while I scrap. lol
Right now I'm shooting for walls and a painted floor. I have to remember small steps. lol
In the gallery under Special Collections is a section for Stamping Spaces. You will find pictures and details of every kind of space imagineable. Also search for similar threads. This topic comes up frequently as we all scheme and dream for that perfect space!
If you check out my gallery I have several pics of my space. I'm most happy with my drawer cabinets and pegboard.
__________________ Jennifer, SU Demonstrator
"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment" -Ben Franklin
I agree with everyone that recommends closed storage space so that most everything is behind closed doors. I love the clean clutterfree look, but you would never know it looking at my space. I am a "standing" worker bee so my dream room would have a large working space higher up than the usual desk, with a barstool type of thing to sit on or lean into while working.
I agree with everyone that recommends closed storage space so that most everything is behind closed doors. I love the clean clutterfree look, but you would never know it looking at my space. I am a "standing" worker bee so my dream room would have a large working space higher up than the usual desk, with a barstool type of thing to sit on or lean into while working.
Yup - I stand too, but I also have a large worktable where I can sit or work on larger projects. In my next space, I would try to also have a small area dedicated as a tabletop photo studio - for photographing cards. Right now, I just get stuff out and put it away now everytime I take a photo - it works, but if I had the room I'd love to just leave it up. I use kitchen cabinets as well and I have my stuff arranged so that inks, scissors, permanent markers, glitter, embellishments, etc are all up top - so my DS can't reach them!
I'm going to renovate my stamping area soon and the main thing I'm looking for is closed storage (as others have said) - but I'm looking for doors that open and then slide out of the way, maybe into the top of the cabinet so I don't lose shelf space. This way, everything can be completely closed up when I want the room to look neat, and fully open and accessible when I'm working on a project. This type of cabinet is hard to find, though. :( I'll also put in countertops and plenty of shallow drawers.
Wow great ideas...the room with all the pics on the blog is just amazing. I was recently nominated on one of the HGTV design shows for a craft room make over because of all the cards I send to the troops.....I am keeping my fingers crossed!
Wow great ideas...the room with all the pics on the blog is just amazing. I was recently nominated on one of the HGTV design shows for a craft room make over because of all the cards I send to the troops.....I am keeping my fingers crossed!
How cool is that? Best of luck! Hope you get that make over!!!
Wow great ideas...the room with all the pics on the blog is just amazing. I was recently nominated on one of the HGTV design shows for a craft room make over because of all the cards I send to the troops.....I am keeping my fingers crossed!
I think a sink has already been mentioned, but if I really could go all out and could have absolutely everything I would probably want a kitchenette with working stove (for shrinky dinky stuff), fridge/freezer (for faux cracked glass technique etc) and a bathroom.
I am thankful for what I do have, but my "stamp room" is in the basement so I have to trek up one flight for a bathroom or freezer, and a second flight to use the stove (we have a split level). It's great exercise, but it's lousy in terms of toting stamped projects through half the house.
hi! I thought I'd add a few notes to this. I just had a Professional Organizer help me with my craft room. She really gave me some great ideas..common sense..but she put it in a form that I'll remember it. As we disassembled my old craft room, we thought about eveything in terms of how often do i touch it. She called it "Prime Real Estate" worthy....kind of like you wouldn't build your garage on your beach front. So I bought a huge L shaped desk from IKEA, with the optional appendages. The back side of the L, backs up to a wall that is filled with bookshelves. I can easily roll my chair a couple of feet and grab all the stuff back there. The other side of the L desk that opens, faces a large closet. In the closet I have Elfa rolling racks/shelves...pull out mesh draws. One of the units is about 6 feet tall, and houses my entire SU stamp collection. I've sorted the stamps by draw/ by theme....like flowers, christmas, manly, kids, words and alphabets, etc. I used cheap metal bookends at the back of each row, if it wasn't full...so that when you remove stamps, they still stay on their edge, so you can read the set names.
The other elfa unit is shorter and holds all my punches, ribbons, etc. My SU ink caddy sits on a corner of my desk. I just bought a cd swivel tower to sit at the L of my desk. I'm going to ask my son to put dowel rods on the sides..and hang my wheels...like the units at SUInks.com. And then all my unmounted and acrylic stamps will be in cd holders on that rack. Eventually I'd like to get all my SU stamps unmounted and on the rack too. (though my little sviwel cd tower only holds 200 cd cases...so I might have to expand later on :( ).
Paper...I have a cropper hopper (I think) black file box on wheels that holds my 12x12 solid colors, and I store it under one end of the L desk, out of my way, but easily reachable. At the opposite end of the L desk is a normal metal filing cabinet (2 draw, so it fits under my desk). And I have all my 8.5x11 in there, including scraps. I love it! It's so handy!
I wish I had a sink (and bar refrig! lol). And a work counter elsewhere in the room would be great, for the stuff that I don't use every time I sit down to work.
So may craft corner is about 8'x8' (plus the closet area). It's a 15x16 foot room....so I also have a 5'x5'x1' (approx) dark shelf..that is like a tic tac toe board...so it all the cubbies, I have straw baskets that totally fill the square..so that's where I store all kinds of photos, old scrapbooks, etc. Plus saved some of the squares for room decor type items. There's a comfy chair in the corner, sort of in front of the book shelf unit. On the other side of the room is a couch. The tv and dvd/vcr are hung in the corner.
now maybe this is dirty pool...but I keep rest of the house kind of warm in the summer and cold in the winter....but my craft room has it's own a/c/heat controls...so I keep the craft room real comfortable. So my kids (i'm widowed) migrate to the craft room and hang with me. Is that unfair? My work tables pretty deep (32"?), so sometimes the kids pull up chairs on the back side of it, and make a page, or paint, or whatever.
98% of my stuff is within arms reach, if I roll my chair a foot or two. I really like having everything so handy.
I should confess....I'm so bad....my electric bills were running $500/month...in the bad months. Now that we're using less electricity in rest of the house...my bills are more like $200/month...so that gives me $300 extra dollars a month to spend on FUN!!!! We still sleep in the warmer part of the house...but the kids haven't fussed a bit, and even I have to admit that sleeping with it 80degrees and the ceiling fan on...it's quite comfortable. I never thought I would say that! What we don't do for stamping!!! ;)
Location: keeping my 7 yr old still, while I'm in stampin' bliss!
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So, I'm getting a new craft room for Christmas. I want the countertops (probably from Ikea) and upper closed storage (Ikea again). My question is can you mount the counters to the wall? Or do they need to "sit" on some sort of cabinets? I want an "L" configuration and part of it will go across 3 window panels. You can pm me if you'd like.
Everyone's spaces were so great. I seen one I like on the following website. It's Amanda's and was so organized and pretty. I love the colors she used and the special touches she placed around the room. Here is the link:
I also think a great room deserves some wonderful relaxing music so I'd say put a CD player in the room and play your favorites. Happy Stamping !!!!! Beckaroni
__________________ THE SECRET TO CONTENTMENT IS KNOWING HOW TO ENJOY WHAT YOU HAVE. Lin Yutang
Lisa - firstly kudos to your DH - aren't they wonderful!!!! Mine helped me do my craft room a few months back (pics are in my gallery of before & after). All I'd like to say is storage is extremely important but ACCESS is even more important - access to your work area, access to all your stuff you need to use and access to your stored items. I have my dream room purely and simply because it is a room dedicated to my craft work and because it is a work in progress. I have things set up now as I want them, but I know that as I learn more techniques and get more stuff, I'll need to adapt my room accordingly. That's why I went into the project using what I had - so I can work out what I need!!!!!! I guess what I mean is, the room is the start of it - there are so many options available to you and you can find some wonderful ideas right here on SCS from other users. I didn't have a lot of money to spend at the time I did my room but I wanted to make sure I had a work area that I could get to easily (access) and that I could get to all my necessities at any time (again, the access thing). Now that I've been using it a few months, I've moved things around a little, had some ideas on what I'd now like to get to make it more functional.
I hope this helps - if you're like the rest of us, you want it all RIGHT NOW!!! LOL!!! You're going about it the right way by planning it first - personally, I'd hold off on spending up big or making too many permanent additions to your room until you know exactly what you NEED (and what you want - lol!!!).
I hope it all goes well and I can't wait to see the end result!!!
Dream Stamp/Scrap Room?
My fave space would be like Amanda's
