A dark and scary place

I never, ever in a million years thought I would show pictures of my scary messy craproom (scraping/sewing/crafting/laundry room). Over the years it has become the dumping ground for extra furniture, half started projects, leftovers from completed projects, and also projects which I know I will never complete. And as much as I love to feed my creative side, my craproom just was too dark and scary for me even to want to work on. It was a lost cause in my book and I had written it off.

Until last Friday, when I decided to do something about it. My BFF inspired me. She was in the middle of her own clean & purge process and it caused me to look at myself a little deeper and acknowledge my own issues. What kind of behavior am I modeling for my 9 year-old who has natural hording tendencies already and surrounds herself with loads and loads of stuff? I found myself frustrated with the flat-surface-syndrome going on in her bedroom where every flat surface is continually stacked up with stuff. Then, I looked around in my craproom and realized that I am a terrible role model! I have flat-surface-syndrome too!! After years and years of trying to make my crafting area workable, I finally got serious about making a change especially since my theme for 2010 is CLEAN-UP.

The first thing I did was to snap some pictures. Well, actually, that isn't true, first I spent 30 minutes trying to get items off the floor and make it more presentable, then I took some pictures.
So really, these are the "after" pictures... the really, really horrible stuff would have broken the camera and severely wounded what is left of my pride. And when I took these pictures, it wasn't to post them. Oh no, I wasn't going to do THAT! I just took the camera over to my BFF and asked her for some advise on what I should do. Being the wise and wonderful person she is, I didn't feel like she would judge me for my disaster and she gave me some great ideas. (You may want to click on the collage picture to really appreciate the mess of my craproom.)

I took the advise of my BFF & decided COLOR would be my jumping off point. Friday night, I went to Home Depot to pick up a color to go with the existing flooring. I found Martha Stewart Araucana Teal. I worked hard to clear out enough stuff Friday evening, so I could start painting on Saturday morning. Steve took care of the removal of the shelves and all of the heavy lifting and even agreed to help me do the painting {Thank you, Honey!}. Thankfully, it was only one wall and the paint was amazing... it only took one coat! That never happens and really was a key time saver.

My next goal, after adding color, was to use what I had. I have been buying containers and storage units over time and hoped it would ultimately make my room more usable. The issue was that I wasn't using these items appropriately and I simply had too.much.stuff. So, I committed to not buy any.more.stuff! The goal was to purge, purge & purge some more. I made a pile of items to take to Goodwill and put a bunch of stuff straight to the garbage. I really tried to evaluate what I had, what was working and if it wasn't working, why not? I spent 8 hours on Sunday doing this and even had Abby helping with sorting through my scrapbook paper. It was hard work... not hard physically, but hard for my brain. I had to fight the urge to keep everything and to find appropriate places to put everything.

Ultimately, I did end up buying a few more items to make the transformation complete, but I was able to reuse, re-purpose or update many of my existing items.

Here was my purchase list:
1) Home Depot - 1 gallon of paint = $27
2) Target - curtain rod, curtain clips, glass drawer pulls & two large glass jars: $32
3) Walmart - 4 yards of fabric & 4 yards of trim: $14.

Total expenses: $73

So, how did it turn out? Judge for yourself... (you can click on the collage and it will open up larger)

I am VERY, VERY pleased with the results. It just looks so bright and happy and CLEAN! I still have some drawers to finish sorting through and organizing, but it is about 90% complete and I have gone ahead and starting creating some actual crafts again. JOY!

I had a plain, pine bulletin board, which wasn't being used {no before pics taken}. All I did was paint the frame with the teal, stapled fabric over the cork & hot glued trim to cover the staples. I added a fabric bow and just love the over-sized push-pins from Wal-mart.
All I did with this chair was to paint it out, again with the teal wall color and made a slip-cover over the existing chair pad.

I removed the fabric that previously covered the three drawers of my sewing table, then painted them teal & replaced the knobs with glass knobs.

I replaced the previous button jar, which was too small and consolidated two existing ribbon jars
with these two large jars that I picked up at Target for $5 each. I love that there is enough room in the jars for me to stir around and actually get something out to use.
I made a little cafe curtain out of fabric I bought at Wal-Mart & with a new rod and clips, the window was done. I was able to display my growing collection of R's using a shelf I had spray painted a couple months ago, but had never hung up. I already had the framed pictures because I had entered these three photos in the Ottertail county fair back in July. So all I needed was some nails and I added them in a row on the right side of the window.
A couple other uses for the fabric I bought was to make a little fabric cozy to cover the former navy blue sewing bench, which easily removes so I can still use the bench for storing and I also used it to cover and add a pillow to the white chair. Now I have room for multiple people to join me in my new craft haven, so come on over! I think it has gone from a true crap-room to a usable craft room.