CreativeCritters Blog: Setting up my new craft room

One of the (many) challenges of moving is setting up the craft room all over again. At least I'm lucky enough to have a room to do my crafts in (although I do have to share it with Miss Kitty- LOL). I'm still missing several boxes of my stuff (the moving company located them, but still hasn't delivered them), but I think I've got the majority of my craft stuff. The new room is about the same size as my old craft room, so everything seems to fit okay. I've got plastic dressers for all my beads, tools, and miscellaneous "stuff" related to sculpting. Eventually I'd like to put up some sort of shelves for all my books, but for the moment I have them organized on top of the dressers. I've got a few round tool caddies for my various sculpting tools and so far I've been moving those around as I need the tools. I also use plastic utensil trays for some of my other tools and supplies.

I don't have everything unpacked yet, but I do have all the things I use on a regular basis (mainly my sculpting supplies) unpacked. This room is also being used as temporary storage for a few items, so eventually I will have more room and be able to organize it a bit better.
For the moment most of my fabric is in bags in the closet, along with my yarn and other knitting supplies. I got rid of my somewhat bulky (and not totally efficient) crafting table and downsized to a simple card table. It takes up less room and actually doesn't seem to get quite as cluttered.

One thing I do like is the way I have my pasta machine set up now. It's much easier to use like this. I put a ceramic tile on top of a small dresser (which is just the right height for me to stand at) and clamped the pasta machine to the top of the dresser and the tile. I used non slip shelf liner under the tile to keep it from sliding around as I use the pasta machine. It's easy to keep the area clean, and since this is exclusively for conditioning clay there's nothing else getting in the way and cluttering the area up. I've already completed several custom order sculptures in the new craft room and am continuing to move and adjust things as needed. I know it will take a while to get everything "just right", but at least the room feels fairly comfortable and conducive to creating. I love that there's a nice big window with a beautiful view to see while I'm working. And it lets in lots of natural light during the day, which makes it much easier to see what I'm doing. I've noticed that it's much brighter here in Arizona than it ever was back in Ohio. It will be really interesting to see what winter is like here. It has to be better that those long, cold, dark Ohio winters! So that's my craft room for now, although I'm sure it will continue to evolve and improve over the next several months. Miss Kitty certainly seems to approve though. She's even trying to learn how to sculpt birds ;-)