Posted on: July 25, 2006
A Spot to Scrapbook, a Corner to Crochet
A craft room tailor-made to suit your interests can nourish your inner artist – and clear your groaning cupboards of creative clutter. Finally, a place to put the yarn!
By Paige Bowie
CTW Features
Stacked and ordered: Bins, shelving and storage boxes can keep craft room supplies organized while still being accessible. Image courtesy Image courtesy The Container Store
After Kimberly Shilling upgraded to a larger house, she found herself with a lot more space to play with.
“I had all this room and all these blank walls,” she says. “I’ve always liked to scrapbook, so I decided to make one of the bedrooms I didn’t need into a scrapbook room.”
Shilling, a 28-year-old graphic designer who lives in Manchester, Md., is among legions of Americans devoting permanent space in their homes to arts and crafts.
“Homemade things right now are really, really big,” says interior designer Grady Cooley, owner of Grady Cooley Interiors in New York City.
Usually, people start out making things for friends and family, but if they’re good, their hobby can grow into a side business, or even a full-time occupation. At that point, Cooley says, a little corner of the kitchen or family room just doesn’t cut it anymore.
“For a lot of people it’s not just a hobby but a serious business, so I tell clients to approach a craft room like it’s a professional environment,” he says. “You need a space you can really work in.”
Professional organizer Terri Beverley, owner of Spacesprit in Dallas, says the first step in designing a craft room is to collect everything that will go into the space and organize it into categories.
Paints should go in one pile, fabrics in another, and so on.
Once you know exactly what materials you have to work with, and in what quantities, you’ll know how much room you need and what kinds of shelving and storage to buy.
That’s also a good time to come up with a budget. If you find that you need twice as many drawers as you were anticipating, consider cheaper alternatives, such as plastic storage bins.
“Fortunately there are just a million storage options, so you can find anything for any budget,” Beverley says.
The room also will be different depending on what the actual craft is. If it’s pottery, you may need a spot for a kiln. If it’s sewing, the sewing machine will need a home.
Before you go shopping, think about how long you’re going to live in the home, says Beverley.
In a condo or starter home you anticipate selling at some point, buy trollies and bins that you can take with you. If you’re a retiree and it’s your last home, it may be worth it to invest in built-in shelves and cabinetry.
“Personally, I prefer the built-ins because it looks neater,” Beverley says. “You can hide things. But other people like stuff out in the open where it’s accessible. That just comes down to individual preference.”
Designer Cooley and his clients plan craft rooms on paper before moving in furniture and supplies. That way, everything is organized and customized to the unique needs of the customer and the way that person works.
He recommends different table levels, for instance, depending on whether you like to work sitting down or standing up. And knowing what order a client accesses tools in, and how often they’re needed, will help determine where those tools should go.
Lighting is important, too. Cooley prefers at least one window with natural light.
“Especially if you’re working with paints or fabrics, we all know something can look totally different under a fluorescent light than it looks in sunlight,” he says.
Shilling read magazines and watched interior design TV shows to gain inspiration for her scrapbook room. “That’s a great place to get ideas,” she says.
Ultimately, she bought wire kitchen racks and big plastic tubs for ribbons, stamps, paper and the like. She likes the tubs because you can label them so materials are easy to find.
Scissors and other tools are hung on a pegboard. Again, no trouble finding what she needs in the midst of a project.
Stephanie Sokolove, a Newton, Mass., restaurateur and mother, created a craft room for her 8-year-old daughter, so her priority was to design a space that was childproof and child-friendly.
“She’s always doing little art projects for school, which can get pretty messy, so I made sure all the surfaces were washable,” she says. “I just think it should be a room nobody worries about.”
Fortunately, Sokolove had cabinetry and an island at her disposal. They’d been purchased for a kitchen remodel that never happened because the family decided to move rather than upgrade their old house.
There’s even a little miniature refrigerator in the island, so her daughter can snack or grab a cold drink while she’s working. But the best perk is the counter space. There’s lots of it. “We can put as big a piece of paper as we want up there,” she says.
Tera Leigh is the author of “How to Be Creative If You Thought You Never Could,” (North Light Books, 2003) and has a craft room in her Manchester, Md., home for painting, mosaics and paper crafts.
She based her design on furniture she already had, including a bookcase and an armoire. Leigh also thought about the process of her projects. “For me, I need a staging area where I can gather up all my supplies,” she says. “I wanted a big table where I could put everything I was working on at that moment.”
An organized storage system was critical, too. “I can’t work in a messy room,” Leigh says.
Even the colors she chose played into how she works-bright orange to spark inspiration and creativity.
“Some people want really plain, white walls to eliminate distractions, but me, I like color and texture, so I really just catered to myself,” she says. “It’s a creative wonderland. An oasis. A place a 6-year-old would want.”
That’s what it’s all about in the end, says Leigh. A craft room should be an indulgence, because crafting itself is a treat we give ourselves.
“You should give yourself a place to celebrate the joy of creating,” she says. “Even if it’s stuff you create and never give away or show anybody or sell, it’s worth it, because creativity nourishes your soul.”
