evolution of my craft room {blogtober day 3}

Today marks two years since I started setting up my craft room. In those two years, the space has both worked exactly as I’d planned, and also changed quite a bit. The basics are still as they were when I first set it up; the shelves haven’t moved, the boxes have shuffled a bit but the general gist is the same. The desk is more paint stained, the wood is darkening with age and the small amount of sun exposure it gets.

But it also looks completely different. The wall behind my work space is filling out, my vision board is messier, little pockets of space are being claimed for storage. So in honour of my studio’s birthday, I thought it would be fun to do some now-and-then comparisons with photos I took in early January 2024 while waiting for our builder’s photographer to come through.

Same same but different. Today’s photo in the right definitely looks more lived in. The laundry bench in the background isn’t quite as clear either – that’s my Quiltmas quilt waiting to be de-cat-haired so I can share it on the blog. Boxes aren’t tucked in as precisely, there’s a couple of hanging baskets on the end (left side of the photo) that store scraps and gadgets. There’s a stack of show ribbons on display, breaking up the more neutral palette of the original photo. And you can also see a peek of the wall on the right filling up.

The Cricut desk – oh my gosh look at the distant of my pegboard now!! I’ve also added my Selphy printer to this desk. The hanging basket is clearly well overdue for a clean out, I’ve removed the white overhead basket, and the little side railing is doubling as a shelf and getting rather full also. I dared not take a photo of the storage area under this table; suffice to say it’s a hot mess!

The main desk area is probably showing the most wear of the last two years – look how neat and clean the before is. Now, it’s pockmarked with the ghosts of a hundred projects that have passed over it…and that’s after I’ve changed it out for a clean shelf! The collection of things I store along the back wall has also grown (and truth be told, could use a cull!), as has the bits and bobs pegged to the vision board – though some stalwarts remain. Pokey, the quilt camp carrot, a favourite polaroid of my babies, a feather collected by Beetle, most noticebly. The gap where the IVAR didn’t quite fit what was supposed to be a linen press has become an ideal storage nook for all manner of bulky tools, and to the left of the “now” photo, you can see the quilting rulers I now store on there with thanks to my old faithful favourite, the command hook.

My overhead boxes remain one of my best organisational choices – in two years, the system has held strong, and even when the craft room is an absolute bomb site, I’m able to quickly find a home for all my belongings. I have shuffled their location around somewhat, to get my more commonly used boxes directly over my working desk, and of course, who could miss the addition of the big green splotch of paint? The needlework box was on the ground (thankfully closed!), when I managed to drop a bottle of paint on the ground which promptly broke and then splattered EVERYWHERE, leading to a much panicked cleaning of the wall and tiles.

I also have made my trolley a regular part of my craft room organisation, and it even gets pressed into service as a work space – I bought a new shelf to replace the mess that is my desk, but unfortunately it’s gone downhill in quality, and instead of nice natural timber, it is clearly remnant timber laminated to make a full board, and is not appealing as a surface to work and photograph on. Instead, I now use it to pop on top of my trolley, and it forms a return to convert my standing desk into an L shape – perfect for larger, messier projects where I would like to spread out a bit, but the fold out table is too low.

More thoughts on how my space influences my creative practice

It’s often messy, the desk is as cluttered as my burgeoning to-do list, and there’s not always space for the projects my mojo is craving (notice the absence of my loom?), but it’s my own little nook and it works for me. It’s fun, on this anniversary of its inception, to look back at how far it’s come.

And now that I’ve cleaned it and photographed it, the long weekend is upon us and it’s time to go mess it up again! Happy Friday friends, have a ripper long weekend!