Inspiration Friday: Sandy's Scrappin' Space!

I have thoroughly enjoyed checking out all the beautiful craft rooms posted on our blog this year...and wish I had such a thing of beauty to share with you! At the moment, my future craftroom is an unfinished corner of our basement...currently home to my husband's tools :)

Until then...

My chief scrapping/crafting area is this awesome hutch my husband built for me. It sits in our dining room and closes up completely to cover up my mess, and keep little hands out of my stuff!

Let me take you on a tour!

When the whole thing is opened up, I have all this at my disposal:

I love having everything right at my fingertips - and I love having everything organized into labeled "homes"...crafting OCD, anyone?!

Hanging on the left door (which has reinforced hinges) are bins with miscellaneous small items - adhesive, tools, pens, etc. I love these bins - easy to throw things in and find, but still look organized:
All my cardstock (and recently finished projects...) is on horizontal shelving, with various other containers next to it.

On the right door I have a cork board for all kinds of things - this usually looks terribly messy as my two-year-old recently decided it would be fun to peel some of the cork off the door and pull down some of the items pinned up there...keeping it real, right?!
One item of interest is my letter storage. Whenever I have mismatched parts of alphabets - chipboard, die-cut, whatever - I sort them by letter in this bin:
I keep acrylic stamps organized in CD cases by topic (thank you, birthday, etc.) but keep the original packaging sheet for reference on manufacturer, set, etc. in this altered BG lunchbox:
These are my embellishment boxes:
Unless I have something set aside for a MemoryWorks assignment or other project where I need to know the manufacturer, etc., I de-package everything and sort by color.

Underneath the desk, I have another set of clear plastic bins and a pull-out rolling cart with hanging files for patterned paper. This is where most of the action is! I organize paper I want to keep separate in their original sets up front (MW Express kits, MW current paper kits, etc.) and put all my leftover pieces, generic paper, older stuff, etc. in files according to color or theme. I just realized I took the picture with the cart facing backwards so you can't see my labels...I'm sure you get the idea :)
I use a large accordion folder to keep scraps of paper in (I generally only keep full-size and card-size paper out in the top of the hutch), sorted by color:

Stickers and die-cuts are currently in a Scrap-in-style binder, organized by color (letter stickers) or loosely by theme (baby, family, etc.). This isn't always ideal...but it works for now!

One VERY good thing about having such a small space is that I am forced to keep things organized and culled regularly. I go through EVERYTHING about once a year and donate my excess to either my kids, friends or family members, or to my children's school. If I don't keep my paper under control, the hanging files rapidly get filled and won't allow for new stuff...so out with the old!

Thanks for visiting my little space! Have a GREAT day - do something creative!