Making Room for the Crafter in Me

Between graduate school, working 25 hours a week, starting a photography business, teaching at my final field experience, adapting to married life, and driving my husband crazy, I have little extra time.   Some days I leave for work at 8am and get home from class at 10:30pm.  The little time that I do have left, I blog, spend time with my friends (which does not happen enough), and spend time with my adorable husband.  However, none of the things I do are solely “me” activities.  Sometimes I need a little me time, to clear my head, to feel good about myself, and to re-inspire myself for the next week or two.

Usually, me time includes crafting because it can be done cheaply, it is incredibly inspirational, and it helps us have pretty things without having to spend lots of money.  However, all of my crafty supplies are in our laundry/storage room which we have to go through our bathroom to get to.  It is not convenient at all, so we usually don’t do things that involve dragging boxes out of the storage room because that adds tons of extra time.



For example, when I made our “S” pillow, I spent nearly half an hour lugging all the materials I needed (sewing machine, scissors, sewing kit, sewing supplies, paper, etc.) from the storage room to our kitchen table upstairs.  When I am already limited on time to myself, I hate spending part of it just getting ready to do something fun and inspirational.

The problem we face with this whole scenario is that we don’t have another room to make into a craft room, which I would love, but it’s just not practical or even possible right now.  We barely have any extra space in our bedroom or living room.  As much as we want to live in a beautiful home with a room for every want and need, we would rather have spaces that fit our needs, regardless of whether they are completely pleasant to the eye (although that is always a bonus).  So, we decided (okay, it was more of a solo decision made by me – my hubby is great enough to let me do my own thing from time to time) to add an itty-bitty craft area.  But where would we put it?

Well, we brought down the bookcase I made with my dad so we could have our books closer, so that meant even less space in the living room.



It’s not shown in this photo, but it sat to the right of our entertainment stand.  That left the area next to our bedroom door, to the left of the access panel sticking out of the far wall in the photo above.  However, a craft area requires some kind of table surface, and that space has no room since we need a walkway to get into our bedroom.

So, we did a little rearranging and this is what we came up with:



We moved the bookcase to the empty spot on the far wall (I’m still working on how to arrange the books – bookcases can sometimes be a little chaotic with all the different book colors, but I’m not about to cover them all).  This arrangement gave us a tiny area next to the entertainment stand for a craft area.

When my parents came to visit us a couple weeks ago, they brought up a vintage sewing table they thought would be perfect.  Here it is in the space (it will be painted once I decide on a color):





Luckily, me sewing machine just barely fits in the drop down area so I can keep it close by without having it sitting out.  the top of the table has hinges so it opens up to twice the size, and it’s on casters so I can move it to the couch or somewhere else in the room if I don’t want to be cramped in the corner, keeping the bathroom door from opening.  It is not the ideal arrangement, but it’s the only one that makes sense.

This is just the first step for this little craft nook.  I have small dreams of what I want it to become over the next couple months (since this is not our main priority right now).  I did some searching around for what other people have done with small spaces to make little craft nooks:



















I would love to go all girl-crazy on the space, but because I share this room with my macho husband (if macho men secretly love Anne of Green Gables and are obsessed with babies), I’m going to keep his wants in mind as well.  I would love to teach Mr. Converse Sneakers to sew (once I officially learn how), so if I keep the area a little more gender-neutral, maybe he will get his craft on as well!  I’ve never really been one to crush on macho men, anyway.  I love seeing my man in an apron or covered in paint.

I’ll keep you posted as we make over our little crafty corner and I’ll definitely let you know what I create in that little space.  Stay tuned this week to read about my first test run in the new craft nook.  It does involve my sewing machine, but I wouldn’t call it a craft.

Where do you get your craft on?