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Craft Studio Tour and Organization Ideas

Heya! It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted…because, well, let’s be honest- I was starting to feel like there wasn’t anyone reading.

I post videos on YouTube and see immediate responses- comments, likes, and views. With the blog, it’s slowed waaaaaaay down.

I mean, who has time to read blogs anymore?

Well, at least a few of you….. because I got a couple of emails wondering if I was okay, or if we’ve moved again (god forbid!)…. so I decided to try posting again a couple of times per week just to test the waters.

craft room, r

Jenny in her studio September 2018

So..to catch you up a bit, I started a small craft-guild style group in my new community to meet some folks, and offered to have the first meet-up here at my place. It didn’t dawn on me until the night before that perhaps folks would WANT TO SEE MY CRAFT ROOM.

((Insert horror face here))

So I spent 2 full days tidying and cleaning and reorganizing just to make it presentable enough to have 10 folks come and walk through it. It’s not perfect- what craft room is? But it’s at least tidy enough to work in and I like the “flow” of the rearranged tables. Of course, we’ll have to see how it works out over the next 3-4 months and whether or not it will stay in this configuration.

I spent a few minutes making this video of my craft room and I share some of my organization tips and tricks. Take a look! (oh, and there are affiliate links after the jump on specific products I use.)

I still love my Honey Do cart for my Cricut Maker, my umbrella lights, my LED table lights, and the arm I use for making videos is fantastic. (And about $50, too!) If you need any of these products for YOUR studio, check these links:

Affiliate Links:

Honey Do Cart (amazon): https://amzn.to/2NsljMf

Fiskars Pro Cision rotary trimmer: https://amzn.to/2NZCu7j

Creative Options Project Boxes: https://amzn.to/2pokk1d

Manfrotto Articulated arm with bracket: https://amzn.to/2xqjsxB

Umbrella light kit: https://amzn.to/2QLYJMD

Nail Polish Display (for paint): https://amzn.to/2QPFEt9

LED daylight dimmable table lamp: https://amzn.to/2ODSTLH

 

Mostly, though, I want to remind you all that you DON’T need a huge studio…. just a well-organized one.

My best tips are…..

  • keep the items that you use most close at hand
  • if you SEE them, you’ll use them
  • open storage forces tidiness
  • reevaluate your crafting habits every season and move products into our out of arm’s reach accordingly
  • you don’t have to clean up every day if that’s not your flow, but set aside some time weekly for a good tidy up. For example, I craft all week and then re-file my stamps and dies on the week-end.

What are your best craft room/organization tips? I’d love to hear from you!

 

Also… since blogging has been kinda lonely lately, I’d love to hear almost ANY comment, just so I know you’re out there. Craft on, friends!

About Jenny

Chief Craft Test Dummy, Craft Evangelist, Founder, Editor, bottle-washer, trouble-maker, and creative whirlwind.

Comments

  1. So true that crafters like to reorganize! My tip is if I bring something in something has to go out.

  2. Hey Jenny!
    I’m still with ya! Love your blog and your videos! Keep up the good work and thanks for the craft room tour. I love to see other people’s goodies and how they organize them. Good luck with your Craft Guild 🙂 { CRAFTY HUGS}

  3. Hey Jenny,

    I follow your blog through Feedly & subscribe on Youtube. But I am not a comment person. So don’t feel blue about the comments. I imagine there are more people like myself reading the blog.

    Robin

  5. I’m retired, so I’m older than the average computer wiz. I do my emails, but I never just go to you tube to see what’s on. I guess I should…
    Also, don’t do children’s crafts.

    WELCOME BACK

  7. I have to be honest here, unless I am notified about the blog I don’t read it. I belong to so many blogs, groups and you tubers that unless I see a notification about a blog I honestly don’t read it. I do however watch all your wonderful you tube videos. You always give great information and explain everything so well.

  9. Thx for the blog post! I love reorganizing as much as I do crafting. I love your idea about changing this up seasonally!!!!! Thx for your post!!!!???

  10. Perfect timing – I’m about to clean up my studio, again lol! Just the push I needed. Thanks Jenny.

    Elaine Allen

  11. I’m still here, and glad that you are! This was a great post and I love that you are sharing your passion with your new community. Bless your sweet heart.

  12. Hi Jenny ;

    I have missed your blog. My previous computer ” expired ” and I lost a lot of contacts . I am glad to see you back and look forward to more of your excellent reviews of all the new products . It is hard to keep up with all the new things and nice to have an idea of the best of the new things to try . Your craft room is amazing ! I am always hopeful of finally finishing my re-organizing – someday !

  14. Hi, I wasn’t commenting because I was being primary caregiver for my late husband. Plus I wasn’t sure how to post response.

    So glad you are back!*
    I have always enjoyed your art/craft supply reviews. I do pen & ink, ink and spray mist spattering. Draw. Paint on wood. Make a lot of cards. Don’t do anything with die cuts.
    Am up for kids crafts now & then.
    Loved your blog posts about London, Paris & NYC.
    Hope this response goes through.

  15. Thanks for sharing your space. I agree with you that if you “want to use it, keep it close by”. I try to do the same thing in my crafty space.

  16. I’m here! It’s great to see you posting to your blog again! Thanks for the tour of the craft room. I love when you post these videos! I always gain so many good tips from you when you do them! Thanks Jenny!!!

  18. Hi…I caught this in my email, so thought I’d catch up on your world. I go to videos rather than blogs. I will say you think you have all this time when you retire, and in some cases you do, but craft while you are young and don’t hoard for retirement…time passes too quickly.

  19. So glad that you are posting again. I always look forward to your posts. I do not do the other things and so have missed you.

  20. I still read blogs, but if the blogger has a You Tube channel I subscribe to that and visit the blog for additional information.

  21. Love your craft room! Miss your videos. I forgot the app that you used to come up in when you did your live videos. I lost it on my phone. So anyway, I got the honey do cart after you had showed it and use it everyday! love it! Now I just took a few things off the links you provided! lol thanks for that! Hope you are enjoying your new home and your new state. Still hot in Florida! lol

  22. ok, ok, where are the polymer clays??…I’m 72 yrs young but i only do leather work, clay, and beading, and those supplies take up a fourth of the living room+++, my hubby is nice about it tho, as his takes up the other window area…he works wood, and leather…it was a joy to see your room..altho yours is much neater…enjoy, have fun, and live life to the fullest….Linda

  23. I enjoy your emails and especially appreciate this one on trying to organize a craft room. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that feels the organization is in constant flux. Unfortunately my craft room is on one floor of my house and since I broke my leg and tore tendons I’m on another. I’m going through craft withdrawal!
    I think I did come up with a way to organize stamps. So far, I’ve only done it with the clear stamps. I use a plastic bill box with hanging file folders. I stamp each stamp on copy paper giving each a number, such as CH21, which would mean it’s a Christmas stamp. I put the stamp in a clear plastic craft envelope with a tag that has that number putting it in the bill box. I then take the stamped pages and put them in a 3 ring binder organized by subject. I was starting to buy duplicate stamps and this has helped. I can just pull out the binder to see which stamps I want to use. Hope this idea helps.
    I enjoy your emails thoroughly. Would love to see some of your polymer clay work!

  24. I am so glad you are back. I have gone through the organizing dance several times myself. Your solutions are wonderful! Thanks for sharing your work space with us. I look forward to your upcoming information.

  25. Hi Jenny, glad to hear you are still around. I check your blog almost daily to see reviews of products so keep them coming!!! It’s great to have honest opinions about products that we may be on the fence about.

  26. Just so you know, I loved getting your e-mails with videos to watch, I learned so much from you. I have a folder full of your e-mails and just thought you changed to some other way of doing this, I probably should have put a comment now and than. Sorry. So glad to see you back.

  27. Glad to see you back. I really enjoyed seeing someone else’s craft room. I have been stamping and making cards for over 20 years.

  28. Jenny, glad to see a blog post from you. Perhaps I am a strange duck, but I read blogs much ,ore than I go to YouTube. Please keep writing. It is fun to see your craft room. I have an area in our basement for my crafting and am currently rearranging it. It isn’t as nice as your room but it is my space and my men all stay out! ?

  29. What is the name of the wall units being shown at 8:59 on your video. It looks like clear bins that hang on the wall.
    I’ve completed my studio redo, but I am still going through stamp sets and attempting to put them together in categories. Like if I have a Stampin Up fireworks stamp set, why can’t my Technique Tuesday fireworks stamp set and Lawn Fawn stitched fireworks dies all go together in the same Stampin Up box? Why do I have to keep looking for the different companies with the sets. I admit, it is easier to search for them when I have them all in an EverNote application and the set tagged, then all I need to do is search for a tag, but I sometimes (a lot) forget to tag the sets. So I am currently doing that.
    But those bins would be a great help around here.
    Thanks for the video!

  31. After seeing your studio I definitely picked up some tips thank you.
    I also loved that mine is not the only kitty that gets into things lol.
    Love watching your videos and was starting to wonder if I had missed an email stating that you no longer were going to be doing them. So glad you are back 🙂

  32. I only DO blogs and watch the accompanying videos. I don’t DO any of the social media stuff. Not a snob, just more private. Anywho…I really love your videos and product reviews. I was very interested to see that you don’t necessarily need to own every die, or every color stamp pad. My problem is controlling my “gotta have it” urges. I keep all of my cardstock in the 12” clear bins. I’ve unmounted my rubber stamps, applied Alene’s “tack-it again and again” to the backs of the stamps and placed all of the stamps in themed 3-ring binders. I use page protectors with my stamped register pages in the protector and the stamps are on the back of the protector. Easier to find specific stamps by theme. It’s the dies that are really messing me up. They’re, like, everywhere. I think they’re breeding or something. (The plot of a horror film). Must solve the dies dilemma. Thanks for your video. Always, always enjoy them.

  33. I’ve been watching your videos but haven’t received any of your blogs in eons…..I was doing a clean-up and realized that I hadn’t seen your blog in awhile. My computer ate all my bookmarks for my blogs so I am back to ground zero and resubbed to your blog! I love to read blogs although some leave alot to be desired like their videos. LOL!! I haven’t abandoned you yet!!! Love your videos and blog! and appreciate all your time and effort put into it. So thank you for your blog and videos!

  34. Glad to see your post! I love Blogs!!!!! They are my ‘go to’ for info I’m interested in. I like YouTube also when I’m looking for a ‘How to’ but it’s the Blogs that give me the ideas of what to look for on YouTube. Love your room and organizing ideas! But you are so right when you say organizing is an ever evolving thing! There is no one perfect way! My problem is more that I have WAY too much stuff! I have run out of room to put everything away. I really need to purge!! LOL

  35. I’ve lost that blogging feeling… too. Haven’t posted in months, but I have several drafted and more mentally drafted. Glad to hear you are making friends and keeping crafty.

  36. I love your blog and never miss it. I rarely post a comment, because I usually think that I should only post if I have something more to say than “Hey I really liked that”.

    I know adding written content on top of a video must be a lot of work, but you always add a point of view or extra info or pictures that really adds to the video content. I enjoy that.

    I recently reorganized my studio. I do use my supplies more now that they are close at hand. Some of my storage was an investment, like the shelving unit I bought at IKEA, but I also made storage for my inks and pens out of foam core and hot glue.

    I agree with you about the VersaFine Clair inks. I got a few from the Rubbernecker Stamps booth at a Stamp and Scrapbook Expo and they are great.

  37. I’ve missed you. So many of my favorite blogs have gone dormant in 2018, and I was hoping that Craft Test Dummies wasn’t one of them. Your blog is my go-to source for crafty product information. I love your videos, too, and I usually get to them through your blog. I promise to read whatever you write.

  38. I’m so glad I stumbled upon you!!! You have given me so many good ideas and I cannot wait to get back in my craft room. Your room is amazing, thank you so much for sharing!!!

  40. Jenny,
    I loved the tour of your craft studio! I’m an organization freak, and it was really pleasing to see your rainbows of color and how you manage to keep everything out to inspire yourself and still have it so neat. I’m mainly into knitting as a craft, but also sew and embroider. Sometimes I combine these crafts into one project. Needless to say, I have lots of big things and lots of tiny little notions. My yarn is something I want to have displayed, and also be ready to use. I have two waist-high wooden filing drawers that are back to back, and I keep knitting supplies in one and sewing/embroidery in the other. The top of these cabinets houses a tower of cubes that I display my favorite yarns in, and there is still room for items that inspire me (a wooden owl, a bowl of yarn bits, a vase of beautiful knitting needles, and two massive wooden knitting needles that my sons gave to me.
    I understand you are the guest speaker at Knitters Unwind tonight with our host Kari, and I’m really looking forward to meeting you!

  41. Thanks so much for your comment, and I really enjoyed my conversation with you all! I love cubes for yarn organization and display…

  42. Thanks so much! From the comments on this post, I’m getting the hint that folks DO still read blogs….:D

  43. That’s a really interesting perspective- blogs for info, but YT for “how to.” I’ll keep that in mind as I get back to writing more. Thank you!

  46. It does sometime feel like a labor of diminishing returns, but I do appreciate your comment and am reassured that there is still an audience for it!

  47. Rosemary- those are Creative Options units. And I totally struggle with the stamp organization, too. For a long time I’ve had my stamps organized by subject in DVD cases- which meant I split up sets into love, sentiments etc. (For example, one Hero Arts set might be split into “Love” stamps but also “frames” dies. However, now it seems my YT audience wants to know the source of all my supplies I use in a video, but if I take them out of the packaging I don’t know. So maybe my new, current product will stay in it’s packaging a while, but after it’s older or discontinued (and I still use it) perhaps THEN I’ll split it into subject. It really is a quandry!

  49. John- thanks so much! I recommend you subscribe to the feed via email and you’ll get a notification when a new post comes out. I’m hoping to get to 2 videos a week on YT and one blog post.

  51. I actually love the binder idea- especially with “off season” stamps like Christmas, Halloween, New Years, etc. Most of those sit in separate boxes and it would be great to see what I’ve got at a glance.

  52. Linda- the clay and tools take up a rolling cart and a bin all of their own. I love them but the DO take over so I have to figure out how to keep them wrangled but also accessible so I can play when I get the urge.

  53. Diiane- thanks for letting me know. I do hope you have subscribed to my YT channel because I’ve posted videos there all summer that I haven’t put onto my blog. (EEK! I can’t imagine having to catch up with that!!!)

  54. I think a lot of folks-especially crafters- like videos as they SHOW us what we want to know. We are visual folks who love a good show-and-tell! 😀

  56. Ha! My cats love the craft room too. We’ve had the girls just over a year and they really add so much to our lives. Nothing is safe, but it’s fun to see them play.

  57. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I do hope you have subscribed to the YouTube channel because I have posted a ton of reviews there that I didn’t blog about here. (I know, BAD JENNY!) But please check out things there and I’ll try to see what I’ve missed….

  58. I do appreciate the honesty. I have found that the Videos get so much more traffic and crafty folk seem to want videos more than to read and look at photos- which is why I didn’t blog all summer but continued to make some videos. I just have to get into the habit of making the video and then creating the blog post to go with it.

  59. That’s a great point, Robin. Folks don’t comment as much as they used to, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t have readers. I’ll take that to heart.

  64. Thanksgiving in Canada: time to look at the emails I saved!
    I really enjoyed the tour. In fact, I might not check other emails but go to my craftroom and sort things (this room needs a LOT of love… so messy!).
    I love all the colors from varius products on your walls.
    I agree with you: if I don’t see it, I don’t use it (in fact it is like it does not exist hence cannot be used…)
    I rarely post comments but I do read/listen to the videos.
    Thanks for sharing you craftroom with us!

jenny-headshot-square

Jenny Barnett Rohrs is Head Dummy and Pied Piper behind CTD, which focuses on reviews, tutorials, and craft industry news. Jenny has appeared on HSN, Scrapbook Soup PBS series, and is currently the co-host of Hands On Crafts for Kids on PBS.

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Copyrighted Content Permission All images and tutorials on this blog are copyrighted material. Please contact me if you would like to borrow any media (photos, video or audio files), tutorials, or ideas from this blog. 99% of the time I would be happy to allow you to use one photo with appropriate credit and link back to CraftTestDummies.com (preferably to the same post it was borrowed from.)
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