Craft room complete!

My dad and step-mother came to visit last month - they live over 200 miles away from us and so we don't get to see them very often. As usual, it lead to a mad dash to tidy before they arrived. You see, we started to turn the guest bedroom into my craft room a few weeks ago and, predictably for us, left it unfinished.

So, on the Friday night before they arrived it was a messy craft bomb of scraps, dies, stamps and cuttings all over the desk, floor and bed. I spent two hours tidying up and on Saturday morning my lovely husband put up shelves and hung artwork to finally make it into a welcoming space. With that final push of a family visit, my craft room was complete! Of course, what must a crafter and blogger do but photograph it? Naturally ;)

There's an alcove in one corner of the guest bedroom, which was the perfect place to install a desktop large enough for my crafting. I often find myself spreading out onto the floor, though. Crafting is inherently messy and I certainly can't tidy up after myself while I work... it all has to be done after the event. Not my favourite part of the creative process, that's for sure! Ignore the random guitar... it would have been resigned to the loft months ago, except that Stanley likes to sing and strum along on the 'la la', as he calls it.

I'm not, and never will be the most tidy of people. My craft stash is a kind of organised chaos - my drawers are separated into papers, embellishments, card blanks and cardstock, stamps and inkpads, chipboard and stickers and tools and that's pretty much it. I also have a separate set of drawers under my desk so that I can keep demo materials separate from my everyday craft stash.

Similarly, I have magazines, files, empty shadow boxes and button storage in my shelving unit. It's all a little haphazard but spending hours painstakingly arranging everything isn't my style, and somehow I always manage to find what I'm looking for.

Just a side note about these beauties. Those who follow me on Instagram might have seen a post a few weeks ago where I gushed about my light box and how I'm not restricted by light when shooting my projects any more. My husband bought me the light box for Christmas - and I'm in love! The light is often pretty bad in this corner of the world, even at the brightest period of the day, so I admit I have struggled with my photographs at times. As well as a brand-new camera, which also makes a HUGE difference to my shots, the light box and these fab lamps mean I can always have crisp, bright images - or at least begin to, anyway!

Of course, no spare room would be complete without a spare bed. We are very blessed to have lovely large bedrooms in this house, so as well as a massive desk and storage room, we managed to retain the double bed and move it into the corner of he room. A functioning study at last! Lets see how long I can keep it tidy for ;)