Our old supplies room at Camille’s house was what you might call… a multipurpose space. I used the table in there as my desk, and it was usually piled high with props for in-progress shoots and crafts at various stages of completion. Needless to say, we were desperate for more space and a better organization system, so when we started designing our new studio, one of our top priorities was a designated room for working on projects. Enter California Closets! We worked closely with their amazing Austin/San Antonio team to create the clean and organized space of our dreams to encourage creativity to flow, and we now have a craft room that would make Martha Stewart proud. Scroll down to see more photos of the space and get tips for managing your own craft space of any size!
special thanks to Monte Goertz and Low Design Office for help with our office renovation project
Before: Originally, our craft room was the front bedroom in the bungalow. Chanel and I usually head up most of the DIY projects and we dreamed of a super organized space to work on art projects and house all of our craft supplies. During construction, Camille and Chanel walked through the space with California Closets’ Jill Siegel to plan out exactly what we were looking for.
After: The craft room of our dreams! The space is mostly empty except for a wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets and our workbench table. When searching for the perfect craft table, we knew we wanted something a little more industrial that was set on casters so we could easily move it around the room. Thankfully Austin is a city full of makers and designers and we found a guy on Craigslist who customized this workbench for us.
The star of the space is definitely the floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with shelves and drawers. In our industry, we tend to accumulate a lot of craft and party supplies, and it was so great to be able to tailor our storage spaces to exactly what we needed. Now we have a place to hide our printer, a smart solution for storing wrapper paper, and tons of different drawer configurations.
We divided our drawers up based on categories, so we have separate places for office supplies, pens and pencils, gifting, paints, and more. Then I attached metal label holders to the front of each drawer and inserted paper labels into each slot. You can easily create your own labels and swap them out as often as you like which makes staying organized a breeze. No more scurrying through random odds and ends to find your favorite pair of scissors!
A few of our drawers have permanent wooden dividers installed in them. These are lifesavers for organizing smaller items like pens and pencils, or things that can easily roll around like ribbon. You can create endless divider configurations with the help of the designers at California Closets.
My pro tip for organizing a crazy craft room is to always leave room for more stuff. You’ll definitely collect more supplies when working on future projects, and the key to staying organized is being able to add new supplies in with the old. In order to free up some space of our own, we went through every nook and cranny in our old craft room before we moved into the new office. We threw away dried up paints and markers, and donated all the supplies we no longer needed to a school in Mexico.
My favorite drawer! I love that we opted for shallow drawers so all of our cute craft supplies can be on display. Not only does it make a pretty presentation, but it’s easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. Some of my favorites include these pencils from Winslet & Rhys, these Kaleido trays from Nannie Inez, and this jar of wooden push pins from Target.
The top cabinets are filled with clear drawers which is the perfect storage solution for our linens and fabric. I love being able to see through the drawers so I don’t have to bring out the step stool every time I need to grab a tablecloth.
Wrapping paper is one of the hardest items to manage in any craft room, but we finally figured out a smart solution to store all of our pretty papers. This tall, slide-out drawer has a built-in grid pattern installed to keep all of our wrapping papers in order.
Now we have the perfect space to work on art projects of any size! I’ve already broken out the paint set, wrapped a few presents, and handmade some invitations. This vibrant Work Hard poster and our new California Closets storage solutions constantly keep us inspired.
