Attic Craft Room Reveal

Well, here it is!  The post you’ve all been waiting for – (especially if you’ve read my last post about the mental and physical frustrations we’ve gone through, complete with assorted before pictures) – my attic craft room reveal!  I’ll admit it though, since taking these photos, I haven’t gone up there at all.  Sad, right?  But I’m a bit burnt out by it all and just need to soak up some family time for a while.  But I know it’ll be such a treat when I do head back to the attic and get to work.

I don’t even know where to start when it comes to doing a room tour.  So I guess I’ll just go around the room.

 

Welcome!

Here’s the door.  Like I mentioned in my last post, this was the turd room in the house, with a door sized for a hobbit.  Pretty much every piece of furniture in this room had to be assembled in place, and will need to be taken apart if it ever needs to leave.  Maybe I should call this my craft room in a bottle?

It seems I will be constantly linking up to what I wrote in my previous craft room post, so you should probably just go on ahead and read that first so you’ll understand what I’ll be rambling about here. After much time spent procrastinating thinking about how to decorate “the big wall” (or, “the only wall”), I kind of chickened out and went with a plain old gallery wall.  I was tempted to put my 5ft x 4ft painting of Audrey Hepburn up here, but my husband didn’t want to take it away from the living room.  Still, I think it turned out for the best this way, since I was able to display an assortment of things that have meaning for me.

The frames are Ikea Ribba frames and assorted frames I found at yard sales/thrift stores that I painted white.

I have hanging:

• a U.S. patent from my previous life
• a few origami prints of my own design
• my first heat transfer vinyl project, depicting my blog logo, framed by an embroidery hoop
• a few photos of family
• colorful prints from Ikea

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• my vintage typebike canvas (made from Garamond font characters)
• a wood scrap lantern that I made for my first SYTYC challenge

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• one of my favorite greeting cards.  It says “Act normal, that’s already crazy enough”.  Is that true or what?!

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• a pencil drawing I did back in 2009 of JLo.  I had just bought a set of charcoal pencils and wanted to try using a grid method to draw something from a photograph.  It has been sitting in my drawing pad all this time until now.

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I found a notebook on clearance at HomeGoods and fell in love with the Hello name sticker on the front.  Since I was in the whole “how to decorate the craft room in order to reflect your personality” debacle, I felt it was an appropriate gesture to leave the name blank…for now.  The blue metal can was a clearance find from the As-Is bins at Ikea.

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And of course, all of these memories and bits of happiness are anchored by my two beautiful Kendall Charcoal card catalogs, for which you can read the story here.

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Where the Magic Happens

Next up is my actual work area.  This was the hardest to organize because there was just so much random craft stuff.  Most of the small items are stored in the card catalogs, but the larger items were also some of the more random bits and pieces, all of which needed a home.

Saved by Ikea, once again.  I did have to wait a while to pick up my new shelving, since I went looking for shelving just as the Expedit was being discontinued.  I waited a month or so and picked up the new Kallax shelf instead, which by the way, fit PERFECTLY in the space (I think I had 1 inch to spare across the whole wall – talk about cutting it close).  The slightly larger Expedit would have been too big!  The shelf is outfitted with Kassett magazine files and boxes to store all sorts of randomness. The wine crates and picnic basket in the corner store scrap yarn and fabric.  Oh yeah, those wine crates?  Free.  Wanna do a little dance with me?  I called up a locally owned wine shop and they just gave them to me.  It never hurts to ask!

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Would you believe I found an old school camera while going through my childhood memory boxes?  It even still has film in it! I took a few photos but haven’t figured out how to get it developed yet.  No biggie though, since he looks so gorgeous just sitting there being fabulous.  I still can’t believe I had my very own SLR camera and I never even knew it.  The little suitcases can be found at Land of Nod.

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This is another iteration of my Ikea craft desk hack.  We had to take everything apart to bring the desk into the room anyways, so we decided to adjust the configuration a bit in order to fit the little window nook, and once again we got super lucky and the Ikea Expedit desk fit the nook with just a few inches to spare. That door on the left is the door to the room.  We removed it to move furniture and I found it so cute I didn’t want to put it back.  It now adds a little touch of rustic to an otherwise boring blank wall.  Hanging from it are a few strands from my Lucky Stars Ombre Mobile – J had tangled up most of the mobile anyways, so I salvaged a few strands for decoration.

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My desk is full of favorite things:

• my painted liquor bottle lamp
• a fabric covered cork board – tutorial forthcoming!
• family photos
• a 300mm wafer of one of the computer chips I designed

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• another favorite greeting card.  The front of it says “Most often, a smile is started by another smile”.  This silly gorilla NEVER fails to make me smile.

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• a wooden name pen holder from 8th grade woodworking class
• spring blooms from our yard in my one and only Le Creuset piece

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• a doofy bird puppet found in my memory bins (along with the Pentax camera).  So apparently, I have always been a fan of bright colors.

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• and finally, a $10 worklamp from Harbor Freight.  Cheap.  Functional.  Right up my industrially stylish alley.

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My Inner Dreamer

Last but not least, this is my day-dreaming corner.  Or “relax and play Candy Crush” corner.  Right now, I only have my stenciled pillow along with a few large Ikea pillows, but I hope to really “pillow it up” into quite the comfy nook, along with maybe another crochet rag rug.  I also have an old iMac so there’s a possibility this might become my very own mini home theater.  For now, I’m just looking forward to soaking up the sunlight.

And I can’t mention enough how handy my husband was through all this – he removed the old windows (with their dead bees), installed new ones (without the dead bees), reframed everything and handmade those beveled window sills!  We also found inexpensive bright white cordless pleated shades at Ikea (I think they’re called Bruddans) that were a perfect fit.

Not too shabby right?  I’m so stinking happy with this room, just knowing that my craft things are safely organized, put away and easy to get to when I need them.  And those floors!  I love my new floors.  If you love the floors too, or really anything about this room, then pin a photo to your boards!

More, More!

I only have one other room transformation for you, so go on and check it out.  It’s all about the Ikea, again.  No surprise there.

Ikea Kitchen

  Thanks for stopping by and checking out my new room!  I hope it provides you with lots of inspiration to create your own haven too!