My Craft Room (in all its glory)

My glorious husband recently finished my long dreamed-of craft room, so I thought I'd share the successes!

And here's the finished room!

The layout is pretty typical of all those amazing Pinterest rooms but there's a few differences: The first is that Manuel sanded down, primed and repainted a hand-me-down bookcase.

This was after sanding it down and priming the walls.  You can still see a bit of the original color.

You can see he left off the back piece since it was that horrible cardboard backing cheap bookcases come with. That stuff's impossible to sand, so instead of buying new plywood, we opted to showcase the pretty Benjamin Moore "Chesapeake Blue" walls.

I bought some magazine backing boards from Amazon (see below) and had to turn them on their side to fit the existing shelves.  That's why mine don't look as pretty as all the Pinterest examples. I think they are pretty awesome anyways!

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.  The very first thing my husband built was an amazing rolling farmhouse Sewing Table! Here you can see the inner workings:

He later painted the legs white and stained the top of it. I can pull it away from the wall for sewing my gigantic victorian/civil war skirts!

My hubby also built an amazing wall unit to store two (of my four) Reflections Twistainer panels. Get this… I had to buy 4 sets of them to get enough containers to fill my wall unit, but the four sets actually came in scrapbook storage boxes!  The Reflections sets were on clearance for only $5 a piece at Michaels. Those boxes are usually 5 bucks a pop anyways, but with these I also got the snap tray, AND a bunch of containers!  So, for 20 bucks total I now have 4 matching scrapbook boxes, an amazing wall storage solution AND two portable (extra) Twistainer trays in case I want to pop some of them off and take them with me somewhere). 

The 4 matching scrapbook boxes are currently being used to store paints and things as you can see on the center shelf of the bookcase above.

In case you are wondering, here's how my husband wall-mounted them: He just drilled some holes in the corners and screwed them into some scrap plywood. He used some of our old crown moulding to encompass the units and here you go!

Here's the Reflections Twistainer trays before painting the crown moulding.

See? It stores my buttons, extra fabric and my laces!

Manuel used Ana White's plans for my rainbow Craft Organizer from this awesome book:

I covered some toilet paper rolls with origami paper to make some ribbon holders.  They are purdy now.

I also repurposed some Starbucks mocha milk jars for my buttons.  Let me tell you, they are a pain to get the sticky label residue off of. A PAIN.  Goo Gone still didn't remove it all!

Details, details.

Manuel also repainted a heavy mirror for me!  I call it my mirror of Erised.  :-)

The mirror color BEFORE...

… And AFTER!

And finally, the only project I did all by myself: I got some old frames, cut out some sturdy cardboard, modpodged it and stuck some Burlap on it. I did this so the Burlap wouldn't sag when hung up on the wall. I used some contact cement to glue on the clips, and here's the result!  A wall for my children's artwork! Yay!

EXTRA! EXTRA!! Here are some bonus photos of the "White Tree of Gondor Quilt" Manuel made me when he proposed to me nearly 10 years ago. It fits perfectly in my crafting space!

And look, it's on a repainted Twin Trundle Bed (so we can actually have married couples come to stay with us)!

Here you can see the original color before he painted it. He paid $80 for the bed on Craigslist.

And here's the reason for it all: My closet housing all my sewing projects! 

Costumes I've made myself...

...And my vintage collection!

Here's the sad part: I only get to kept this craft room until my kids demand separate rooms.  I shall cherish it every day until then!

Here's Eowyn "helping" daddy. Such a sweetie.

Eowyn's Neverland Birthday

Here are some photos from E's 1st birthday party!  Descriptions to come one day!

The pirate and fairy dressing station: The costume chest!

 For the "pirate kids" I made pirate hats, eye patches, binoculars, moving telescopes, and pirate sashes! For the "fairy kids" I made personalized fairy tutus, and wands.  I also gave the boys some dollar store compasses and the girls some face pixie dust.

Pirate fonts were projected, traced and sharpied.

Handmade fairy tutus, pirate hats, eye patches, binoculars, telescopes, sashes and wands with store-bought compasses and fairy face glitter.

A close-up of the pirate hat on my Basset Hound 

Painting those binoculars

In the tree I hung dozens of jute/feather ornaments I made.

Hanging out in Tiger Lily's teepee

You can kind of see the feather ornaments in the tree here. 

Walking the plank.. fun for a girl just learning to walk!

London cityscape silhouette in the window behind the treasure.

Fabric silhouettes I cut out and fray-checked

Opening presents in front of the "Second Star to the right" table.

I made a puzzle game where the kids had to complete each station (like walking the plank, "flying" in the bounce house, etc) in order to get their puzzle piece which in the end would construct a treasure map of the party.

Puzzle hunting sign.

Completed puzzle

Bonus cool map I made with "reveal by fire" lettering!