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A new craft room!

If you’re like me, you have an unused room in your house that becomes the dumping ground for all things that don’t have a place. Storage center, filing cabinet, winter coat closet – these are all apt descriptions of how that room was being used. My husband and I both agreed it should become something functional – and would be my space. (since hubby just got a pretty sweet man cave in the basement)

What did I decide to do with it? Make a craft room of course. Truth be told, I really wanted a room to wrap presents – with one of those handy wall racks for hanging rolls of colorful paper. And I wanted a counter height table for wrapping, so I wouldn’t spend one more Christmas even hunched over the bed, wrapping gifts with an aching back. 
I had a vision in my head of what I wanted, the color scheme, etc. It’s a small room, so it didn’t take more than about a week and a trip to Home Depot to make a reality.
This is probably my favorite part of the room – this pegboard wall with the wrapping supplies. We simply bought two pieces of pegboard and drilled them onto the wall.
I made this craft table and it was super easy! I bought two cube shelves, which form the sides of the table. They sell these at Home Depot – they are 36″ wide and the same exact width of the hollow door that formed the top of the table (also purchased from Home Depot). We used a saw and cut the door down to a good size, so that I could easily walk around the table with plenty of space. I painted and stenciled the unfinished door, and attached it to the cube shelves with Liquid Nails adhesive.
I had an old brown wooden book shelf, and just painted it with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Paris Grey. The yellow is just sheets of scrap book paper decoupaged on the back. 

A grey linen-wrapped memo board holds items of inspiration, and the white shelves on the left house paint. Furniture painting will not happen in this room, thus big cans are still stored in the garage.

My french chair makeover has found its home! It’s been sitting for a year in my living room, but the grey and yellow are perfect for this room. I shoved a grey-topped IKEA desk into the closet (and took the doors off). Now I have a great place to surf Pinterest!
Isn’t this rhino fun? I found him at HomeGoods, and new he would make a great addition. And I can hang my apron over his horn!

Now you can see the sewing machine, notions and gift bags all shoved down in the bottom!

I’ve had a lot of questions about these frames. They came from HomeGoods. But man, they would be easy to make. They’re just grey-washed boards glued together. The white is foam core, with a small little piece of plastic covering the photos, with screws holding the images in place!

My wonderful neighbor Tara Sutherland took these family photos. What fun!
So there you have it – my new craft room. So far, I’ve made Valentine’s day keychains in this room, and wrapped a couple of gifts. But, I’m awaiting a craft kit in the mail and will work on it in this space too. More photos to come!
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We Made No-Knit Scarves at Craft Club

This month our neighborhood craft club got together and made scarves. Except we didn’t knit – we knotted. Intrigued? So was I.

Here’s the project we based our craft from – Martha Stewart’s No-Knit Scarf. So first, we went out and looked for some really chunky yarn.

Our neighbor, Lisa, led the craft, since she had done similar macramé knotting previously.

The next step was to cut 12 strands that were 108″ in length. She said that would give us 9-feet, but that we’d lose about 1/3rd of it in the knotting and be left with a 6-foot scarf. So we all started cutting our 12 strands.

Chrissy, our hostess, used really amazingly soft and thick yarn! And she made delicious soup and sandwiches, too! (she’s known in the neighborhood for her wonderful cooking!)

After the 12 strands were cut and ready to go, we had to secure them under the end of a clip board.

Then we separated them into 4 groups of 3 strands each.

The next step was to take the two groups of strands on the right and knot them as you would tie a shoe: overlap the two groups and then tuck the ends of one group through the loop (this sounds much more complicated than it really is – just pretend its a shoelace.)

Then do the same thing again, except this time, reverse the way you go into the loop. So, if the first time you tied you shoes you went over into the loop, this time go under. You are creating a square knot.

Repeat this on the left side with the two left groups of strands.

Now, take the two innermost groups of stands – and make the square knot by using the same technique explained above. Repeat the entire sequence, until you get to the end.

Lisa was really good at it.

Me, not so much.

Gail was a natural and finished quickly!

Somehow I ended up with about 8 inches of strands on one side and 3 on the other, so I had to stop and just cut the longer pieces off, which resulted in a smaller scarf then I had wanted. But, the scarf is warm and I love the color. I really enjoy Craft Club because it introduces us to crafts we may not have ever attempted otherwise. And its fun to get together with the ladies and enjoy food, drinks and girl time, while being creative.

Next month we are making pearl heart ornaments in honor of Valentine’s Day – stay tuned!

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