Inspiration Friday: Organizing Your Crafty Goodness

Crochet Mushrooms YUM!

Happy Friday!

Sorry today’s update is so late– I’m feeling under the weather and have just been really slow today.  I am excited about today’s Inspiration Friday post though.  I’m a crafty person… No, I don’t mean you can’t trust me!    I love to make things.  My craft obsessions are ever changing, and like any good crafter, I have my own little stash of project materials that I’ve accumulated over the years.  Yarn, fabric, paper, plus assorted miscellaneous items are all stashed in various hidey-holes throughout my home.  I dream of the day when I can have a craft room of my very own, where all my things are stashed together in their own pretty places.  And that’s what today’s Inspiration Friday is about… pretty, organized creative spaces.

In fact, today’s post actually features the creative space of a wonderful Swedish artist, Hummmlan, who works in a little bit of everything:  paper, watercolors, fabric, yarn… you name it!  She most definitely understands the need to corral all the bits of stash that a crafter ends up trying to hide and her creative space is chock full of great ideas to inspire creative stashing!    You know I HAD to ask her all about it, right?

Please tell us a little about yourself… What inspires you in decorating and in your art work?

I’m living in Sweden with my 3 year old daughter and my fiancé. A year ago we bought our house, a cute little house from 1925. One of the requirement was that I could have a little crafting space in the house. In our old apartment I sat at the kitchen table and was crafting, sewing and painting. I had to clear the table each night so we had somewhere to have our breakfast! No fun at all.

Storage as Art

There are so many things that inspires me in decorating. I can be inspired by a painting or music. Of course I get much inspiration from other blogs and from flickr. Often it is a little detail in a photo, a beautiful frame or how someone have displayed their things on a shelf for example. I love interior magazines too, but they are quite expensive and me and my sister-in-law are borrowing magazines from each other.   A mix of new and old things I think is the best way to decorate.

buttons

In my artwork it is mostly my daughter and other children who is a great inspiration to me. After Maya was born my creativity exploded! It is a bit of a paradox, because before Maya was born I had all the time in the world to be creative, but wasn’t… After she was born I found the time to be creative while she was taking her nap.

What was your biggest challenge in organizing your creative space? How did you overcome this challenge?

A beautiful desk

The biggest challenge was to find the right furniture and decorations that I wanted. The desk had to swallow a lot of my paper and crafting supplies but yet be beautiful. It can take years to find the right things. I’m not finished with my craft room, I think I never will be. It’s a ongoing process. Some times I was thinking that I would buy a desk from an apartment store who had the right drawers for storing and organizing all my things, but it wasn’t the desk I really wanted… I’m so happy that I waited, I found my desk on the Internet, at a site where you can buy and sell your old things. Like a flea market but on the net! It was a bargain it cost only 500 SEK, that is approximately $60 USD!! I couldn’t believe how lucky I was! The chair is from my grandmother and the shelf is from IKEA. The type case I found in a local flea market.

Close up of wall storage

Would you please share your top 4 suggestions for organizing a creative space?

1. Hide all ugly things in drawers and boxes!

2. Display only the things you like and think is beautiful.

3. Keep it simple, if there are to many things it’s just looks to messy. (Some people knows the art of having a lot of things everywhere and it doesn’t look like a lot of clutter, but If you aren’t one of them, just don’t do it…)

4. Storage, storage and storage! You can’t have to much of that! Things that I know I won’t be needing for a while I have in the attic or in the wardrobe.

You can see more of Hummmlan’s creative space and home by visiting her flickr account, her blog, and, of course, her etsy shop!  If you’re interested in even more inspiration for organizing your creative space, check out the following links:

• Lots of inspirational photos from the members of the flickr group Creative Spaces
• And even more with the flickr group Organization is for Squares
• And a great article from Domino magazine, 9 tips for establishing a creative space

Have a great weekend!

xoxo – Shauntelle