Crafting Newbie 101

{Get a workspace}

When you start on this mad bad world of crafting, you will suddenly start to acquire lots and lots of 'stuff'.

Even if you're keeping it minimal and re-using everything, you will start to get weird about throwing things away.  I don't see cut offs of anything as scrap any more. Green as this may be, there is only so much space in my small house, and I really don't have any disposable income at the moment so I had to come up with solutions pretty quickly. 

This coincided with my college schedule, the first home project being to make a work space. 

I really am short on space and storage and I know that if it isn't at arms length to me, I won't use it, so I emptied out my makeup drawers, wedged them in a corner of my kitchen and set up a little crafting area. 

But thats just the beginning. 

Toothpicks, glue sticks, buttons, stamps, stickers, paper trimmings or needles can't live in the packaging they come in forever, but need to be kept separated and easy to access. 

This is my solution. 

For this tutorial I used cheap Tesco copier paper but the ones I have in my drawers are made from heavy card stock. You could even experiment with acetate or card, as long as you like it, try it. 

What are your storage solutions other than buying them?

Then once I had made them up I had to elaborate on the idea. I used old photos and some gorgeous paper
to line them. I eyeballed it all but use a pen to get things exact if you're giving them away or making card embellishments. I'm really intrigued by shadow boxes at the moment and these are a great way to play with that idea.

Hi, if you have followed me here from my Nailart blog thank you.
If you are here as a stranger, welcome!
I am 'doing'a diploma in art and design with a heavy emphasis on upcycling and handmade crafts, and I am also a complete newbie on the world of crafts, apart from some disastrous cards.
I hope you will stick with me on my journey.
I am very poor and very lazy, so learning things, and then working out ways to replicate them for cheap or easier is important to me.
This will be a learn with me blog rather than a look at how the experts do it blog, so if you're skint and lazy let's be friends and share tips!
These are some of the projects I already did, nailart friends will be familiar so I apologise for the repition. As I type I am epoxy resin-ing my sons school shoes, which he informed me were flapping freely from the sole about 5 minutes ago. As they do.
Have a good day wherever it takes you.