Pen cases

When Mum asked for an idea of what to get me for Christmas, these pen cases were what I came up with. They had been on my wishlist for a while.

My Copic marker collection had been growing. The ones I'd bought to begin with came in a plastic box, but those I'd bought since were expanding beyond the mug I was keeping them in.

I also had a tin full of various pens, including my growing collection of Tombow brush pens. I really needed a way to organise all these pens and the various fine-liners which I had in a pencil case, and the Pitt brush pens I had in another plastic box.


I got two cases. The first has four zipped compartments, and is great for most of my pens. The only problem is that the elastic is quite tight and close together, so some pens need to be spaced out a bit.




The second case has larger elastic and is designed for marker pens, so this is where I have all my Copic and Promarker markers, along with a few Crayola markers that were too big to go in the other case. This marker case has velcro on the sides, so it can open out flat.

It was fun arranging all the pens in rainbow order. Now I can carry my pens around with me, and I can immediately find what I'm looking for! And I think I will make better use of pens that I had forgotten about.

10 years of emuse: Craft room video tour

I thought that my bloggiversary would be a great occasion to tidy up my craft room and film a video tour! I hope you enjoy having a look round my room!

Craft room reveal!

Here at last are some photos of my craft room in its nearly finished state! There are still a few little projects to finish off, but it’s nearly there!

You’ll see from the before photos that the room was very purple! I really did love the colour, one of the first room ideas I had when buying my house was that I wanted a purple craft room. But, more than 15 years on, I decided that I’d like a more neutral look for the room. This was mainly because it would make it easier to display some of my finished craft items around the room without clashing with the walls, but it also had the added effect of making the room feel much lighter and brighter!

The first step was to have a massive clearout of the room! I filled quite a few bin bags, and also made a trip to the tip. Then I needed to remove some of the furniture from the room, which wasn’t easy as there isn’t much space to put it in the bedroom. I realised that even after my clearout there was a huge amount of stuff left! I ended up pushing most of the furniture to one end of the room while I painted the opposite end, and then doing the same for the other end of the room.

I painted the two longer walls and the ceiling brilliant white (the ceiling was a real pain to do, because it’s polystyrene tiles), and the two shorter walls were painted with Dulux Perfectly Taupe, which is a lovely greyish beige that seems to change colour at different times of day between grey, beige and almost lilac – I love it!

 

After painting one of the white walls, I marked out an area I wanted to paint with blackboard paint. The blackboard paint was a little difficult to work with as it was so runny on the brush that it spattered a lot, but when it was on the wall it was surprisingly difficult to spread about! But I was hugely impressed with the effect, especially after I’d rubbed it with chalk, and if I didn’t love the Perfectly Taupe so much I’d paint a whole wall with it! I also used it to paint the fronts of some Ikea drawers.

I painted the shelving units brilliant white, including the cutlery racks and small shelves I use for my rubber stamps, and decorated a set of plastic drawers with patterned papers. One of my favourite projects was decorating a drawer unit with papers in Japanese designs.

I got a small white lampshade from Ikea, and a retro style clock from Asda. I’ve also done some fun little projects like spray painting a letter rack, and decorating a green pot with washi tape and ribbon for my scissors. I made a couple of little curtains to hide clutter under some of the desks, and it was a good chance to get all the cables for my computer tidied up too!

I don’t really need a lot of privacy in the room, so I took down the vertical blinds and the curtains. This immediately made the room much lighter and brighter, and makes it much easier to take photos there. I do sometimes need a little shade from the sun while using the computer, so I replaced the heavy curtain pole with the thinnest one I could find, and attached some thin voile curtains using clips (but this was after I took the photos). And now that the blinds are out of the way I can use the windowsill (which I stained a darker colour) for displaying some odds and ends like the big pincushion my mum got me recently.

I’m really enjoying having areas to display and photograph my craft projects, and a light, bright craft room to work in!

Mod Podge projects

Did you know there's a Mod Podge shortage here in the UK? Apparently everyone's using it to glitter up their glassware, it's sold out throughout the country, and there's a whole load in a shipping container making its way here! Luckily the sellers on eBay seem to be finding it easy enough to source, and that's where I got mine (after hunting around Glasgow and not finding any).

I started off by brightening up a plain set of drawers with beautiful papers in Japanese designs, and fresh from my success with that I also decorated another, smaller, set of drawers. Finally I added some pretty papers to some old mint tins.

Some other projects that I've done with Mod Podge over the years include these gift tag baubles, some decorated binder clips, and some other decorated tins.

Mini drawers makeover

I've had these little drawers for a long time - I remember using them for some of my craft items when I lived with my parents. They are the very basic sort of drawers that you can find in any DIY store - and they looked very boring and functional. Since I was decorating my craft room, I decided that these drawers needed a bit of a makeover.

I started by putting all the drawers aside and using white spray paint on the rest of the structure. These were three drawer units joined together, some of which used to be black and some red, and I'd previously used silver spray paint on them. I didn't bother making sure that the insides of the cubbyholes were completely covered, I just used enough paint that the visible part was covered with white.

To decorate the clear plastic drawers themselves, I used patterned paper. First I cut a template from card that would fit inside the front of a drawer (this took a little trial and error). Then I had the fun of choosing the papers. I decided to start with red/pink on the left and work in a rainbow towards purple/violet at the right. For each colour from red to purple I chose 8 different patterned papers, used the template to cut pieces of the right size, and placed these down the fronts of the drawers.

Along the top of the drawers I placed a little shelf from Ikea. It is designed for displaying pictures, but it's a great size for holding my paintbrushes and other tools, and displaying some vintage reels of thread and sewing patterns.

Blackboard drawers

I've had these three sets of Ikea Moppe drawers for many years, and they've been decorated in many different ways. Most recently they were pale purple to match the walls of my craft room (you can see them here), but when I redecorated my craft room recently I decided to paint the outsides of them white and the fronts of the drawers with blackboard paint. This had the added benefit that finally, after all these years, I would no longer have to open about five drawers before finding the one I was looking for!

The blackboard paint was a bit drippy and messy to use, but I love the effect that it gives. I bought a chalk marker pen, and used this to decorate the fronts of the drawers. It was a lot of fun coming up with different lettering styles for all the drawers, and I'm really please with the finished effect.

Book review: Craft Show & Sell

I was in two minds about whether to buy this book, Craft Show & Sell by Torie Jayne, because, although I've sold a few zines on Etsy and had a craft stall, I wouldn't consider myself as having a craft "business". I'm glad, however, that I did buy the book, because it's got so many great ideas for crafters whether or not you craft as a business.

I bought the book when I'd already done a lot of the decorating of my craft room, but I still got some great ideas that I could use in my craft room, like having some of my pretty supplies and completed items on display. I will now be looking out for wooden reels to store my ribbons on, and pretty paper to cover boxes with. And there's a spray painting project with jam jars that I can't wait to try!

The book then moves onto branding, which I hadn't considered before, but seeing as I have a blog, flickr account, moo cards, and have just got started on pinterest, it gives good ideas on having a consistent look and feel across all of these.

The tips on selling online and taking good photos are also really useful, and, since I do want to do more craft fairs in future, I liked reading all the hints and tips on setting up a craft stall. There are also some good tips on blogging, which came in handy when I recently redesigned my blog.

This is a beautiful and really useful book, and I love it!

Mini Japanese drawers

Fresh from my success of decorating a larger set of drawers with Japanese patterned papers and Mod Podge, I decided to do these little ones as well. They used to belong to my parents, and I think were designed for holding floppy disks.

I removed the label holders and gave the black wood-effect fronts of the drawers a slight sanding, then added the patterned paper to the fronts. Once they had dried I put the label holders back on. I'm using the top one to hold my reels of thread, and the bottom one for the feet for my sewing machine.

The mint flowerpot mini makeover

I picked up this cute little container from one of the local charity shops recently. It's an Ikea Skurar flowerpot. To make it even more cute, I added a pretty pink gingham ribbon and a strip of mint polka-dot washi tape. It's the perfect size for all my decorative edge scissors - they were on a pinboard before I redecorated my craft room, and I'd been looking for a suitable container for them.

Japanese drawers

These drawers were very plain and cheap-looking before I decorated them. This is the project idea that kicked off the redecoration of my craft room, but it was one of the last things in the room to be completed (because I needed to order some Mod Podge!).

The inspiration for the drawers came from the children's TV show Clarissa Explains it All. I was a student at the time it was on TV back in the 90s, so a bit older than the intended audience, but I used to love watching it on a Saturday morning. I loved Clarissa's bedroom, in particular a set of drawers that were decorated with different papers. Unfortunately this blurry picture is the only one I can find of it!

First I stained the outside of the unit using brushing wax. This was probably the most time-consuming part of the project, as I had to stain the edges of the drawers as well, and they were quite fiddly.

Scrapbooking paper was not large enough to cover the drawers, so I went looking for paper in Paperchase. Luckily I found the perfect thing - a book of wrapping paper based on kimono fabric designs. The only difficult thing was deciding which order to put the patterns on the drawers.

When my Mod Podge arrived I looked for a tutorial on how to avoid wrinkles, and I found this one. I misted the paper with water and used a brayer to ensure the paper was smoothly in place. Later I added more Mod Podge over the top.

I'm really delighted with how this turned out - it is every bit as good as in my imagination. And the Mod Podging was much quicker and easier than I thought it would be.