New & Improved Scrap Space

Good Morning...as I sit in my parents' easy chair waiting for more sunshine to peak around the clouds so I can enjoy some pool time, I am remembering that I promised to post pictures of my scrapbooking room when I finally finished cleaning it!

It's been several weeks since I have actually completed that task, thankfully, but then got the notion to do the same re-organization in my three kids' rooms...needless to say, I was opening up a can of worms at the end of June!

Gutting Marissa's room while she was away in the last week of June for a school camping trip, was the start of my insanity :) In hindsight, I should have taken before and after photos, much like I did for my Scrap space...but all I've got instead are pics of the neat and tidy and well organized space of my kids...

This is the picture of the desk and bench that I painted from their original natural wood to black and finished with a verethane coat so Marissa could get some extra storage space in the bench for her homework, calligraphy and drawing supplies and make me happy by having a nice neat desktop.

I decided to move her bed under the window to open up her space a bit and to try to minimize her belongings :) in simple terms...she is a collector of ALL things and I am trying to guide her in another direction ;)

She has a wardrobe to increase her closet space as she only has a tiny closet...

keeping her room monochromatic has allowed us to introduce colours like these new aqua, plum and fushia pillows...I'd like to switch out her sheet set to white to keep it crisper looking

Matthew has been asking me for months for a desk...I decided to take Marissa's old white table and move it into his room and put his lockers on either side of it to create a bit of a cubby space...his room is tough because of the location of his window, closet and door, so their isn't much room for different layouts of his stuff...

I put his TV onto his dresser, but needed to paint out the forest green top to black and replaced his knobs also, freshened up some of our older furniture to a more current look and to reflect his 12 year old style...his room is divided into two...Baseball and Hockey...one side has his Luongo jersey, Goalie shots of him in action and trophies and medals etc...the other side of the room is Baseball, jersey, medals and banners...

Olivia's room was relatively organized, did that months prior, but the girls switched their beds one weekend while I was at a weekend retreat, and Olivia wanted to maximize the space in her room...mostly for entertaining her friends...I took Marissa's Club chair and put a white slipcover on it similar to what is on the chair already in Olivia's room, so now she has a pair of chairs...

We fashioned her daybed to be like a couch...she really wanted a sofa in her room, but that was pushing it as far as I was concerned ;) we see little of her and she already takes her tea and snacks into her space already, so I wanted to add a little coffee table for her so she isn't putting things on the floor. She likes to study and do homework in her room, with the TV on or music and was tending to sit on the floor, so I picked up a laptop table from Ikea for her Mac (in the far left corner beside the bed)

I reclaimed the cute little apartment size coffee table of my Grandmother's (which I've kept stored for years) and I decided to try and give it a fresh look by painting it... I started with a primer based paint in off white, two coats, a nice little sampler size of the turquoise, Canadian Tire, one coat and then hand sanded off along the edges and on the tabletop here and there...this exposed some of the white paint and in some areas, the wood base of the original table. The turquoise was a little bright so I hand rubbed a Gel Stain varathane by Minwax to help protect the surface as well as adding a darker shade to the paint. I had to get a new piece of glass cut for the top as the original recently cracked, so I chose a slightly thicker glass to prevent any future problems with the table surface...will be great for Olivia as she likes to have her daily pot of tea and snacks up in her room after school. 

Check out these cool book shelf thingies...I got them at Barnes and Noble for her at Christmas time and was thinking that they'd be great for some of her hard covered favorites...they are metal 'L' shaped brackets that the bottom book slides on and subsequent books stack on top of...the finished look is that they appear to be floating on the wall...super neat!

Ok, so last but not least...the room that started it all...my Scrapspace!!!

I purchased another four cubed cubby shelf from Ikea to pair and balance the one I already had and put them under these two tabletop counters (above) and I moved all the rods off of my other wall and positioned them above my counterspace so that my punches and frequently used items were at hand for that workspace...I moved my stamp storage and stamps to the right hand side of the counter and cupboards so I wasn't moving all over the room to grab stuff, funny how you do things before you reorganize your life ;)

I love this new version of my ribbon storage...just tied them onto a rod from Ikea

The small shelf units on the left side are perfect for those little ink misters, small containers of glitter, stickles and jars of specialty ribbon and flowers.

I moved my smaller table to the other side of the room under the window and am using the ledge to hold my large jars of thread, Olivia's old night table stores my serger thread and misc. fabric and the natural wood box unit with drawers on the cupboard to the left holds my sewing scissors, thread rippers, measuring tapes etc.

I kept the two metal boards on the left side of the room because I find this still works for me...I reorganized what hung on them and picked up some more round/clear containers for odds and sods and I like being able to see what I have so bins full of adhesive etc. work better for me...I can grab what I want while in the middle of something, then quickly throw it back where it belongs. The cake plates on the left work great for throwing the odd embellies into to grab and use up as I create...if I tuck too many things away, they get forgotten ;) As you can see I still have a pile (on the chair) to sort and go through, organizing work is never done!

My computer desk and printing station area is a bit tidier than before ;)

Anyhow, as you can see my absence has mainly been due to me trying to get some semilance of order in my life. I find that once kids are in school, I get less done in the way or organizing due to the fact that all of their schedules get busier during that time, unfortunately for me, summer holidays is when we have more control over our time and schedules...thanks for stopping by and I'm going to go join the kids in the pool! Feel free to post any questions about some of the stuff I've used, as I'd be more than happy to help you organize your life more too! Take care.