I’m so excited to share my colourful craft room tour today! Long-term readers of my blog will know that I’ve been dreaming of having my own space for years. My craft stuff was taking over the house, and when Little One arrived and I set up my shop a year later, it was just starting to get a bit out of control! We took the decision to convert the spare room into a craft room and it has made such a huge difference. The room still needs to function as a spare room, so I designed it to work around what I needed with the flexibility to be able to put people up when they come to stay. I’m so happy with it! So I’ll show you a few before photos today, as well as some photos of my colourful space.

 

Colourful craft room tour: before

 

This room is a little bit of a funny shape, because of the chimney breast and the old airing cupboard in the corner. We couldn’t really do anything removing them, so it made sense to work around it. My wardrobe has always been in this room, so I decided to turn the existing cupboard into a built-in wardrobe. Next to this I wanted as much shelf space as possible, which would fit nicely into the alcove gaps. So I got out my masking tape and worked out where I wanted them to go:

 

 

 

Not the prettiest photos (awful wallpaper – we hadn’t decorated this room at all after buying the house!). But marking it out like this was really helpful 🙂 I calculated the depth and width of each one around some storage boxes from IKEA, which meant that I could maximise storage space. As part of the shelving wall, I also wanted a mini desk for my computer. We have a similar thing in our living room from when my computer was down there, and it’s really handy.

 

Colourful craft room tour: starting work

 

To get the shelves exactly as I wanted meant that we had them custom made. This isn’t the cheapest option, but we got the same guy who did our living room shelves to build these too, and so we knew they would be good and give me the storage I need. I’ve had various shelving arrangements over the years, and they were all fine at the time but these need to be super strong and different depths. Working around that cupboard wasn’t going to be easy either. You can’t really tell from the photos, but we painted the ceiling and the other walls white before the shelves went in (there was no point in painting this one as it would be covered up). Our joiner Graeme did a brilliant job making the shelves on our extremely wonky walls, and it looks amazing!

 

 

 

So the final thing to do was to get it all painted, which we did ourselves. Because the shelves are made from MDF, we used the not-so-quick-drying satinwood in white. I like the look of this paint because it isn’t too shiny – but it takes a while between coats so that the MDF doesn’t warp. And it’s a bit stinky! Once it was touch dry, we had to leave it for about a week to make sure it had completely dried. Then the fun of moving things in could begin!

 

 

 

Colourful craft room tour: after

 

So now we’ve got to the colourful bit of the colourful craft room tour! 🙂

 

 

The space works perfectly for me – I’ve been organising things since the beginning of the year and I’m so happy with it. The flexibility is working out really well with this desk from IKEA – the trestle bottoms are great for storage, so I keep my sewing thread boxes there. We also have a sofa bed from John Lewis in this gorgeous teal colour, so that the room can easily be turned into a bedroom again when we have visitors. The desk top isn’t attached so it’s easily stored whilst the bed is up, and my little IKEA trolley can easily be move out of the way.

 

 

 

 

 

I have a mix of different sizes of boxes for ultimate storage – the bottom two rows are for large boxes, with medium-sized ones just above that. There was a little bit of space in an alcove next to the wardrobe, so that was designed around my smallest boxes. I have 10 of these to maximise space, which is great for keeping little things in.

 

 

 

 

 

These magazine files are really useful for storing things – I wrote a blog post about how to cover them a few years back (which you can find here).

 

 

This is my desk space, and it’s just what I wanted! I use the table or sit on the sofa to craft things, so this is where I do any other blog or shop admin. I’ve decorated it with happy prints and little things I’ve got from indie makers I’ve purchased from. You can also just see my Pantone colour chart curtains, which add a whole lot of colour to my room!

 

 

 

Super-handy letter board from The Room Alive and gorgeous felt ball garland from For Mama and Baba. Rainbow rug in the next picture is by Little Bird and I love the contrast of the rainbow against the teal sofa. It’s an extra fun pop of colour!

 

 

 

My colourful hoop wall

 

My hoop wall is one of my favourite things about my room. It’s a lovely way to display my work but also to support other talented indie makers too. I’ve added a few more things to it since taking these photos, so head over to @hellohoorayblog on Instagram as I’ve shared them there. The details for some of these are below (L-R on photo below):

 

Good vibes hoop and pastel enamel pin holder hoop from hellohoorayshop

Wooly girl hoop is a personal project

Spider pin from gildedcreatures (hoop is personal project)

LOVE hoop stitched from pattern by Brynn&Co (click here to read my post about it)

I love tea banner from hannahdoodle

Felt colour wheel hoop from hellohoorayshop

Tea helps hoop from ohmygollyembroidery

Small wreath hoop from GeorgieKEmery (which I won on Instagram!)

Hello banner from CottonClara

Retro floral hoop which I designed for Bibelot Magazine – find the tutorial here

 

 

 

Future craft room plans

 

On the other side of my craft room (for now) are my wardrobe and chest of drawers. This is just temporary until we get the rest of our extension done and they can move out into the new bedroom – we’re keeping everything crossed that we can get that done soon! Once they are gone, I’ll add peg boards to the wall for more storage and I have another IKEA trestle table for extra workspace. Yay!

 

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed my colourful craft room tour! I am working on a related post about being organised and crafting when you don’t have a craft room, so look out for that on the blog over the next few weeks. How do you organise your craft supplies? Let me know in the comments below! 🙂