Guest post: How to Create the Perfect Work Area for Paper Crafting

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Today's article is brought to you by the folks from Modernize.com

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How to Create the Perfect Work Area for Paper Crafting

by Erin Vaughan

We paper crafters are a special breed. We love even the raw elements—virgin stacks of untouched paper, a fresh new set of markers, a sharp set of scissors—and we can’t stop buying them!

If you’re anything like we are here at Modernize, you’ve learned that padding your paper supply means punching up your crafting space. Today, we’re going to take you through what we consider to be the essentials of a helpful and beautiful craft room, no matter whether you’re a paper enthusiast, or full-on fanatic!

Plenty of Shelving and Storage

It’s all about that storage in a craft room! When you’re serious about your crafting, you need a lot of space (no matter how much your significant other complains), and lots of shelves and nooks for storing all your pretties. Thankfully for your scrap paper, we’ve seen lots of clever—and adorable!—solutions to your craft room storage woes.

IKEA Expedit shelves are truly a gift from the crafting gods. They’re so versatile that they’ve popped up in dozens of DIY tutorials, but we’re huge fans of using them with Stamp-n-Storage’s custom holders. They fit right inside all sorts of IKEA shelving, and keep your papers, pens, and stamps organized and neat—the perfect crafting Valhalla!

Sometimes, though, you want your craft room to be more than functional—you want it to inspire your creations. One look we adore are these salvaged lockers. How perfect would they be for stashing away your cardstock cache?

And of course, there are the old standards. Boxes and baskets do great double duty on craft room shelves—they keep everything sorted, and they have a cute, quaint look that we’re betting you’ll love. Sure, you can buy those boxes premade, but personally, we want to try this neat jute box tutorial that turns the packaging from your last Amazon purchase into something truly lovely.

The Perfect Crafting Table

Your crafting space should be a place where you can shut the world away and get down to business. We borrowed this idea from our quilting friends, but we love this idea for a DIY crafting table. The wide plywood table gives you plenty of room to spread out, and it’s made from upcycled shoe cubbies, so that means extra storage, too!

Pegboard Hangers

Your passion for paper takes you through any number of specialized scissors and hole punches, and a pegboard backerboard in your craftroom means that you can hang these things up right after you’re done—no need to remember what drawer or box you put them in.

Since we were introduced to pegboard, we’ve wondered how we lived without it so long. Use cups and small shelves to store easy-to-looks items like pens, pencils, or just store items directly on hooks. Plus, if you have some leftover paper, we love this awesome tutorial that uses old soup cans. Fun, functional, and resourceful!

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Thank you, Erin for sharing these great ideas. For more ideas for your home, please visit Modernize.com