My "Unfinished" Craft Space

About a month or two ago, my husband and I cleared out the madness we called a basement.  Our new home came with a large, but unfinished basement.  (Builder's costs for finishing it were beyond our means at the time.)

So, it became Box Central.  We finally emptied the last box last month, and began working on some sort of organization.

One side of the empty space has become my crafting area.

Remember these?

I needed some sort of bins to corral all the crafting goodies I've accumulated over the last few months.  I picked up everything seen in the photo above at the Dollar Tree.  Of course! I was so close to spending $10/container at other places when it dawned on me that the Dollar Tree MUST have something!

We bought several of the wire shelves from Target ($45 apiece) and used the containers above to create this:

The basement gets very little light unless it's late in the afternoon and very sunny, so I apologize for the poor quality photos.  I took the above photo last week... I'm still working on a few areas of the crafting corner.

I wove floral ribbon through the laundry baskets to dress them up and tied laminated labels to them (right side).

To the buckets, simple white Cricut vinyl labels were applied.

Here's a close-up of the laundry basket label.

The white numbered "planters" hold ribbon by colors (blues/greens, neutrals, whites, reds, etc.)

Here's a close-up of the ribbons.  This sorting works much better for me than my previous design where I used a crate to hold the ribbons on dowels (see Ribbon Crate).  I now use that crate for simply gift-wrapping ribbons, since that is a much less used assortment... yet, it keeps them organized and easy to see.

These blue bins strayed from my "black and white" scheme, but were too cute to pass up.  I also used tied-on laminated labels.  

I had a few spare Ikea baskets after moving in, so I used them for larger collections.

Because we don't have much light downstairs, I added some party lights!  I love these, but I need a lot more!  {side note... see the cut-out stars in the ceiling joists?  That is where they cut some ventilation for the fireplace, and the builders were being cute.  LOL  We found one of those stars in the yard during construction and saved it... I'll frame it one of these days.}

More organization... so excited to find that one of my already-owned baskets fit duct tape/painters tape perfectly!

Sorting paper goods... not everything has been labeled just yet... that's a lot of labeling!!

For the oversized items, I found a few huge containers/bins/baskets that weren't being used and just set them next to the shelves for now.  We are hoping to buy more shelves soon for the other side of the window to hold these one day.

See all my goodies yet to play with?

Hope you get some idea of how to sort your goodies... even though this is my unfinished space, we have some fun plans till we can afford to officially "finish" the room.  I have a table ready, room for a few more shelves, some labels to work on, maybe some curtains and rugs?  Oh, we're going to doll up this space... why not?  What you can't see is the big-screen TV on the other side of the room and the second fridge around the corner... once I have it all prettied up, I may never leave my basement.  LOL

As we add more to our space, I'll post photos...


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