The new look craft room is taking shape.

The new craft room is taking shape, but oh so slowly!  Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day now was it!? :o)

The furniture that I have bought so far is in situ. I plan on keeping all the furniture white even the small storage that will eventually go at the back of my craft table, this is mainly because I have two sets of soft furnishings that are both different colours etc. So the colour in the room will be made up of other objects etc. :o))

 A few nice drawers to fill up!

Well, it took over a day to decide on really how I wanted it to look overall. Some ideas just didn’t look right or work at all! The room isn’t too pokey but neither is it big, but I have enough space for plans and ideas to change etc.

I had planned on moving my craft table this way, but by the time I had the moveable storage pieces in and a smaller craft table on the end, it looked too much and unorganised . So I moved it back under the window and had another idea.... 

Back to square one! lol  I am now having one long craft table, but bigger than the other one I had originally selected to buy. It is 175 cms long by 75 deep and I have at present 3 units that can be moved about and their tops could be used as worktop space and will eventually have permanent projects on them. 

I’m no longer having the lower moveable drawer unit under the window, it looked horrid against the chest of drawer units that I have. So this will now live on the wall behind the door and in front of the pull out table.  I will be getting some more furniture (for the other wall), hopefully in March (I’m having to fit round my other financial priorities too!). A shelf unit, two narrow cabinets (one an open bookcase for books and the other a tall drawer unit to match the lower moveable drawer unit for mini‘s and/or DVD’s ) and the new craft table will be bought then.  

I plan on having small unit’s of storage space at the back of my craft table for immediate needs as well as my unit under my craft table.

 I love this unit, and it was solely bought for practical reasons. It moves soooo easily, though I do have laminate flooring in this room so this helps! 

 This is tidy...

 This is the descent into madness! Arrrgh! lol

I have been busy for 2 days so far unpacking and moving mini’s about. At the best of times my craft room has looked like a bomb has hit it, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs as they say!  I have also bought in all my mini’s from the Summer House, I just have a few mini’s in the garage that need to bought in too; I will get them in over the weekend. :o)

I have some (cough) ‘form’ of organisation at present (but not in many drawers as yet!!), but until I truly work out what I want where and what drawer I don’t have the final system in place. I also don’t want to spend heaps on proper inner drawer storage, this is because mini’s won’t always be in there and I don’t want to end up with loads of good storage and nothing to fill them with. So, I am opting for catering plastic boxes, they come in all sorts of sizes, you can bulk buy and they are cheap…they can also be labelled. For smaller mini’s I am going to use plastic business card boxes, again cheap to buy in bulk and they too can be labelled.  These can be placed into the bigger storage boxes too. :o)

This pull out table has been hidden for a while! It will be moved onto the other wall next to  Highgate. My Mum made the spotted box for my new décor (when it's up and in!)

Highgate dollshouse will be moved along by the door and the pull out table will be next to it. I will empty that internal cupboard and put the larger wall unit in front of it, with two new narrow units next to it.  I will completely remove the plastic drawers from this room.   

This drawer is mainly filled with some of the furniture for Hogwarts. :o) 

Having bought all my mini’s in from the Summer House I have now gained a lot of storage under my work bench out there. We are going to try and cut one of my plastic storage drawers and put these under my bench. The idea should work, if so, then I will the others cut in half and I can put a lot of my supplies in these drawers and make even more horizontal space in there. I can then have smaller projects out here. There is not anyway I can completely redesign my craft room to accommodate all my projects. If I was starting from scratch I probably could, but I don’t want to move everything about in there, but as luck would have it, I have space in the Summer House now. :o))

I'm not having this mix of ornaments together, but I do hang things on knobs. In my bedroom I have Christmas decorations (they don't look Chrismassy). So, a few things to brighten the room. :o))

 This gorgeous little pixie was made by the supremely talented Nikki Rowe. I just love her and she sparkles too!

This is where Mrs Puddifoot's tea shop will go and Sugar Plum's Sweet Shop will go along side it, by the wall. I thought it was a different layout from what you normally see, and you get a view of the shops before you actually enter the room. :o)  

This is how it will appear and look once you are in the room.  

Well, I am off work till Tuesday of next week, so I hope to have the room looking fairly normal by then (until March that is!) and I may even have time to do some mini work? Hmmm maybe not, well not if I want to tidy up and sort out the Summer House too! ;o))

I'm in the middle of adding extra pages to my blog, most don't have any info. at the moment, but some will soon! The others will be updated as and when I do that project. I have more pages to be added, but I will add them at a later date. :o)

A big warm welcome to my new followers….I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx 

My Craft Room Revamp and Hogwarts

 Firstly, Happy New Year!!!!

Well, I was going to call this post Armageddon has hit! As you can see my craft room is in one atrocious state! The daybed has been removed, but its 3 drawers have been stacked up with boxes of mini’s, supplies, kits and buildings!

As you go into the room, it just gets so much worse! I’m currently working on Hogwarts, so I have all the kit in here, plus lots of supplies for it.

This is what I call Hell’s corner…I really hate looking at it, it’s dire! lol

The new furniture for storage was due to arrived tomorrow, but apparently there has been a change to IKEA’s drivers rota’s so it’s all now coming on the 18th January.   

The new storage will go along the wall as you look into the room and go under some of the window too. There will be approx. 11 feet of work-top to have my projects on, that’s also 2 feet deep. I am hoping to have all of my Diagon Alley project’s here. I will only know if they will all fit once they are all put together! 

There will also be a deep shelf above that will have smaller projects on as well as other non mini items on there.

I plan on having two craft tables to create an L-shape. This should make my life so much easier overall.  I need to buy lots of internal storage that will all need labelling too, I can‘t begin to tell you just how much time I have lost just looking for something! Once a lot of that is done, I will also sort out the other units in the room as they are poorly utilised and could hold so much more than they do. I also have a pull out table behind the 2 plastic storage chests that again could come in handy. ;o)    

The tapestry that I printed on was washable linen. My very first attempt. I have printed 2 others and I plan to print more and then decide what I want to use. I prefer this one, only because the colours are more muted and therefore look more aged.  It will be hang on an aged wooden pole which you can't see here! I'm not having them cover the whole of the walls like in the film.

I have been busy doing some work on Hogwarts, a few of the lights have been fitted, I’ve printed off one of the Lady and Unicorn tapestries for one wall too. I have started on the exterior beamwork and done most of the plaster work too.  

I have hand cut and whittled the beams  and they have been stained, they will be aged further once the plaster has been applied and then the beams will be glued on. The support beams (short chunky ones) would have been like this, but the other beams, I have cut them in a rather wild way as they are emulating Whomping Willow beams! ;o) I did these for Hogwarts' alley way, so I have to continue it throughout the whole of the project. 

                                                      

The third  row design has changed from this and more plaster added in-between the beams. The 3rd row though as been left for now, as this has to tie in with wood on the roof (sides).

 The front now hinged on.

A lot of the time has been taken up in adapting the kit as two (as it was one before it was cut in two). We’ve also had to (of course) cut the roof in half and see how that fits together (this kit is not easy!). The main problems have been the warping of the MDF! I did seal the MDF before I worked on it, but it was largely ineffective (I have since used Dulux’s Difficult Surface primer) and the kit warped something chronic, not just the building but the base too. This has prevented the front panel opening and shutting easily, so it’s taken a lot of sanding to get this to open smoothly.  I had to cut over half of the front (base) off.

Now the front is on I have lots of things to do on it…but of course I have to sort the craft room out too! So, I have no idea just how long that will take to do…as I only work 4 days per week, I might have 2 days sorting the room out and 1 day of mini working….I will see! I’m gonna be busy though!   

My main plan this year is to complete as many of the kits (shells) as I can, I can worry about filling them a bit later. There will of course be some mini’s bought, I have some commission’s due and some shortly…some for Slug and Jiggers, one for Sugar Plum’s (the Gob Stopper maker!) and one for Hogwarts too. They are key pieces. :o)

I have also bought another kit for Diagon Alley…oh dear I hear you say…’another one’?! Yes, another one! I have pretty much decided what it will be and I hope to be able to open it the opposite way to the other kit that I have of it. I have no idea whether that idea will actually work…but I can only try!

I have been busy buying kits in 2011, some have not been seen on my blog and most are unusual.  I haven’t decided on their fate yet….I might add 2 or 3 of them together. I pretty much plan to turn them into buildings from Harry Potter..but this is a while off yet methinks. I’m hardly short of decided projects to do! 

A big warm welcome to my new followers….I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))


Michelle xxxx