He closed off the room with French Doors, added another single
French door out to the hallway, put in hardwoods, moulding, a
ceiling fan and recessed lighting. Yum. I've always worked out of a
bedroom, this was the first time I'd had a room of my own to design
from the bottom up.

Anyway - let's get to the good stuff, right?!?

1. This is a closeup of the view looking in from our bedroom. You can
see the rolling worktable, the armoire in the corner and the desk
behind. The door to the hallway is just inside the room to the left,
and my paper cabinet is just inside the door to the right.

2. A closer look at the worktable. To save time, Vic made it using
unfinished oak base cabinets. He stained them black, custom-made
the mahogany top, and added heavy-duty casters to the bottom. I
LOVE the height and being able to roll it around wherever I like. Perfect.

3. and 4. DRAWERS!! I LOVE drawers!! The key to good organization is
to keep the things you use most near at hand. With that in mind, my
top right drawer is all adhesives. The top left is my most frequently-
used tools.

5. The center drawers are all my loose embellishments. I used to
organize everything out to the Nth degree, but no longer. Inspired
by Ms. Shelley Sullivan, I decided to group smaller things by type to
encourage me to dig thru them (and hopefully use them). So far, it's
working well!

You can probably identify what's in there (brad fetish ya think?).
The drawer organizers are from The Container Store - Deep clear
acrylic with rubber feet. Before shopping, I made a list of
everything I had to organize and what size containers I'd need.

6. Second drawer. Mostly metals.

7. Third drawer. Tags, tags, tags! (organized by Aidan. :)

8. Bottom drawer - extra stuff. And mostly empty (love empty drawers, so much potential!).

The open cabinets on either side store my sewing machine,
embossing gun, books, scraps, etc.

9. The desk. Made the same way as the worktable - unfinished oak
cabinets with a mahogany top. Drawers and cabinets store basic
office stuff. Notebooks, pens, paper, stapler, etc. etc. Vic made the
bulletin board a couple of years ago.

10. Our old TV armoire, which Vic hates (he made it during his 'country'
phase and wishes it would disappear - heh). I love it. He painted it
black for me, but insists he's going to make another piece to match
the desk and worktable so he can dump this...but I think not.

Behind the doors on the top are two six-drawer plastic Iris carts.
They store all the product I divide by manufacturer (there's a KI
drawer, a CBX drawer, a few AL drawers, etc.). There's also a
drawer for rub-ons, one for stickers, etc.

11. Directly under that are 4 open cubbies (there were doors, but I took
them off). I measured the space and picked up wire drawers at the
Container Store that fit perfectly. The top two drawers are all
stamps (Hero Arts on the left, Misc. on the right). The bottom two
are larger office supplies.

12. The bottom drawer, which was initally meant for VCR tapes is now
where my stamping inks and supplies live (I took the pic before the
drawer front was on - Vic would want me to mention that). It's
deep and perfect. Everything fits. Aaaah....

13. My paper cabinet. Pretty self-explanatory. Vic is going to make a
replacement for this. Open shelving, I think.

14. Another view from my bedroom.

Being the organizational freak that I am...here are some things I've
learned (tips, if you will...)

• STAND! Seriously. I was a sitting scrapper for 5 years. Not only
didn't it help my large butt, but my scrapping as well. I only used
what I could reach. Standing? I move around, I look, I dig. And I use
things I'd forgotten I had.

• Mix stuff up. Some things should be broken out by manufacturer,
but do you really NEED to have your brads and snaps organized
out by color, size, and shape (who, me??). Turns out the answer is no.

• If you're designing a room from scratch, or just reorganizing the
one you want, MEASURE AND LIST. Don't just go to Target and
say "Hey, that's a pretty box." Take an inventory of what you have
and how you want to store it. Then measure and go to the store
with that list in-hand.

Thanks for looking!