Craft and Hobby Room
TIPical Mary Ellen : Episode TIP-314 -- More Projects »
Hobby expert Fran Middlestat provides tips on setting up a hobby and craft room in the home.
- A sturdy work table with a lot of work space is the key to a productive craft room. Choose a large, durable table--either metal or wooden is ideal.
- If you want to add height to a table you already have, use blocks under the legs or put PVC pipe on the legs. A good height is approximately 31 inches.
- If you will be sitting for a long time, use a stool with a back support.
- Mount a piece of pegboard for organizing supplies (figure A).
- Glue or tape a measuring tape on the edge of your work table for easy sizing or measuring (figure B).
- Use unused pizza boxes to store rubber stamps (figure C). Call your neighborhood pizza place and ask them for boxes. Color code the boxes (orange for Halloween stamps, green for plants) to make them easier to locate. Stamp the bottom of the box with the stamp that belongs in that spot and stack them.
- A sink is important to have in a craft room. This makes cleanup easy and convenient and you're not toting messy materials all over the house. If you don't have access to a sink, use a container with a spout and a bucket for dirty water.
- Store paintbrushes in empty soup cans and insert corrugated cardboard to keep them separate.
- Store craft supplies in kitchen canisters. Fill them with cotton balls, ribbon, felt scraps, yarn, etc.
- Cleaned-out baby food or margarine containers make excellent paint holders or can be filled with water to rinse paintbrushes.
- Glue magnetic strips to a wall and hang scissors and other metal tools on them, or use a peg board and hooks. You'll never have to dig around in a drawer again.
- Keep an old magazine/newspaper rack in the craft room for messy projects. Old place mats can also be used as a table guard when working with messy materials.
- Keep a hat tree or coat rack in the craft room for hanging up smocks.
- Decorate the shelves in your craft room. Here is a supply list for one decorating method: standard steel shelf (inexpensive and available at any home store), drapery fabric and ribbon. Attach the fabric to the top of the shelf, then make two holes in the fabric, one on each side. Put the ribbon through so that when you roll it up, you can hold the fabric out of the way.
- Coordinate shoeboxes with by covering them with the same material used on the shelf. Spray adhesive works best for this.
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