Organizing my craft room

Although I said that I was going to have a very productive weekend in my studio last weekend I will confess that I did not. I went on a road trip to Pittsburgh instead. But this weekend is a whole different story. I am far from being done with the organizing process and showing you amazing before and after photos but I have a good start. Actually my studio looks like Martha Stewart threw up all over the place right now but I keep telling myself that it needs to get messy before it will be clean. So, I guess this is just a boring post to tell you that I did what I promised I was going to do, just a little later.

I will do the big reveal in a few weeks when I have time to make the room all shiny and beautiful, for now I will show you just two of the projects I am tackling. We moved into our new house about 7 months ago. I took over one of the extra bedrooms as my studio and while we were renovating the house I literally took most of my fabric and other crafty goodies and tossed them into a crawl space in my studio. Before this weekend it looked like this:

There is also a small closet where purses, bags, buttons and other items are being stored. It currently looks like this:

So, as you can see I have a lot of work ahead of me. After my cleaning process is complete I hope both spaces will look a bit more presentable.

Monsterous shopping!

I received many wonderful gifts for Christmas this year but there were 5 times when I opened small brown, familiar boxes that got me quite excited.

These little guys all represent a gift card to Anthropologie, one of my most favorite places. I happened to wander into the wonderful store over the weekend and found a few goodies that had to come home with me right away.

This awesome carafe was on sale, I got the largest size.

This book is fantastic, I am addicted to craft and design books so I had to pick this one up.

I also got a sweater. I decided to save some of my gift cards to do a little shopping before spring quilt market so I can have some new fun items for the trip to Minneapolis this year.

New projects complete!

I finished 2 new bags over the weekend. My new year's resolutions are off to a pretty good start.

First was a custom diaper bag. The new mom-to-be gave me a general idea of the shape and size and I took it from there. It is a pretty simple bag but I really like how it turned out. There are two pockets on the outside with coordinating piping along the top. I also added two pockets along the inside so she can keep organized all the time.

The second bag was an order from a shopper at Bazaar Bizarre. She saw some of my duffle bags at the show and didn't get a chance to come back and buy the one she liked. Since I sold out of this particular design I made a custom one for her with additional pockets on the inside. I have had lots of requests for pockets on this style of bag so I was happy to be able to test this out on the new order.

Both bags turned out well, one has been shipped off and the other is posted on my etsy site now waiting for it's new owner to take it home!

I have another weekend of work in front of me over the next few days so hopefully I will have some fun new items or an organized studio to show for my work next week. Heck, I might even post over the weekend to send out an update - I know, I know more than one post a week! It would be crazy but I think I am up to the challenge.

Who's the boss?

I went to the library today and got a big stack of books to give me some inspiration for the week and something to do while it continues to snow outside. Mostly just design and craft books but I also picked up a great business book called The Boss of You: Everything a Woman needs to know to start, run, and maintain her own business by Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears. I've been reading (and writing) for a few hours now, I am only on page 38 and I am already feeling more inspired than I have in a long while. I have read a few other books about small business marketed to crafters and women but for some reason this one is really clicking for me. You know how these books always tell you to make lists and think about what you want your business to be, well, I actually did that. I am writing lists and giving a lot of thought to my business and how I want it to be perceived by others and what I want it to be. So far I am really enjoying the book and hopefully this creative and inspirational mood will stick for a while so I can get through the book and get my business going this year!

As I was writing this post I googled the name of the book and found out they have a blog too! Now I know that I won't be able to get anything done at work tomorrow.

New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's January so I figured I would go ahead and post some of my new year's resolutions. I didn't post any last year but I'm pretty sure that most of these were on my list for 2009 so I hope that I do a better job in 2010 of getting a few of these taken care of.

1 - Spend more time in my sewing room - I don't have to be sewing or creating a specific project, just spending time in my creative space often inspires me and makes me happy in general. I spend too many days coming home from work, eating dinner and heading to the couch.

2 - Spend more time working in my sewing room - this is kind of part two of my first resolution - hopefully when I am spending all of the time in this room I will start doing some work as well. I already have two orders for the new year so I need to get cracking!

3 - Organize my sewing room - I have been living in my new house for about 7 months now so I need to get this room under control. I have A LOT of stuff but I should have enough room to store everything so I need to get organized so it will be easier to accomplish resolution #2. As you can see from the photos below - this room could definitely use some help.

4 - Blog more - of course, not much else needs to be said about this, I think it speaks for itself. (by the way it is the 7th day of the year and I'm already on my 2nd post - not too bad!)

5 - Apply for more craft shows - I have done three shows so far, two last year. This year I would like to attend a few shows in the spring and a few shows around the holidays.

6 - Spend more time on my Etsy store - pretty self explanatory - I can't sell items that aren't in the store, so I need to get them up there.

7 - Network more - I don't have many friends that sew or craft so I would like to meet a group of people who I can learn from and connect with in this industry. On this note, I can mention that I got word today that I have been accepted into the Etsy Team Columbus group so this resolution is off to a great start!

8 - Start working on my book ideas - like many people I have a few ideas for fun craft books. I would like to start working on researching these ideas and getting them written.

So in the spirit of resolution #2 I spent about an hour in my sewing room tonight organizing a few shelves and putting away a few Christmas presents. Speaking of presents, I got my mom's vintage Singer featherweight sewing machine as a gift this year. I was so excited to be able to call it mine - I have been lusting after it for years!

My Year in Cities 2009

I hope that everybody had a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year! I had a great season spending lots of time with family and friends which is what it's all about. I had fun last year looking back through the year to see where my travel took me, I think 2008 was a little more interesting in travel but this year we bought the new house so that was pretty interesting as well.

Here is my year in cities for 2009:

Columbus, OH - old house
Pickerington, OH - while we renovated the new house
Westerville, OH - New house
Cleveland, OH - visiting with my parents and family
Lansing, WV - white water rafting on The Upper Gauley
Pittsburgh, PA - Spring Quilt Market
Houston, TX - Fall Quilt Market
Rock Hill, SC - Visiting my new niece
Buckeye Lake, OH - Vacation time
Orlando, FL - Vacation time
Cincinnati, OH - Weekend trip with friends
Davis, WV - Ski trip at Canaan Valley