a REAL look at my craft room (and a proud aunt!)

I love it when I'm online checking out blogs or browsing Pinterest, and I find photos that people post of their crafting spaces.  Their beautiful, perfect crafting spaces that could be (and sometimes are!) found on the pages of a magazine.

As much as I love drooling over their expertly organized storage, I also wonder....is that what their room always looks like?  I could be wrong, but I imagine 90% of the crafters out there create in total chaos (or is that just what I want to believe, since it often applies to me?)

So I decided to take spur-of-the moment photos of my craft room.  No tidying up.  No re-organizing.  No throwing out the stray paper that landed on the floor a week ago, and for some reason is still there.  

Here's the REAL look at my craft room.  I wish I could say that this was some kind of "before" picture, leading you to an amazing "after" photo.  But nope, what you see is what you get.  A lot of people have left comments or sent emails about my space, so I've labeled some things for ya:

(honestly, this isn't that bad.  It's usually worse. WAY worse) 

1. A box that is bursting from the seams with prizes.  I need to host a giveaway stat!  
2. Packing materials, blank canvases, and paper storage.  The only way I like organizing is by color.  The paper in these drawers (and my thread, ribbon, markers, colored pencils, embroidery floss, etc) are in rainbow-order.
3. Sewing stuff.  I've got the thread, embroidery hoops, my sewing machine (with the cover on), and my exploding bin of fabric is in rolling bins under the black table.
4. This is the miscellaneous storage.  I have my watercolor supplies (paints, pens, paper, brushes, etc), acrylic painting stuff, polymer clay, markers, crafting magazines/books, sewing notions, yarn, crochet hooks and knitting needles, and other random things.
5. My photo studio.  I leave the light tent set up all the time under the table.  Clamped underneath the table on either side of the tent are 2 lights from the hardware store, with daylight bulbs.  When I take pictures of projects, I lay on the floor and take them here.
6. Paper crafting stuff.  Stamps, inks, embossing folders, dies, embellishments, etc.
7. Electronic Die Cutter.  I bought the Pazzles Inspiration back when it was the most inexpensive non-cartridge die cutter.  I would love to upgrade to the Silhouette one day, but I'm cheap and this thing still works.  

The other side of the room

1. Since technically this is the "office" in our apartment, it's only fitting to have some actual office items in here.  Computer, printer, scanner, and more.  ("more" includes a bin of sheet music and the guitar amp that is laying down on top of it)
2. Comics.  Because we're cool like that (ps. cool=dorky).  You can also find my viola, violin, flute, and electric guitar next to it.
3. Jessica just gave me this to display the handmade cards I've received.  I didn't realize until now that I put all the cards on the same side. Hope it doesn't fall over!
4. Sewing rotary cutting mat and ruler.  This is right next to my door-of-purses.  You can kind of see 2 of the bags sneaking in from out of the frame.
5. Top shelf has copies of some of the magazines I've been published in, and 3D paper crafts that I don't know what to do with.  Do you have stuff like that too?
6. I'm embarrassed to admit that this iron has been out for over a week.  I was working on a sewing project.

...which brings me to photos of my sewing project!  My sister-in-law gave birth a few weeks ago to my first niece, Emily!  Dave and I visited her and my brother last weekend, and it was so much fun!

I made her these cute little shoes and a stuffed elephant:

...and I can't end this post without showing you some sweet pictures of my husband Dave and I with Emily:

I'm a proud aunt :) 

after I told Dave "you need to look happier in the pictures!" he made this face, lol