So, that brings us to how the craft room looks today.  Are you ready? Are you ready?  huh, huh, huh, huh, huh?  Okay, well, come on then!

Does that font scream Vicki Lawrence or what?  If you have no idea what I’m talking about…I’m not sure we can be friends.  Anyway,to the left you will see a big cabinet. One half of it has drawers and the other half is sliding shelves. On top, notice the funky blue genie lamp given to me by my dearest mother-in-law who was going to get rid of it.  Then, the white sewing cabinet is my standard go-to Kenmore machine.  My mother gave me that machine in 2000, and it was her old cabinet.  More on that in a bit.

Don’t you just love pegboard?  Sigh.

Here is my table and chairs that I got for 100 bucks off of CL.  When I first saw it, I just couldn’t decide if I loved it or hated it.  I had to look at the ad about 10 times before I decided I’d call about it.  As it turns out, it fits perfectly in here.  Esmeralda was the dressform given to me by my mom’s friend.  I have padded her to look more like…me.  Yes, I look like an hourglass.  Hush up.

And there’s my happy little blog on my laptop.  I was thrilled that I could actually get signal way out here.

Here is that metal rack.  I covered it with my $3 garage sale quilt via clothespins to hide all that ‘Junque’ that it contains.  On the lowest rack is my batting/Polyfil/fabric scraps which are stuffed (!) into vintage suitcases.  Yeah, I was too lazy to show you that.  I also spray painted my cheap little radio turquoise and that’s where it sits.

My chalkboard door and my tin wall.  I drew that picture (pointillism study in art class back in ’99), and I just really like it, so I stuck it there.  I doodled a sign on the door just…because.  See my old typewriter?  I own two.  Love ’em.

This was my mom’s old sewing cabinet.  I should title this pic “Pimp My Cabinet”.  A week ago, it was that hideous speckled 1970s brown.  Now it is Dover White and I sanded all the corners.  I decoupaged the cabinet doors with vintage fabric from my Mamaw’s attic.  Coming soon:  Glass knobs.  I also applied clear Contact paper on the top to prevent smudges.  The paint that I had was satin, so it tends to kinda absorb dirt.

Detail of shelves/pegboard.  The clock was a present from my Papaw.

And here’s my favorite ad on the whole wall.  Because nothing screams class like fine imported cheese, hors d’oeuvres, and cheap domestic beer of the half-quart variety.  You have to love the 60’s.

Hope you enjoyed!  Of course, I’m not done.  Not done until I can fill the walls with tacky vintage items that no one else in their right mind would want!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to prime things up.  We used Zinsser 1-2-3 Bullseye.

And here we begin to cut in with our paint.  I love, love, love turquoise.  Is it original to paint your craft room turquoise?  NO.  But I don’t care.  Turquoise is in my own made-up holy trinity of colors consisting of:  Red, Peace yellow, and Turquoise.  It’s what I love!  I thought about light yellow walls, but I also wanted something more relaxing.  So, I went with blue.  To be exact, it’s a Glidden color from Wal-Mart.  Something like Aqua Seacrest or something like that.  I’ve slept since then.  I just knew I wanted it when I saw it!  Here is some more detail to that shelving/pegboard.  The shelf is actually 2 inches thick.  It’s a leftover piece to when we re-sided our house with cypress.  Gotta be STRONG to hold up those old sewing machines!

*note the beer bottle.  “Build it, and he will drink.”  Wait…that’s not right.  Is it?

And a view from the doorway:

Now came some CRAFTILICIOUS FUN.    I had been saving a whole stack of early 1960s ads just for this purpose.  I decoupaged the back wall with them. So much fun and now I really want a perfume with the scent of ModPodge.  Yes, I love it that much.  (No, I wasn’t sniffing ModPodge when no one was looking) Here ’tis:

Now is that some fun or what?  I love the hot pink in the ads, plus my ‘Holy Trinity of Colors’.  Now you can see why I went with Dover White on that pegboard.  I didn’t need any more color!  You can also see Jason installed my fan (not really a vintage looking fan, but hey, it was all we had in town).

Time to add something else…some old tin to the back wall.  We scavenged this tin off of the back part of our property, which we have deemed “Appliance Hill”.  Previous property owners had dumped tons of junk back there, including this cool tin.  I wanted to have a magnetic surface in my room to put up patterns/whathaveyou.

Now came baseboards (1″x6″ boards) and ‘crown moulding’ (1″x4″ boards).  And then caulk…lots of caulk.  Fortunately, I’m the Caulk Queen (a self-designated title), so that went quickly. I also wanted a chalkboard surface, just for some fun, so the back of the existing door was painted with Krylon latex chalkboard paint (2 coats). The last picture was taken on October 1st.  The next weekend, we went and picked out flooring.  There was a laminate flooring on clearance for 28 cents a square foot (!!!), but I reeeeeally didn’t  like it.  It just oozed “Cheap”.  And you know you shouldn’t ever ooze ‘Cheap’.  At least that’s what my mom always told me.  Anyhoo, I went with a $1.69 sq/ft plastic laminate that had a ‘hand-scraped’ look and I looooove it. We put it in by the next day.  So yes, most of this was done in about oh…5 days total!

AND NOW LADIES AND GENTS, I WOULD LIKE TO PRESENT YOU WITH THE NEW AND *IMPROVED* CRAFT ROOM…..(con’t)

For three years now, ever since we moved into this house, I have been longing for a craft/sewing room.  First of all, I have a LOT of craft stuff around, and it’s an accumulation of about 15 years.  Secondly, I think everybody needs their very own creative little space.  While I did have a corner of our dining area, there was no way it was large enough to house my smorgasbord of crafterie (my own just-now-made-up word).  Mostly, it’s sewing stuff/fabric, but I also have a lot of scrapbooking bits, painting stuff, and kid’s crafts.  So, for three years, I’ve had my eye on a small 10×12 room which is located inside of our workshop.  Originally, it was built to incubate emu eggs.  Yep, you read that correctly.  Back in the hey-day of emu oil, the former owners and my neighbors had a small emu co-op, where they raised and sold emu.  So, this little room was well insulated, and as an added bonus, it was fitted with about 12 plugs at 3′ off of the ground for the incubators/brooders.  No more reaching down to fumble with plugs!  Yay for my aging back.  So let’s go allllll the way back to last winter when we started with this project.

In the beginning, there was a window.  It was, well, a fairly (cough) crappy little window with the bottom glass pane that somehow mysteriously hung on despite only being attached to the frame at the bottom of the sill.

Notice the lovely coordinating black plug/outlet which was also slathered with glow in the dark paint.  If you will look at the floor, you will now see the oh-so-lovely plastic trim baseboard. The door opens out to my husband’s Man Cave.

Now, here comes my wonderful husband to start this project right:

And then:

Shhhhh, you have to promise to not tell Jason I have a picture of him on here in his slippers!  So as you can see, he is measuring now to put in my very own door, which I scored for free off of Craigslist.  And here is the door:

And there she is!  Whew, aren’t you tired?  I know I am!  (I broke a sweat watching him install the door while I sat around taking pictures.  I’m a really great help.)

Now moving right along, let’s fast forward through this hideous, sweltering summer and get to some nice fall temps so that we can begin on our little project again.  Picking up on September 25, 2011:  Looking into the room:

Note the Beee-youuuu-ti-ful sponged walls (which we had dubbed Diarrhea Green and SoulSucking Blue), the missing fan, and the holes in the sheetrock, thanks to my parrot.  Here is the A/C window unit that Jason mounted into the wall, and my metal storage rack, chock full of junk:

Nice, huh?  So first we ripped out the plastic molding by the floor.  Then filled the holes in the walls with spackle.  Jason mounted a 4’x8′ piece of pegboard and a shelf for my 19 zillion antique/vintage sewing machines.  After that, we spray painted that pegboard Dover White.  (Note to self:  I think I lost 1/2 my brain cells over that.  Do not repeat.)  Now to prime all the walls!  (continued in Part two)