We head to Northern Ireland to go behind the scenes at Heart Handmade UK to tour Claire's lovely craft room.
"Honestly, my favourite thing is the amount of natural light that I have. My craft room was previously in a little room right beside my current craft room but it was located at the back of the house which is in a row of terraced houses and was totally dark and grey and rather stiffling creativly!"
{% room 50 %}
Tell us about your space?
My craft room is in my house. It is about 4mx3m and it's a craft room/home office/cat bedroom and greenhouse (it gets all the best light so my plants live in there). It is also my workspace, and the crafting I do most in this room would probably be art journalling or project life.
What have you done to make your space cosy, beautiful or inspiring?
I like to add vintage touches within all the new furniture and I try to change the items on the wall and rearrange the 'stuff' on my big ikea expedit case with each season. I find having seasonal colours and images surrounding me really helps to get the creative juices flowing.
How do you keep organized?
I tend to give the illusion of organisation. I have a large wicker basket in the bottom of my large basket, inside I have acrylic pen pots that fit the basket perfectly and in there I have all of my pens, pencils, lettering markers and excess office supplies. I use a decorative lolly pop maker to store my paint brushes in the one place and I use little ikea drawers and acrylic drawers to group all of my items together. I have an entire (Moppe) drawer full of glue sticks, one full of versafine ink pads, another full of unmouted rubber stamps and another full of embossing powders!
I used old yougurt pots and hot glued them together to create drawer organisers and I store all my little bits and bobs in those. I had a bit of a sequin accident over christmas, so there are suprise sequins in all the little pots. A nice little sparkly suprise!
Any tips & tricks for organising supplies?
All of the above! I love my food cans covered in decorative paper for storing my most used pens and pencils and craft knives. I use pretty jam jars to store small spools of decorative thread and I try to have a place for everything. Athough, everything is not always in its place.
Which are your favourite possessions and are there any of your own creations on display?
Yes I have lots of my own little decorative items on display. My favourite thing to do is art journalling so I keep those old journals grouped together in a large basket and I have a little 'mini albums' basket so that if I'm feeling nostalgic I can look through them all. I have lots of decorative frames and handmade cushions and crochet blankets of my own that are on display all through my home.
How do you organise your inspiration and ideas?
I use both art journals and pinterest.
Where do you look for inspiration?
Usually pinterest.It's probably my favourite online social media site. I've always been a very visual learner and images have always evoked certain emotions and inspiration in me so I love it!
If you had three wishes, what would you do to make it the dream space?
These are going to be quite sad. Quite honestly; remove the damp in the walls, insulate the outer wall better and find somewhere to put a tiny/comfy couch!