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Come behind the scenes at The Cobra Lily for a #CraftRoomTour and see Kate's work area.
It has half a bay window so it has pretty great light at certain times of day.
Tell us about your space
My craft space is a little nook in the window of my son’s room. He likes making things too, (and has drawers brimming with craft supplies, just like me) so there’s a certain logic to having us be roomies. We share two book cases and two sets of drawers (his are the lower shelves and drawers that he can reach.) My table folds down when I'm not using it so he can play or read in the window nook if he likes.
I don’t actually do much crafting in my craft space. I use it to take photos, to store supplies, and to arrange flowers, but the actual flower making happens at the kitchen table, on the couch, in bed, at the park, in the car while my daughter sleeps, etc. My work area is kind of like a home base that grounds all this peripatetic craftiness.
What have you done to make your space cosy, beautiful or inspiring?
I splurged on these vintage bark cloth curtains. The previous owner had hemmed them to fit around a radiator, so they’re a weird length in one section, but I don’t even care. I just love the color and pattern and the way the leaves glow when the sun shines through them.
The other thing I did, which I intended to be purely practical, was to arrange my scraps by color in these magazine holders from Ikea. I was just trying to deal with the problem of the scary overstuffed scrap drawer I never wanted to deal with.. But it came out really nice, and now I find that rainbow of crepe paper to be really motivating.
How do you keep organized?
For me, the challenge is to be organized but not over organized. So I stick my pink – orange crepe paper rolls in the same crate, for example, but I don’t worry about having them in perfect rainbow order. Or I have a set of little boxes that contain loosely related items, but not every sized brad has its own perfect spot. I could never keep up with that.
Any tips & tricks for organising supplies?
It helps me to just accept that I’m always going to be fine tuning aspects of organizing supplies—new designs sometimes call for new supplies and those can throw off the “perfect” ecosystem of supplies. So I’ll try putting this with that and then adjust later and generally try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Which are your favourite possessions and are there any of your own creations on display?
I think my favorite possessions are always going to be the scissors and glue that just happen to be in the right place at the right time. I keep them all over the place. A friend of mine had a pacifier loving baby who would drop her pacifier in the night and then cry. So they tried just dumping a bunch of pacifiers to the crib at night in the hope that she would be able to bump into one in the dark. This is my approach to scissors and glue.
Paper flowers are challenging to store, so I tend to have them out where I can see them. But having my flowers around sometimes stress me out because I’m always mentally reworking them. But my daughter loves them and will just randomly say: “I love your beautiful flowers, Mama.” And that’s the absolute best.
How do you organise your inspiration and ideas?
For flowers to try, I rely on pinterest. For ideas, I keep a little box labeled “bits” that are just little partial experiments or flower parts or ideas. I have a bigger version I keep in the top of the closet that I comb through now and then. I envy people who work in 2D the ability to put stuff in a binder!
Where do you look for inspiration?
Neighborhood gardens, the Bellevue botanical garden, botanical prints, gardening books, just being outside--it's actually kind of hard to escape flower inspiration since it's all around us.
If you had three wishes, what would you do to make it the dream space?
1. It would be nice to have an extra bedroom and have this be a dedicated craft room for me and my little crafters.
2. I sometimes fantasize about building really detailed backgrounds for my photos that I could easily hang and switch: like one with subway tile, one with wallpaper, one with cool molding, etc. I don't really have the diy knowhow to make this happen, but maybe one day I'll con my husband into taking it on.
3. It would be great if my table could both fold down and be totally adjustable height for photos.
But honestly, I really like my craft space and don't feel like its limitations really hold me back from making what I'd like to make. More than anything, I'm grateful to have easy access to great natural light for photography.
Whose craft room would you love to explore? Send us a message!
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