Crafting and creating is even more fun when items are at our finger tips.
If you need help organizing your craft supplies, look no further. This craft room was organized by a creating genius for order and inspiration.
Organize your craft room for ultimate inspiration. Whether it be quilting, painting, jewelry or costumes, you’ll find easy and affordable organization that you’ll want to show off.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small percentage of the sale of items you may purchase at no additional cost to you.
Foam Board Fabric Organizers
These organizing game changers are inexpensive and versatile. Dollar store foam board turned fabric organizer. Cut with a ruler and exacto knife to the size that fits your needs.
Notice how there are taller boards in the back to store large pieces of fabric and shorter boards in the front. This helps make use of a deep shelf and still be able to see what you have.
And of course the fabric is color coded, because it would be wrong any other way. 😉
Easy Accent Wall Shelving from Ikea
The shelving units fit perfectly and when you aren’t looking for the perfect piece for your next quilting project, the shelves make a cozy accent wall to your creative space.
Baby Food Containers, Perfect for Organizers
Baby food containers, collect these for easy, see through storage. Perfect for small beads, buttons etc. You’ll find these shallow drawers from Ikea. No more digging to get creating – it’s literally at your finger tips
Whether you’ve got a baby at home or have a friend at the baby food stage, there is someone in your life that has an over abundance of these. The shallow drawers from Ikea make it easy to quickly find what you need. Here are some other great ideas for using baby food containers.
Lunch Meat Container Storage
Deli meat containers in varrying sizes, with the same width, keep larger items in easy reach. The see through sides and labels are genius time savers. If you find you are always buying a certain product, consider saving the container for storage. They’ll match and stack easier. And you’ll be saving our little Earth with thrifty, cute, reusable organizers.
Each container is “filed” in a metal filing cabinet that was painted light pink. Making it easy to find what you’re looking for.
Organizing Shelves Door Storage Ideas: Wire Basket Catch All
One secret about having everything at your finger tips is using every bit of your craft room space. Transform your closet door into a thread storage shelf, scissors and Cricut supplies, or a gift wrapping station. There are so many options, what would you do with that extra space?
Organize craft supplies. Wire shelfing that can attach easily to doors can be found on Amazon.
Use Command Hooks for Affordable Craft Room Organization
There are endless ways to use Command Hooks in organizing your craft room and the best part? They’re insanely affordable and easy to move. Find a great selection to choose from here.
Cheese Puff Bin Storage
Again, if you like a product, hold onto the containers. Cheese Puff containers can hold a lot. If the material is light you can easily store above head and still use space in harder to reach areas
Hard to Store Quilting Frame Made Easy
Quilting frame too tall for the closet? Improvise. If you’re quilting rack seems to take up precious space, get creative. Here a small hole was cut in the closet ceiling to allow the quilting frame to stand upright and save more space
Craft Room Ideas: Beautify Your Creative Space
If you spend much of your time crafting, why not make it cute with a collection of dress stands. Keep an eye out at yard sales to perfect your collection. They can also be easily found online.
Add a fancy chandelier with an artistic flaire, this style was found at Costco or search for some fun ideas online.
Happy crafting! I hope you found some great take home ideas that will help you organize your craftroom. Comment below on your favorite organizing tips.
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When we bought our house it had been a rental which was bad in the aspect that we had alot of things to fix up, but really good in that we got the house for a killer deal.
The front yard had beenprofessionally landscaped, which was great. However many of the trees and shrubs had overgrown and killed lawn or taken over several feet of pavement.
I really didn’t like that you could see the downspout drain pipe from the front. There was also a vast space of nothing right by the front walk way.
And though I wanted to do this project along with 100 others right away, I knew I had to pace myself.
There were several projects we had to do first out of necessity. You can read more about that from my DIY tab. Some of my favorites, some easy, some labor intensive, each made a dramatic difference to the enjoyment of our home.
Finally it’s time for the dry creek bed pictures, how-to maintenance and all I’ve learned in making it the best.
How to Make a Dry Creek Bed For Drainage
One of the primary reasons for wanting to DIY a dry creek bed was for drainage. I wanted like nothing else to get rid of that big black drain tube.
What I found is the dry creek bed works amazing as a drainage canal for downspouts.
There are a few specific things that will help your dry creek bed work well to drain excess water.
Dry Creek Bed Cost and Materials
To keep the costs low and because I had them on hand. These are the materials I used for a 10 foot stretch.
3 Heavy duty plastic landscape bags
15 Large boulders football sized plus
30 Small boulders fist sized or less
2 bags River rock /pea gravel
First dig a canal in the ground. Make sure it is sloping away from your foundation. I used a level to make sure it was tilting as far as I wanted.
Then lay down the landscape bags. As seen in the picture I started the bag 6 inches up the side of the foundation and held it in place with rocks.
With each new bag I made sure it overlapped by 6 inches with the new bag going underneath the previous bag.
Each bag also had a 1′ to a 1 1/2′ of space on either side of the canal. Here I made sure to push back the landscape rock. Place large, then small boulders and then put the landscape rock back around to cover the plastic.
At the downspout I had a pile of rocks to help hide the plastic and to lead the water away from the house and down the canal.
How to Keep River Rock in Place on a Slope
After the first rain storm I found I had a problem. The water would rush out from the drain pipe so quickly that it would wash away all my river rock as well.
I actually went and studied the river by my house – I’m pretty committed to this dry creek bed by now.
I noticed two things. A natural river has most of its large boulders on the outside edge, followed by smaller boulders and then river rock. A natural river curves and winds and that is where it slows down.
To create this natural slowing process I had to put rocks sticking out into the “river.” It was difficult, because my brain kept saying it should be uniform, but nature is not uniform and looks better with curves and displaced rocks anyhow.
As you can see in the picture below the rocks slow the water enough that even the tree seeds gather and don’t wash all the way down, but the water still moves away from the house.
I strategically placed one rock on one side and then a foot later a rock on the other side so it would hit a rock, show down, hit another rock and slow down more.
I no longer have river rock washing away.
With a view of the whole creek you can also see that I only did two major rocks, strategically placed to slow the water flow.
The rest of the creek curves a bit for aesthetic and water control purposes.
Dry Creek Bed Landscape Plants
When the landscape was originally planned there was no water run to this section. It gets too dry for regular plants to grow, so I tried native plants, as you can kind of see in this picture.
They all died, probably because of my limited plant knowledge.
I tried again with Chick and Hen Succulents and they thrived. First off succulents love rocky terrain for their little roots to wrap around. They also do great with large amounts of water during rainy season. The thick leaves allow them to store up water for dry spells.
Watch your succulents. If the leaves start to get thin, give them a good long drink of water. I have found they can go several weeks in hot dry weather before needing water.
Keep in mind, not all succulents can survive outside in all growing zones. We are zone 5b-7a. I have also successfully grown these in zone 4 where it got pretty cold for 6 months. Check for the particular succulent you are looking to plant before you put it permanently outside.
Depending on your rain fall, hostas would also do well near a dry creek bed. Keep in mind that they like a moderate amount of water and do well in shade.
Dry Creek Bed Maintenance
Once you’ve got the water flow under control and plants that grow well there is not alot of maintenance.
A few times a year I use a leaf blower to blow away any trees seeds, leaves and plant residue.
Every so often I adjust a rock or redistribute river rock that has fallen. In general its a nice, low maintenance landscaping.
It’s added interest to our yard. Provided an attractive way to move rain water away from our house and acts as an occasional balancing exercise for our children. 😊
The Succulents have taken off and at they grow will also help hold the smaller rocks in place.
Thank you for stopping by. Please share your thoughts – which of your projects have had the greatest effect on your curb appeal?
You are in luck, we just did it and are here to share what we learned. Some people may wonder, can you put an above ground trampoline in the ground?
The answer is yes!
There are several options. Here’s how we did ours for under $100.
Definitely the easiest way to get the pit is to hire the digging out to someone with equipment or rent the equipment like a backhoe or a mini excavator. Depending on where you live, this can cost $200 – $500 to rent.
DIY Trampoline Pit
If you’re really determined and very much into saving money and DIY you can dig it by hand.
My husband dug this completely by hand. He’s amazing right? I thought it was a little crazy and not possible, but he treated it like his workout and did it every day for about two weeks.
He then used the extra dirt to create a greater slope away from the foundation of our house and make a hill to build a fish pond and waterfall for a later project.
So it is possible by hand and you can do it even with hard desert ground, just know what you’re getting into.
Sunken trampoline problems
The ground seemed so hard we decided not to put up a Trampoline retaining wall. Then a few months later, our neighbor’s water main broke and all the water drained into this pit. The sides weakened and then collapsed.
We knew we had to put up a retaining wall of some sort, but left it for the next spring.
Building a Retaining Wall for a Trampoline Pit
This article is on how to create a retaining wall using corrugated metal, because it’s cheap and easy. At the end of the article I will share all the other ways we considered before we began.
How Corrugated Metal Can be Used as a DIY Inground Trampoline Pit
Pros it’s inexpensive, the curved horizontal lines create a strong surface for a retaining wall.
Cons it may rust, it is sharp on the edges.
First you’ll want to dig out enough dirt for the metal sheet to slide into place.
This is what it looked like digging out the collapsed walls.
Fit Corrugated Sheets Around the sides of the Inground Trampoline Pit
We used 4’x10′ corrugated metal sheets. This allowed just enough room to bend around the middle poll while both edges fit behind the first and last poll. They run about $10 a sheet bringing the cost to just under a $100 for materials.
Tip : wear working gloves. As you are fitting the metal into place you will need to push down on the edges, which are sharp.
Bending Corrugated Metal For a Trampoline Pit
We tried two methods. Bending it before we put it in and bending it while we put it in. Both had successes and failures.
Both bends highlighted below were done by bending while we put them in place. As you can see sometimes it worked very well. However our worst bend job also came from bending while putting it in the pit.
We then tried bending it before by having our kids stand where we wanted it to bend while we pushed the sheet up. We got mediocre bends.
Ultimately we decided to just chance it and bend as we went.
A long metal pipe may work better, we just decided to wing it.
How to Avoid Sharp Edges on Trampoline Retaining Walls and How to Create Air Flow
As has been noted, corrugated metal is sharp on the edges. A friend’s daughter slipped on their tramp while jumping and cut her leg. Not a bad cut, but still not desirable.
We decided to combat this by having the metal sit well below the edge of the trampoline and have the earth slope down to the metal.
Eventually grass will grow towards the metal retaining wall and slightly cover the metal edge.
The added bonus of having this slope is it will also allow air to escape which creates a greater bounce. If the trampoline comes flush to the ground the air won’t move out of the way and will create a belly flop, hard bounce.
In ground trampoline drainage
We don’t have a nifty drain in the middle, that would be really smart and we may do that one day. But we do have a down spout draining field right in the trampoline pit.
My husband discovered it while digging. It’s basically a pile of rocks, to prevent erosion, covered with dirt.
We left the whole thing where it was. Eventually we will put up some 2x4s to reinforce the sides where the drain field is.
It also works as a handy slope to get in and out of the pit.
You may not be able to tell from this picture, but I came through with a rake and built up the sides with a slight decline towards the middle.
This will help reinforce the bottom edge of the corrugated metal and any water that does make it in can drain to the middle and evaporate.
How Well Does a Trampoline Retaining Wall Hold up?
We came up with a corrugated retaining wall out of necessity. After the walls caved in, the erosion kept going. Our other neighbor’s garden irrigation was slowly eating away at one side.
If you have alot of erosion from water first put up the wall, then fill with gravel then dirt. The gravel will help filter the water and reduce the erosion effect.
The section I have circled here has been up over a year and is still going strong. No bulging or signs of giving way.
Alternative Spring Covers for an Inground Trampoline Pit
The heat and wind desinegrated our trampoline pad. We wanted something that wouldn’t blow away, but would also protect our kids from spring pinches.
Pool noodles were the thing we needed. They fit the spring with just enough room to slide.
Fitting Pool Noodles for Trampoline Springs
First get these on clearance at the end of summer. This measures the whole inground trampoline package really come to under $100
Next cut noodles with a serrated knife about 5″ or the length of the spring stretch section leaving the metal loops exposed.
This will make for easier assembly onto the frame.
Slide the springs into each pool noodle section.
Put all the springs onto the frame, then begin to put the trampoline mat in place.
How to Assemble a Trampoline
The trampoline mat can be difficult to get on the frame. You will want to have these cool tools that grip the spring and allow you to pull it onto the trampoline mat ring.
Towards the end when it’s really difficult, we found it worked best for me to pull the ring of the trampoline mat while my husband used a long flathead screw driver from the loop on the spring and connected the two together.
And it’s done!
The kids love jumping, we love them getting the exercise and being outside. The longer we’ve had the trampoline the more comfortable and daring our children have become.
So we’re coming up with rules to keep kids heads in place.
What are go – to rules that have kept your kids safe on the trampoline?
Here are some other inground trampoline ideas we also considered
Pros it’s all set up meant to fit your trampoline.
Cons I’ve still seen these bulging, they’re not fail safe. But to be fair to Trampolines down under its possible they weren’t installed correctly.
Check out this design from their company. The curved sides give it added security.
Using a Cut Off End to a Grain Silo for an Inground Trampoline Retaining Wall
Runs you a few hundred. The idea is you buy the whole silo and cut them into sections. You can get 4-5 out of one silo, sell off the rest to pay for it.
Pros it’s one big, heavy duty circle. No bulging from dirt, no rust.
Cons it’s hard to find one.
Build a Trampoline Retaining Wall Out of Brick
The only version I saw of this had a huge 1′ gap all the way around. Which was built that way on purpose so kids could climb under and get things that had fallen. All I saw was my toddler tripping on it and face planting on the springs. It also is a lot of money for brick.
Pros it can look really classy
Cons it can be a hard place to fall.
Well that’s the inground trampoline pit info. We ultimately chose the corrugated metal because we tested it and saw it was working.
I hope this helped as you make your inground pit.
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If you have used wood blind slats or faux wood slats laying around, don’t throw them out. Sometimes these thin, flexible slats can work better than trim you find at the store
Not only can you remove those extra blind slats that sit constantly at the bottom of your window blinds, but you can do insanely awesome things with the left overs.
Use Faux Wood Blind Slats to Dress Up a Boring Door
One of my favorite uses for faux wood blinds is to dress up a flat boring door. To trim out and add a touch of farmhouse style, simply outline your doors (and walls if you want) with trim. Then caulk in the seams and paint. It’s that easy.
The faux wood blinds used here, had holes in them. To fix that, first glue the blind slat to your desired surface. Then come back through with drywall mud and fill in all the holes. Let the mud dry, then sand smooth.
After a coat of primer you are ready to paint.
If you look here, you will see I actually added trim to create the visual effect of wider doors. I cut the window blinds so that it ran across the accordian style door. This gave the visual perception of two wider doors instead of 4 narrow ones.
Upcycle Window Blinds Slats to Add Character to a Kitchen Island
Sometimes you want bigger, boxy trim and sometimes you want sleek and subtle highlights.
Used window blinds work perfect here. Being thin helps add interest without the bulk as shown in my desk to kitchen island.
As the tilt out trash can and storage were added, several gaps needed to be covered. The window blinds did a great job and added an element of elegance once complete.
To see the whole transformation and how-to click here.
Repurpose Faux Wood Blind Slats to Cover Up Outdated Designs
Old window blinds came in handy with this upcycle project. There was so little room to add trim. Faux wood slats would work best because they were so thin.
I attached the trim with an automatic air nailer. Then caulked over the holes.
So seamless, once painted, you will never know about the outdated scalloped edge.
I use recycled, upcycled, repurposed material in my designs because I love to bring value back to something that would just end up in a landfill. We consume so much as a society and so many materials are needlessly tossed.
It’s a good feeling to recycle and have your home even more beautiful.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed this article. Please feel free to subscribe for more cost effective,environmentally friendly ways to update your home.
How to hang hooks and faux wainscoting to increase the use of your space and make your entry feel more welcoming.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small percentage of the sale of items you may purchase at no increased price to you.
The entryway is the first and often only place many people see of your home. By making it welcoming and spacious you give an impression of what you’re whole home looks like.
There are different techniques to use whether you have a small, narrow space or large space that needs focus. Today I am writing about how we gave a larger entry focus. Read here for tips on a smaller space.
The reason for the project
I found that when people arrived at our home they had no convenient place to put their jackets. Though we do have a small coat closet, people usually chose to just lay them on the floor. I wanted there to be an attractive and useful spot to quickly put visitors items and help them feel welcome.
I also hated the orange peel texture, so you can see in my before picture that the project is already underway…And I forgot to take a picture before I had started 😅.
This can be done (as demonstrated on my YouTube channel) with a skim coat of dry wall mud. You can buy this in powder form and mix to the desired consistency or pre mixed.
Tip:
Bumps on the wall are more concerning than dips in the wall. You can always come back and fill in a hole. It’s much harder to scrape off a poorly filled hole that sticks up and is now painted.
Space Vertical Trim
When I first started doing faux wainscoting, someone had suggested to use a computer program to decide where to put each piece of vertical slat. I don’t have the patience for that.
I place the piece where it looks normal up close, then I back up to see if it looks good.
After it visually looks good, I measure between each piece and make slight adjustments. You may have light switches, plugs or door frames to maneuver around.
The slats are pine, 1/4 inch by 2 inches, found in the buy-by-the-foot trim section at the Home Depot. I believe they are lattice slats.
Tape Each Slat in Place
Once I am sure of the location of each slat, I tape it in place with painters tape. It is also a good idea to use a level as you tape them down. It may look perfectly vertical when you are up close, but when you move away the slight slants really stick out.
Secure the slates in place with either finish nails and a hammer or an automatic finish nailer. We bought the Porter – Cable combo pack nailers and upholstery stapler with an air compressor. It had the best price and highest reviews.
Add Boards for a Shelf
Two 6″ X 1″ pine boards make a narrow shelf and a great support to add coat hooks. You can also add a piece of decorative trim where the boards come together, for extra support and detail.
Secure in place with finish nails and a few screws. I used my awesome magnetic stud finder and placed the screws into studs. The shelf isn’t meant to hold much weight, but it will be holding several hooks and weight from coats.
Caulk All Joints
Use paintable caulk along all joints. This is what gives a finished, professional look.
Friends have told me before that they were intimidated by all the caulk choices. See my caulk choosing guide here.
For this project I went with DAP paintable caulk.
Fill in any nail or screw holes with caulk.
Choose Your Paint Color
Paint can dramatically change the feel of a room. I went with a light blue on the upper wall to help soften my crazy horizontal lines along the ceiling.
As you can see in the image below the diagonal wall painted in blue draws less attention to the strange angle, than the brown.
It works because the wall color comes closer to matching the ceiling. It blend in instead of sticking out. In this case I really wanted that effect.
I painted the faux wainscoting the same color as my baseboards and trim. This created continuity and gave the impression of more space.
Add Coat Hooks
I searched everywhere for hooks that looked nice and weren’t too big or expensive. Many were too tall to fit under the shelf and leave enough head room to fit a coat over the hook. Many looked cheap.
Eventually I chose these. They had good shape, good reviews, they held your attention, but didn’t draw away from the rest of the design.
Our home immediately looked elevated. I recieved complements from people who were seeing the home for the first time as well as old friends.
I thought it, “worked! The entry really does speak for the whole home.” 🙂 It’s worth investing in.
I hope you liked this little tutorial today. What is something you want to upgrade in your home? What do you wish you knew how to do (maybe I’ll make a tutorial 😉).
Who doesn’t want clean tile? Either you’ve already got it or you give it a real mean glare from the couch.
The easiest way to keep your tile clean is to seal it in the first place. If you inherited your dirty grout lines like I did the only way out is to get down and clean them.
You’ve got a few options that I will cover in this article.
Scrub with adhesive
Steam
Paint the grout lines
Chemicals
In the before picture of my tile. The floor doesn’t look too bad – but I think I’d grown used to it. I hated it when we bought the house and off and on hated it while we finished the basement, put in a back yard and built a loft bed. See what I did there 😉.
We weren’t sitting around, staring at a horrible floor. We were working our tails off, occasionally noticing the floor. Then a well meaning family member mentioned it and I had a 40 year birthday bash coming.
(I know I finally made the big 4-0 😊)
Which meant it was time for the real deal. It was time to clean that floor and seal it.
Before the grout was cleaned
After the grout was cleaned
Baking Soda and Vinegar Meathod
I had scrubbed the floor before with baking soda – it worked, but took several washes to get the residue off. I had done a 4’x5′ section to see how it went. Didn’t seal it because the rest of the floor needed to be done first. Within a few weeks the tile was back to normal – ugh!
This time, my 40th birthday try, I decided to get it all done in one blow and rented a really expensive tile steamer.
I was hoping for a magical experience, where I pointed the steam and simply wiped away any leftover mist. The truth is, I worked up a sweat scrubbing the tile – just like I’d hoped not too.
The good news? I figured out how to do it for free with no harsh chemicals, annoying residue or expensive rental machines.
The steamer by itself left light lines, but in no way got the whole floor clean.
Grout lines cleaned with just a steamer and no scrubbing
I found I had to steam and then scrub. I was also in a rush because I only had the rented steamer for 4 hours. It was too pricey to do a thorough job.
Here my floor was cleaner, but still had dark lines and I had to return the steamer.
I was annoyed because of the price I had paid and time restraints – and it still wasn’t clean.
However I had noticed something, I was cleaning up alot of water. Steam after all is a gas from really hot water…
Why was I paying all this money for hot water??
Hot Water No Chemicals or Adhesives
I came home and tried again. This time with no time restraints. How good can boiling hot water do at cleaning grout?
This is the amount of dirt I got up with just hot water and a metal bristle brush. For just the cost of boiled water, I was able to get the exact same result as a rented steamer.
Or better because it didn’t cost me $50.
The good news is not only was it cheaper, but it also left no residue behind. No harsh chemicals to breath in while cleaning or to expose my children to.
Boiling water and a metal bristle brush worked just as well as any other method I’ve tried – and it was free.
After your floor is clean, be sure to seal it. I used 511 Impregnator Sealer. Hoping this works to the tune of never having to clean tile grout again. 😜
Paint Grout Lines
Another option is to “paint” the grout with Grout Refresh. You can see instructions on how to get that look here.
Chemicals
You can clean with chemicals. As time has gone on I’ve become more weary of the chemicals we use. My youngest was diagnosed with asthma at one year of age so I personally have started looking for options that don’t require chemicals.
That being said, sometimes chemicals are just easier. There are a few options out there and people claim ut makes your life easier and will get the job done quickly.
One option is Clorox toilet bowl cleaner you can view the how to here. Though I haven’t tried this personally I would suggest you clean your floor very well after since it is meant to be kept within a toilet bowl.
There are also options to use Oxiclean or Resolve to clean your tile.
Whichever option you choose, best wishes. I am so glad I got it done and that I sealed the grout afterwards. I’m not going to do this every month.
Hi, I’m Natalie. I’m a mother of four, an artist, and a DIYer that loves to reuse, recycle, and refurbish. I like power tools and teaching others how to save money while improving their home.
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