Which crafts do you enjoy? Knitting? Quilting? Or mosaic?
Crafts are an important part of our lives and cultures. Through different arts, we are able to make items that brighten up and beautify our homes. And just as often we use it to create objects with practical value too.
If it is something you love doing, why not create a space for crafts in your life?
Whether you make money from the items you create or only do it as a hobby, you can benefit from dedicated crafting space. In either case, take a look at our guide for turning your mobile home into a crafter’s paradise.
Space for arts and crafts
There are plenty of advantages to creating a dedicated crafting space for yourself.
First off, it will help you keep all your supplies neat and organized. No more scrambling around looking for your glue or your scissors. We all know the feeling of leaving an idea unfinished simply because we can’t find what we need.
It will also make it much easier to work without getting glitter or beads everywhere.
But besides this, allocating a workspace for yourself can help you get inspired. Making the area beautiful and attractive will get your creative juices flowing. All in all, it is a great step toward becoming an expert at your craft.
Trust us. Once you’ve done the work, you’ll never look back.
Craft room vs. crafts nook
So, where should you put new crafting workspace?
Ideally, you would be able to dedicate an entire room to this pursuit. If you can, pick the smallest room or bedroom in your home and transform it into your very own studio. Otherwise you could combine this space with your spare room.
Unfortunately, like conventional homes, most mobile homes are a little short on space. You usually won’t have that much room left to spare.
In this case, you want to think in terms of a nook. You can use all kinds of hacks to turn a corner or spot in any of your rooms into your tiny crafting paradise.
If this is your plan, we recommend that you use your office, living room, or even your dining room.
Workspace
A central part of any crafter’s nook is your workspace. This will be the surface that you use to mold, construct, and paint, etc. In other words, it’s where the magic happens.
You can use a counter, desk, or regular table for this. Just make sure that it is wide enough. It will be more than a nuisance if your equipment and supplies keep falling off.
Preferably, you want to get a metal or wood table. These materials are more durable, so you don’t have to worry too much about bumps and scrapes. Besides this, the surface should be easy to clean and wipe down.
A pro tip is to invest in a self-healing cutting mat. Measure your work surface and look for a mat that is as close to these dimensions as possible. Thanks to these kinds of mats, your table will be protected from physical damage as well as mess and dirt.
Another thing to consider is the height of the desk. Some people prefer to work on crafts like pottery while standing up. In this case, consider getting an adjustable desk that you can lift or lower if you want to sit. Or just get a taller desk with a chair that you can adjust.
One item that often tends to get lost just when you need it is your ruler. Our solution for this is to stick extra measuring tape to the edge of your work surface. This way you can measure as you need to and as you work.
Space-saving tips
If you are trying to save every inch of space that you can, these tricks might help you:
- Buy a table with wood leaflets on the ends that you can fold up or down. You can even add these to your surface yourself.
- Mount your desk or table on wheels so that you can push it out of the way when necessary.
- Install a fold-down desk that you can secure to your mobile home wall.
- Or modify your desk by attaching DIY or ready-made cubby holes to the bottom of the surface and the legs.
Storage
This brings us to the next step toward creating a crafter’s paradise. That is to sort out your storage situation. Every crafter knows the feeling of having too much stuff and nowhere to put it. Some of us might enjoy messy desks, but it can hamper other people’s creativity.
An excellent place to start is to go through all your supplies and equipment. The chances are that you’ll find a few items you honestly don’t need anymore. Throw out things you can’t use at all like that old, congealed tube of paint.
But you’ll probably still have a lot of goodies to put away. Let’s look at storage tips for specific types of crafts.
Scrapbooking
The primary material for scrapbooking is obviously all the different kinds of paper that you use. Your challenge here is to keep them neat, protected, while still being able to distinguish between the different types and colors.
Here are a few ways you can store the sheets:
- Use a typical office filing cabinet to store the paper.
- Or take a crate and arrange it according to your own cardstock system.
- Put mail or paper holders on your shelves to store different colors and patterns. You can even paste a sample piece on the side as an index.
Quilting
Quilting is an age-old craft that people still love doing. One of your main challenges here will be how to store and organize all the cloth.
Take the time to fold your quilting fabrics into neat squares. Now you can vertically place them in a slim wire basket or the types of drawers that you use to arrange socks. For an upcycled option, you can repurpose an old shoebox.
Secondly, you need to store all your thread spools and ribbons. We recommend that you secure a pegboard on your mobile home wall. You can then tap in some pegs over which you place your ribbon or thread spools.
These storage hacks will work well for any type of craft that involves sewing or even embroidery.
Knitting
Is your craft of choice knitting?
In this case, you need to find a way to store and arrange your balls of wool.
An excellent solution for this is cubby holes. You can use a whole shelf of these or separate cubbies. If you want to, you can secure them to your work surface or your walls. You can then arrange them by color or type of yarn so that you can see them and get to them quickly.
Children’s crafts
Arts and crafts are a fantastic hobby for kids. It can be a great way to keep them occupied during weekends and holidays. But more than that, crafts can teach children new skills, allow them to practice their creativity, and give them the chance to develop their interests.
One of the critical things to consider in creating a crafting nook for your children is that they’ll probably experiment with variety of craft and materials. So you will need storage for a wide range of goodies.
An idea that works really well is to use empty cans. Clean them and make sure that there aren’t any sharp edges. You can store different items in them, for example:
- Pens, pencils, and crayons
- Paintbrushes
- Cotton balls
- Glitter glue
- Pom poms
- Colored pipe cleaners
- Ice cream sticks etc.
Best of all, they can decorate these cans and use them for other crafts as well. Get some baskets that they can use to store any other larger items.
Jewelry
When it comes to jewelry making, bottles are your best friend. They are the ideal way to store the hundreds and thousands of beads and pendants that you need. You can put away many of your tools and other supplies in the same way.
We recommend that you upcycle glass bottles or even old pill bottles. You can arrange them neatly on your shelves or in your drawers. Preferably, you should keep the lids on to prevent accidental spillage.
For smaller quantities, you can use tackle boxes or even egg trays. These solutions will work great if you need to move your supplies around for some reason.
General storage tips:
You can mix and match these solutions as the materials that you use for different crafts often overlap. But here are some general ideas that can come in handy in a crafting room or nook:
- Stick strips of magnetic tape to the wall. You can hang metal equipment like scissors from this.
- Mount pegs on the wall from which you can hang aprons or smocks. Or just get a coat rack or hat tree.
- If you need more room, install recessed shelves into your wall. This will quite literally expand the space you have to work with. You can use this for storage or use the recess to mount a work surface too.
Workboard
Another feature that will help you make the most out of your crafting space is to get a work board. This can help you keep track of any new ideas you have. You can also track the steps and tasks for your projects.
Besides this, we recommend that you use this as a vision board too. The brainstorming can really increase your creativity.
Felt boards with thumbtacks will work perfectly for this. However, you can also give a whiteboard with magnets a try.
Dedicated sink
One downside of crafting as a hobby is that it can get pretty messy. Therefore, serious crafters know how useful a dedicated sink can be. It can save you lots of time running back and forth. And can also help you to prevent the mess from spreading.
You can use this sink to wash your hands plus any tools like paintbrushes.
Luckily, the basin doesn’t necessarily have to be as wide or as deep as those you normally find in a kitchen. But it all depends on the nature of your craft.
If you have space and can easily connect it to your plumbing, you could permanently install a sink. But if that’s not an option, you can opt for a more portable and temporary solution.
Get a container with a spout and place it on a surface like a small end table. You can then put a bucket underneath the faucet for easy rinsing.
Seating
The whole point of a crafter’s paradise is to create a space that you’ll enjoy spending time in. It means you will probably be sitting down for hours on end. So it’s essential that you get comfy seating.
You don’t want to skimp on this. If you can, secure a proper desk or office chair. Otherwise choose a normal chair or bench with a pillow that is nice and soft.
Stock your shelves
To make your mobile home crafter’s paradise complete, you obviously need to build up your stocks.
Here is a list of supplies that will give you a solid foundation to work from:
- Paintbrushes
- Markers
- Scissors
- Arts and craft or multipurpose glue
- Hot glue gun and glue sticks
- Pencil and eraser
- Cutting board
- Clear and decorative tape
- Ruler
- Pliers
- Carpet knife
- Sponges
- Paper trimmer
- Decorative scissors
- Paint palette
- Mod podge
- Construction paper
- String
- Cloth or towel to wipe down with or clean
- Old newspapers
Get crafty
Turn your mobile home into a crafter’s paradise and spend more time being creative. These hacks will help you to make it easier than ever to practice your craft and to take on new and exciting projects like these one hour DIYs.
If you need to create more space to work in and store your supplies, don’t miss our article on building recessed shelves in a mobile home.
