My craft room/work space

I have to admit, I can get jealous sometimes when I'm reading design blogs with huge readerships and I look at some room makeover and think, I could totally have done that if I had more money for accessories, new furniture, project materials, the list goes on. I'm usually operating on a non-existant to tiny budget, so a lot of times, if I don't already have it or I can't make it for a few bucks, it's not happening.  Necessity is the mother of invention though and my blog IS about design on a budget, so haha yeah...

My craft room was definitely one of those low budget projects.  I'd been meaning to get it organized and usable for awhile, but when Scout Mob asked for some photos of my workspace, it gave me a good reason to get it done ASAP.  I actually had about $100 to do the whole thing (thanks Mom!), but considering the scope of work that needed to be done, it was tight. I have a small sun porch off my living room that serves as my guest room/craft room.    There are windows on 3 sides of the room and in the summer that room gets SO. MUCH. SUN.  And thanks to the fact that I live in Florida, we're talking scorching rays, making the room pretty much unusable.  

After 

Obviously not super styled or anything, but compared to what I had in there before (boxes, I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of it), it's a huge improvement.  I didn't have a large enough workspace back there, so we got the gray tabletop at IKEA for $10 and put it on top of two plastic drawer units that I already had (also great for storage).  Since taking this photo, my dad's given me an old desk of his, so now I have kind of an L-shaped work area.  B gave me the little drawer unit on the desktop and using a label maker, we organized all of my buttons, thread, and trim.  He has way more patience than I do.  The felt holder is a letter tray, also from IKEA.  I really needed a way to be able to see what felt I had and this does the trick.  I'll need more room at some point, but this works for now.

The striped curtains were made from a fabric remnant that a good friend gave me.  The opposite window has a coordinating floral print that was actually made from a vintage sheet from my grandma.  We lined them with a pack of curtain panels from IKEA.  We did that whole project for about $35, just the cost of the IKEA curtains and the curtain rods.

I don't have a picture of the floral curtains, but you can kind of see them behind the wingback chair.

The next big requirement that I had was a way to organize my ribbon.  It had previously been just jammed in a drawer and I could never see what I had.  So, B being kind of a genius, designed these ribbon holders for me.

This project was also pretty affordable, just the cost of the lumber and the dowels that the spools of ribbon sit on.  We already had the paint from the crazy quasi-ill fated front door project.  Neither of us remember exactly what we spent, but it was about $20.

General cost breakdown:
IKEA letter tray for felt: $8.99 (I was shocked at how expensive letter trays are, this is the cheapest I found, plus it's pink.)
Supplies for ribbon organizer: ≈$20
Desk top: $10
Curtain project: ≈$35

Total: ≈$74

Hope this gives you some ideas for a craft room of your own!

-Robin