Bookcase Organisation
We’re nearly there with the craft room sort out!
Where things go on my bookcases has always been determined by two different factors; usefulness, and prettiness. As my bookcases are open (ie not drawers), I want my often used items in an easy to reach place. BUT, I also want it to look pretty, after all it’s what I see when I walk into my craft room.
The middle couple of shelves are prime real estate, they’re eye level (at least for me, as I’m short) and they’re easy to grab. Before, I had a lot of space taken up here by my tray storage, luckily these are now up on the wall, so I have gained quite a bit of room.
The Top Half
PaintGem completed books
PaintGem stash, Zestie Mail, PaintGem in progress & older Logbooks
Special Diamonds and space for ‘To Film’ items
My diamond painting pens
In an ideal world, I would have had my ‘To Film’ shelf lower down; however, the middle shelf is fixed and it didn’t work out right with the spacing to switch things around. When the shelf is empty (like now) it does give somewhere for the eyes to rest that is clean and clear.
I love that the shelf for my pens now allows me to see in the clear lids and open them for easy access. They also hold all my pens with a couple of slots spare, so that’s good.
The Bottom Half
Diamond Dust drills, AB drills, Cover Paper
Spare drill storage
More spare drill storage
Quilting bits & pieces
This section looks really pretty and while I could possibly move some of my spare drill storage up to the top, I would increase the risk of them falling when getting them down, (as I said I’m short). Also, my PaintGem stash has been taken into consideration as my completed book shelf is FULL and they’ll start to creep onto the next shelf as soon as my next set is finished.
Over all I’m happy with the free space on my shelves and the room for growing items to grow as they need to over the next year or so. As with anything, I’ll have to revisit the space in the future, but not for a while.
Diamond Painting Storage
Today is all about storage, and by that I mean diamond painting storage cases. Not the storage in my craft room as that isn’t changing.
Initially, this was hard. As a person who loves organisation, I love going to kit up a painting and having the perfect container for the drills to go into. It makes me happy, it makes me smile and who doesn’t love going into a new project all full of smiles and happiness?
Before going into this part of the project, my cases took up one large shelf on my big bookcase, 2 shelves on my small bookcase, 2 drawers in my Kallax and I’d also often have projects waiting to be de-kitted floating about. For such a small craft room, this is just too much space for things that aren’t being used all the time.
So, to tackle this I set myself a limited amount of space for these cases - 3 1/2 shelves on my small bookcase and 1 Kallax drawer. I also really thought about the usefulness and how much the storage has been used over the last year or so.
My Small Bookcase
As you can see by this image, I have paired down my options. I kept cases based on how many pots they have, or the different size options within the cases.
This small shelf also shares space with my logbook and small on going projects (PaintGem & HAED diamonds)
The Kallax drawer holds my small storage cases that are perfect for little projects. You’ll be able to see that in my after Craft Room video that will be coming soon.
Diamond Paintings
Now everyone has a different view on how many diamond paintings in your stash is too many, and that’s OK. We all have varying amounts of space, time or budget. We also have different levels of clutter allowance; for that I mean we all have a level in which the amount of things we own becomes overwhelming. Sometimes that can be remedied with how it’s stored or how easy it is to access, but more often than not, it requires a good declutter. You, and only you can answer that question. You just need to be truthful with yourself.
That being said, I have too many diamond paintings in my stash for my comfort level. Does that mean I did a deep purge - no. Should I have done - probably.
My main focus during this craft room sort out has been to get my craft room to become an organised space that makes me smile again. I love organisation and I love being able to put things away because I know where they go. All decisions I’ve made so far have been relatively easy, pairing down my storage (coming up in a future blog post) was probably one of the hardest, but focusing on the usefulness of my storage options made that easier.
Where it became hard, was my diamond paintings. I like having variety, but not the space it takes up in my room. I love having diamond paintings that are blocky, or ones that are confetti, some even being both. I love having round and square ones, big and small ones. I also adore all the paintings that I have to choose from, and pairing these down would have been HARD!
So, instead, I found more space for them. Cheating - maybe, but I’m happy with the fact that my craft room is looking the way I want it to, and I haven’t had to make any REALLY hard decisions. I may focus on purging my diamond paintings in the future, but for now I’m going to keep being mindful about what gets added into my stash and enjoy the process of getting some of them completed. But, I also know where to start if my room begins to overwhelm me again.
For my big paintings, I have now split them up to be either side of my Kallax unit that is under my desk. To the left, is all my Diamond Art Studio UK (DAS) paintings, with the bamboo box on the floor holding boxes for paintings that are currently being worked on by me or Megan. To the right, is all the others.
Underneath my Kallax has also been cleared out and is holding all my completed paintings for 2025 (of which I have a few), so that I can do a video at the end of the year.
My smaller paintings that are hung on trouser hangers are fine, and I’m not changing any organisation system that works. Oh, but I did move my PaintGem mini sets (more on that in the future too).
Spare Diamond Drills
Today it’s time to show you my spare diamond drills. I’ve rearranged my AB diamonds to be in these gorgeous little flower boxes that Kim gifted me for Christmas. They are just perfect for holding all my AB, Neon and numbered rhinestone drills in one place. I even got around to making new name plates for the photo boxes and I didn’t ask Megan for help once. Go me!
I used 2” x 3” bags for holding my ABs, the same ones I use for all my other diamonds. I also used the same dividers, though I did have to trim a little bit off the sides to make them 2” as the box is only just over 4” wide.
For my regular spare diamonds, I relabelled the boxes as my Dymo labels just weren’t pretty enough for my liking. I also passed on all my extra spares and turned my lovely green lidded box into one to hold all my Zestie mail. Now that has room to grow too.
Slowly but surely, my shelves are looking pretty and organised again.
Diamond Dust Drills & Cover Paper
I already had storage in mind for my Cover Paper; I was planning to use the adorable boxes that Kim kindly gifted me. However, as always, things change. I found that I just had too much cover paper, ooops.
So, I went back to my original storage method of these acrylic drawers from Home Bargains. I also decided to use these for my Diamond Dust drills as eight of them fit just right on my bookshelf. Don’t worry, the cute storage boxes sit on the same shelf and I have another use for them.
I’ve organised the top two cover paper drawers into themes; Christmas, numbers, valentine etc and the bottom two hold all the others. I’m sure I’ll need more in the future, but for now I have room to grow.
For my diamond dust drills, I have two boxes for round, and two for square. They’re organised by DMC number and it’s already proved to be the best way as I grabbed some to go with my next PaintGem kit.
The added bonus, is they look pretty on my shelf and have prime real estate as they’re at the easy to grab level. More on what goes inside the boxes and how my bookcase is laid out, coming soon….
Add More Zest Tray Storage
So we’re going to start off the craft room organisation with an easy task - Trays. My AMZ, Zesty and Touch of Zest Trays.
I say easy task, because as I was getting ready for this venture, hubby kindly fixed more of our Tray Storage units to my wall, and Katherine was home from University to arrange them all pretty for me. I was only needed for guidance, rather than manual labour. 🤣
Now I have room to grow my collection as new ones come out. I can also see easily where to put the 2 back that I’m currently using. Plus, they aren’t taking up valuable space on my bookcase which has many other uses.
Many of our initial designs are at the top as we only have them in one size option, but as we work down, I have a lovely rainbow, with all size options for the trays.
Which one has been your favourite colour option?
Craft Room
Click on the image for the YouTube tour.
As with many spaces, the use changes over time. My craft room is no exception. It’s been my scrapbooking haven, the Add More Zest Shop and now houses my diamond painting craft supplies, along with a little bit of my quilting overflow. While it’s housed my diamond painting supplies for a while, even they need reorganisation every now and then, as what and how much of something I use changes.
Join me while I revamp my space to suit my current needs. As detailed in the before tour video I have a few things that I specifically want to tackle:
Organising my Diamond Painting Trays
Sorting out my Cover Paper
Reworking my bookcases
Finding a home for my Diamond Dust Drills
Decluttering and purging what is no longer serving my needs
Getting my diamond paintings managable
Diamond Painting Pens tidy up
I am sure there will be more as I move step my step, but isn’t there always.
If your craft room/space is in need of a revamp, please join me. Grab a bag for rubbish/trash and a box for things to donate/sell and lets get moving. Starting with clearing out all the rubbish you can see. - GO!
Party Time!
I will soon be putting up details of my craft room revamp, but before then, I thought I’d do a quick post to show you how the Add More Zest Shop hosted a 21st birthday party this last Saturday.
Our youngest Katherine, turned 21 (at the head of the table in purple). So we had Chinese Takeaway and a games night with family.
We moved all packing supplies etc around to our ‘warehouse’ section out of the way. Brought in the dining table, and teamed with our packing table it was enough space to hold 15 people for dinner.
A great time was had by all. Now back to normal viewing…
Diamond Dust Drills
Who knew it would take so long to sort out the pictures for selling Diamond Dust Drills by individual colour, or PaintGem set? I always seem to forget how long it takes to not only photograph, but also edit, rename, upload and assign to the website. That’s a few days I won’t get back, but a great feeling to get it completed.
We are now able to offer all 60 colours of Diamond Dust Drills individually, as well as our colour groups. In addition, I’ve compiled sets to match the PaintGem mini diamond paintings that I love, they currently range from 2 matching colours, to a whopping 21 colours!
Now to get back to craft room organisation and the rest of my todo list….
Happy New Year
How did this year come around so quickly? I feel like it’s still the early 2000’s.
For 2025 I thought I’d follow on from our Advent 2024 Blog, and do an AMZ Blog too. My ramblings in the written word.
The new posts won’t be at a set day or time but I’ll try to bring you a glimpse into a different side of Add More Zest.
Today, I’m all about organisation. I took December 2024 as a slower month, keeping on top of the AMZ Advent Event on YouTube, emails, and orders, but all the plotting, planning and organising was set by the wayside for the most part. (I can’t switch my brain off).
It’s now time to get things going full steam ahead again and I already feel behind. We’re not organised with a January Sale this year, nor have we planned a January launch. Due to this, you may see items appear as and when in the shop. We’ve focused today on getting the Christmas themed items and the 2024 Calendar on the website. We also started to sort out the office/shop, tidying up and trying to get some order in what had turned into a chaotic setting.
Tomorrow we plan to get ourselves a plan - written down. From there we can prioritise, place orders, generate listings for the website and share more of what’s happening.
Please feel free to comment below and let me know what you’d like to see more of, for today, I just wanted to get something down on ‘paper’ while the motivation is high!
Have an awesome day.