Storing Art Materials for Home Education

We love to make stuff. We love to paint, print, stamp, draw, write, colour, stick and recycle. We love to create.

All of that leads to a great deal of art and craft materials being kept in quite a limited space. Here's how we do it.

We have a lazy susan that I wrapped a piece of hardboard around and attached with small nails (through the hardboard and into the wooden base of the lazy susan). It wasn't a piece of that hardboard that is designed to go around curves (didn't have any to hand on this day, oh how I wish I had done!). It was just a piece of hardboard that I scored at intervals with a hacksaw to ensure it would go round the lazy susan without breaking up. I then taped a piece of silvery card around it. This was all meant to be a temporary measure but I've not yet got around to improving it's aesthetics!

Inside the lazy susan are pots, boxes and other containers of mark making materials and a few other art accessories. Here's a bird's eye view -

In the lazy susan we have various boxes of pastels, sets of crayons, pots and tins of pencils (drawing, colouring, watercolour, blendable, metallic), charcoal sticks and tortillons for blending, felt pens and felt pre-inked stamper pens, and in the middle a few extras : shape-edged rulers, bendy blue thing for creating curvy shapes, small cutting mat, small watercolour palette with a set of basic watercolour paints, and a couple of basic letter stencils (we have a huge collection of other stencils elsewhere along with a sizeable number of pattern rubbing plates). Oh yeah, there's also a couple of fluffy ended pens and pencils that the cats would otherwise attack play with.

The whole thing is quite heavy so it's placed on a round tray that is slightly bigger than the lazy susan. We got the tray for free at a car boot sale. The tray has cut-out handles and allows us to carry the whole thing through to another room should we wish (it usually lives in the living room on top of the games cupboard). However, we normally just remove the pot or box we need and take that to wherever the creativity is happening.

Some of our other art and craft supplies are stored thus -

pipecleaners in a container that used to hold tennis balls;

 

tissue paper shapes, geometric paper shapes, stick on magnets, 'special' pink sequins, fabric shapes, and more are corralled in fast food containers; 



  

further miscellaneous art materials (stick on gems, small beads, paper mosaic pieces, fake snow etc.) are also in various containers in the kitchen dresser;

 



then we have several sets of small plastic drawers and ice cream tubs that hold the usual glittery glues, sticky foamy bits, polystyrene balls, feathers, etc;

along with other containers repurposed to hold lolly sticks... and loose glitter...

 

 

and a few of the most popular textile and yarn resources are in larger plastic containers (yes, they are balanced on top of the recipe books that are balanced on top of the kitchen dresser... what can I say, I am seeking a new home for them but no vacancies have yet appeared!) 

 



 

Then there are the shelves of art and craft books... in the dining room cum home office/study...

and in the kitchen.

Hmm, yes, even the corner of a shelf isn't safe from reuse! That's a small metal bucket we got free at a car boot sale and covered in paper flowers - it holds our glue gun with spare glue rods, our hot air thingy (like a small hairdryer, for use primarily when embossing) and there's also a staple gun around somewhere...

But here's the storage thing I love most - a small plastic pot of PVA glue with a tight fitting lid.

It means I can buy a BIG container of glue and decant small amounts and ensure it stays useable  for a long time and save money and reduce potential spillages. Simple solutions, I love them!

As for clean recyclables? At present they're in a small vegetable rack in the dining room! This is one of the things that Cupcake's friends are most likely to ask to use when they visit. It's untidy and I have to put the tiny stuff into plastic boxes (to stop them dropping through the gaps) but it does mean the items are visually available and consequently being used more.

No, that's not everything.

Of course there's lots of plain paper and card in various sizes.The there are boxes of coloured and decorative papers; a file tray filled with corrugated card, tissue paper, crepe paper, fun foam sheets etc; a container of pieces of foils and cellophanes; trays holding pots and tubes of acrylic and poster paints; lots of paintbrushes and spatulas; a carousel of fancy scissors; a collection of sculpting tools and air dry clay; a box of sticky stuff (glue dots, glue sticks, sticky backed foam pads etc); ridiculously very large box of larger recyclables (kept in the summer house); collections of felted materials, netting, wadding, threads, yarns and lots of fabric yardage and scaps... and so on...

Yes, we like to be creative!