Our Home Art Studio

When the new year came around last month, I felt a strong urge to clear the clutter and re-organize our house. Can you guess where the worst of our clutter lived? …In the art studio! Art supplies seem to have a way of rapidly multiplying and taking over a space. In order to tackle the mess, I decided to clear the shelves and get some new containers that actually fit our space and materials. I also splurged on a few streamlined items (the chairs and large baskets) to take the visual stimulation down a notch.

Finding the right containers for us was tricky. We kept a few that were working well, and then looked for others that fit our supplies and were easy to transport to the table.

Our new caddy was a great buy. It holds our markers, crayons, and colored pencils (affiliate links) in one unit. This seems to encourage my girls to branch out from using just markers all the time. When there are other options right in front of them, they are more inclined to try them.

Karuna and Ora are currently both really into writing letters and making cards. I decided to incorporate this into the design by adding letter holders on top of the paper rack. They hold blank greeting cards, envelopes, (affliliate link) and colored cardstock. Because of the light-weight material of these letter holders, I added bits of Putty (affiliate link) to the bottom to stick them to the paper rack. These babies aren’t gong anywhere now!

The colorful drawers are great for storing collage materials and other crafty items. Each drawer can be taken out and moved to the table for easy access.

Below the shelves are large baskets that hold recycled items, broken toys, fabric scraps, and wood bits. They make for great, inexpensive art supplies. Ora loves getting into these baskets!

As I’ve mentioned before, I always try to incorporate toys into an art space. When I noticed my girls were using their little animals and figurines in their art play, I knew I needed a special place for them to live in the studio. I came across this house shelf at an antique fair, painted it white, and added some fun paper to jazz it up. It now lives on the wall next to the art supplies to encourage more play in their creative process. It also lives next to a new art display line so the girls can clip up their work whenever they like.

The best part of our studio? It’s a converted porch- right off of the living room- that can be closed off and yet still visible! I like to shut the door (because you never know what will happen when you let a 2 year old loose around all these materials) and peer into the space every now and then through the living room windows.

How is your art clutter? Do you tend to let it pile up or do you try do a clean sweep every now and then? I’d love to hear about it in the comments! And as always, let me know if you have a question I could help you out with.