The Babe Cave is back!
Welcome back, dear readers, new and old! Today is a special day! For my semi-regular readers, they will probably recognize the reference. For those of you who are new here, let me get you up to speed! The Babe Cave is the beloved and favored nickname for my craft room; which is my haven, my sanctuary, my “special” personal space. Everyone needs a personal space for their crafts, whether it’s just a little corner of the room where you do your cross stitching or knitting, or an entire basement that you can hoard out with every craft known to man like an underground bunker made for a Craft Survivalist waiting for every Michael’s in the country to go out of business. (If you’re wondering, I’m…somewhere in between.) Anywho…the name came from one of those novelty metal garage/parking signs that I found one day while browsing a Five Below store, and my husband was insistent that I needed the sign for my craft room. Henceforth the craft room has been called the Babe Cave. It’s like a Man Cave…but much better.
With our move in October 2020, the Babe Cave, sadly, had to go. For a while, I mean, not permanently – because at this point I have so many craft supplies they require their own room. Originally, the new Babe Cave was supposed to be down in our basement. I had this ideal picture in my head – I wanted the basement to be a combination family room, gaming room, and craft room. The idea was I could enjoy my craft space while my husband was playing his games, because he’s gone so much for work that I enjoy being around him when he plays. Plus, over this past year and a half through the pandemic, he has actually succeeded in turning me into a gamer. I love hanging around him in the same room while he’s playing, but when my craft room is a completely separate room I can’t really do that. So I had this grand design of having half the open basement be the fully-loaded family and gaming area (comfy couch, large screen TV, entertainment center, the works), and the other half being the epic Babe Cave aka craft room I’ve always dreamed of – the totally Pinterest worthy kind, with the walls overloaded with the white storage cubes of all different kinds for so many storage options, and work spaces up against two of the walls with an even bigger workspace in the center for bigger projects and spreading out. And, at first, we were totally working toward that.
Eventually, reality sank in. The reality that I have fibromyalgia. The reality that this is not a made-up disorder like some think, that this is very real – because it interferes so much with the things I want to do that how could it not be real? Because eventually I realized that there was no way I could go up and down our staircase that many times whenever I wanted to spend time in my craft room. So eventually I realized that maybe the basement plan wasn’t the best one.
So my husband and I went to Plan B. Plan B was always the spare bedroom upstairs. Our son chose the bedroom all the way down in the basement for his room – you know, he’s one of those broody 14-year-olds who don’t want to be bothered and enjoy living in a dark dungeon that no other humans want to enter. š So that left a spare bedroom upstairs, right next to our bedroom and bathroom. And we had planned to put the spare bed we had in there, and eventually “renovate” it to be an actual guest room, but…reality comes into play again…we don’t have that many overnight guests. It would go unused, when it could be made into something enjoyable. So Plan B it was – make a guest bed spot downstairs in the basement for whatever guests we do end up having, and turn the spare bedroom to the Babe Cave 2.0.
So, let’s take the grand tour, shall we?
To the direct left, as soon as you walk in the door, we have my beautiful new sewing area. As you can see, I have my treasured photo of my mom before she passed, and the handmade yarn-wrapped wreaths I made many years ago in some of the handspun yarn I made. A new-ish addition is the handmade paper quilled banner I made as one of my first projects when I tried quilling last year. My reliable old sewing table from the thrift shop is holding my machine, my scissor/tool caddy, my thread holder, and my new yarn ball winder and umbrella swift that I bought this year because I got back to knitting for a while. The wooden file cabinet under my desk holds fabric, notions, and projects, because my husband didn’t need this cabinet anymore and thought I could better use it. Yes, we have yet to put the light switch covers back on after painting months ago – we haven’t gotten around to getting extra screws, and I’m still deciding if I want to put the original covers back on or put my “artistic touch” on new covers for my craft room. The closet is my storage area, and yeah it’s messy – I’ve actually organized and reorganized it about 3 times since we first moved, and it just keeps going back to how it is now. One of these days I’ll buy more clear storage totes to contain everything a little better, but for now since it’s all easily hidden away it’s perfectly fine. This is also the place where I store all the shipping boxes and necessities I need for my business. (You see the huge bag of packing peanuts peeking out to say hi? lol)
And to the right of the quilting/sewing/closet area is what I call my “staging area”. This is mainly where I stage my product photos for selling things in my Etsy shop. This adorable little wooden end table was left in the house when we took it over, I think it must have been my mother-in-law’s, and it was in good enough shape and so cute that I instantly saw a great place to take the photos for my shop. I added a cheap little placemat from Dollar General and a floral arrangement I put together using Dollar Tree supplies and voila. And yep, there’s a cat bed right by that table – whenever I’m in the craft room the cats follow me, and Milo loves taking naps in his cat bed so that’s his area. Sassy has absolutely no use for cat beds so there’s only one; she’d rather lay in the window and watch the birds outside than sleep in a cat bed. I have a ton of my storage cubes up against this wall – a few of them hold stones, tealight holders, and glassware I’ve painted or am in the process of painting, either as they dry or waiting for me to photograph them and get them up in the shop (which I need to do obviously). Others hold canvases and other painting supplies. The gold fabric tote holds some smaller shipping or packaging supplies. The blue striped ones hold some fabric and sewing supplies, mostly things like rolls of ribbon that I’m less likely to ever use. The white cabinet holds some of my store’s stock and of course, my printer; the shelf unit holds more ribbon plus the stickers for my shop packaging, containers of tiny things like sequins, and some other paints. I have my letter board displayed, my business cards, some knick-knacks, a couple $1 paint by number canvases that I bought at Walmart for something to do (and I thought they were kinda cute). And I display one of my own dot art paintings above my staging area, one that I created specifically for the room. The smaller “geode” canvas paintings were picked up at Dollar Tree, when I bought several of these 5×7 style paintings to spread through the decor in the new house. You’d be amazed what cheap little pieces you can buy to add something extra to your more expensive decor.
Turning the corner of the room, you start to enter into my beading area. Now, I don’t do much beading these days – it’s unbelievably rough on my back because I can never find a chair that doesn’t hurt it, and since I don’t sell jewelry anymore and don’t wear much of it myself I don’t have much use for it. But it stays just in case one of these days I want to give it another go (which I hope to do soon, I have a couple projects I want to do). There’s more storage cubes – the tall tower holds supplies for diamond painting projects and, honestly, any random doodads I can slip in there – there’s even an old silverware tray that holds my least used paintbrushes towards the bottom. (It’s not hoarding, it’s resourcefulness. š) The drawer units all hold various art supplies – there are artist journals, pastel and drawing tools, a few painting supplies, my very small stash of card-making supplies, and a bunch of dollhouse-making tools and supplies. The cubby holds more Etsy shop stock – wooden hanging art, small canvases, etc. I keep my plain wrapping paper for wrapping orders to be sent, gift wrap for gift orders, and my business notebook next to that. And up top is just more decorations – a couple of my finished cross stitch pieces sit there with a fountain, and the cross was another thing that was found in the house when we moved in that I liked and kept. I’ve hung another dot art painting I’ve created up there. Standing up on the tower is a sticker holder that was originally meant to store scrapbook stickers – mine never worked well for that, so I found another use for it and it stores extra drills from finished diamond painting projects. And yes – I have a glitter lava lamp, twinkle lights, and a little neon sign (that isn’t plugged in in the picture). I had these kinds of things in my old bedroom when I was a teenager, and I just remember feeling like it expressed my likes so well that I decided my craft room can have some things like this too, for nostalgia. Who cares if I’m a damn adult, if I want twinkle lights I’ll hang twinkle lights!
Directly to the right of that, my reliable old bookshelves hold all my bead containers. The top is a display area and knick-knack collector. I have some old decor – the gold sequin pillow, my Tinkerbell memorabilia, and the figurines and stuffed toys. I’ve also added some new things – the blue sequined pillow is new (another Dollar Tree find that was purchased with the 5×7 canvases), the kitty frame (Dollar Tree), my birthday card from this year (last year’s is there also). The “Maker of Pretty Things” and “Knitters Gonna Knit” signs are new – Michael’s clearance finds, for only $2 each! There’s another sign that’s kinda hiding behind the dollhouse that says “Creative Genius At Work”. The old thrift store shelf isn’t new but I did finally get around to hanging it. And of course, my own projects – my diamond painting and two cross stitch pieces. The dollhouse is something I’ve been putting together piece by piece lately – I found these at Michael’s and decided to try them. I buy a piece or a room here and there when I can. So far I have these four rooms, not much furniture, but I’m still in the process of deciding what I’m doing with it and how I’m finishing. One day maybe it will be its own blog post.
Turn the corner again and here’s my wonderful yarn area. The nine-drawer unit holds the majority of the yarn I currently have. I do have some overflow supply since I went on a yarn-buying binge earlier this year, but almost all of it is the Dollar Tree acrylic skeins, and it’s kept in a spot in my bedroom close to where I stay. As I empty space, it gets moved from overflow to the drawers. Each weight of yarn is separated and divided into different fabric boxes, and I recently labeled them with my label maker. My spinning wheel is out as well, I actually have plans to repaint it and do some dot art on it, but since it’s a big project I haven’t gotten to it yet – and it could probably use another stain and some TLC too. There’s more of my finished diamond paintings, the “official” Babe Cave signage, and a mess from my dollhouse supplies that needs taken care of on my file cabinet. And, obviously, my television and area of band memorabilia – yes I am a 90’s boyband girl, and did a huge diamond painting of my favorite lol. And I also have the Funko Pop figurines of theirs that I bought a while back, and the framed signed autographs of my favorite member that I absolutely treasure on display.
And finally, the centerpiece of my whole room is probably the new workspace I put in. I actually took some of the stimulus money from earlier this year and used it to stimulate my new business venture. I put the money into all the supplies I needed, shipping and marketing, tools, and things I needed, like canvases, wood, mugs and glassware, etc. I had to invest in all the supplies for molding the stones and tealight holders I paint – the silicone molds, the mix, and measuring tools. I also had to buy new paints and things. One of the big purchases I made was more storage cubes to build this center desk area. Sometime in 2019 I had gotten into pour painting and given that a go, and enjoyed it – but no area in my craft room was appropriate for it. I had to do the two canvases I did at my kitchen table, which was not ideal. And I started thinking, “It would be great if I had a space that was more like a worktable than a desk to do certain things.” So that was essentially what I set out to do with this. I had seen set-ups like this many times on Pinterest and things like that over the years, and always wanted something like that. It’s not as large as I would have liked but this is all I had room to do – I could have made it larger if my craft room had been in the basement unfortunately, but this is still great. I’ve used it quite a lot, mostly to do work on my dot art painting business – you can see it’s kinda messy because I tend to just keep my stuff out until I’m finished. Soon I think I’ll try to do more pour painting, and I’ll use this area for that, so we’ll see how that goes.
The great thing about the storage cubes from Michael’s that were used to create this work area is they are built-in storage. Each side consists of 2 of the double-shelf cubes stacked on top of each other. And I use each of these shelves to store a ton of my supplies, which I don’t have a good place for in any other part of the room. In each photo below, from top to bottom: I have 2 full shelves of Christmas ornaments to paint, which will start getting done and put up in my shop soon; paints and my varnishing supplies; mold-making supplies for stones and candle holders – molds, measuring equipment, mixture, and clean-up supplies; 2 shelves of wood decor pieces, from wood shaped baskets to keychains and necklace pieces, wooden crosses, and wooden plaques; a stack of unpainted stretched canvases; larger wood decor pieces, like hanging stars, hearts, and shapes. The third picture (right) is an open view of my cabinet (the one that the printer is sat on top of) – I keep finished and painted mugs and glassware on the top shelf, both painted and unpainted molded stones and candle holders in the middle shelf, and the fast-food drink trays will help hold painted ornaments safely somewhere as they get completed; and the bottom shelf is almost all unpainted ceramic and glassware – coffee mugs, wine and champagne glasses just waiting to be painted.
And that’s it, that’s essentially the tour of the new room. I still have a few things I’d like to do to it. One of the things I would have loved to do with the startup money was buy a rug so I don’t scratch the wooden floors with the work desk and my chairs, but the money went to too many more important things first, so I’ll get that someday. I need to replace that curtain because it doesn’t match the room how it is now and we still need to put up the light switch and other things from when we painted. I also have several projects that will be put up in the room, but they’re not done yet. And I’m always changing and adding to the room, so who knows what I’ll do with it in the future. I’m sure you’ll see it pop up again in future posts, because it’s such a fun room now that I try to work in it more than I did previously – even when I feel terrible.
So, what do you think? And what would you like to see on the blog in the coming weeks? I have a few ideas, but sometimes it’s so challenging to come up with topics to discuss I just don’t, and I get busy doing other things and that’s when I let the blog sit for months! So if you guys have ideas, please drop me comments and let me know!
Floss and Fibro 