Black and white make a great decorating base, because you can throw a winning selection of other colours at them and they will just ground it. I spent time over the holiday in a space that is black with a lot of white plus hits of red and sagey green, and wow: so relaxing. Not to mention a perfect backdrop for the majority of seasonal decorating events.
But the other good thing about black and white is that it's super easy to buy storage accessories in those non-colours, and then mix and match it all up.
My bookshelves are from IKEA, nothing fancy. That black blob up in the left hand corner? That's a magazine tote I bought in an off-price designer decorating store (HomeSense, to my fellow Canadians) and there's a second one of them on the other side of the shelf for balance. The floral black and white box is meant for photographs - also cheap, also from HomeSense. The rest? it's Martha Stewart desk storage, bought at Staples.
Let's just take another look at the lower left corner there - what looks like two stacked boxes.
They aren't stacked boxes. They're stacked desk trays by Martha Stewart, turned to face away so the mess inside them doesn't spill out into the psyche of anybody in this room.
IKEA bookshelves are so deep, you can get away with storing 12" x 12" scrapbook paper in these things and nothing so much as curls when the trays are pushed into place. I can even hide that industrial-weight hole punch!
Just like with the black magazine totes - they hold binders and report covers and file folders, by the way - the other side of the shelf is balanced out with a matching pair of stacked desk trays.
These ones hold paper scraps for smaller projects, and pull-out trays for ribbons and other odds and ends. (the lined box is another desk thing from HomeSense, bought about a year before the rest. told you it's easy to mix and match!)
I also have some Martha Stewart plain white boxes with lids stacked up there, for storing glue sticks and markers and other fun supplies, and Martha Stewart trays for corralling a single hole punch and more clips and stickers and tags.
The upshot is, you can stash a ton of crafty stuff not just invisibly, but conveniently. That's really the best part: everything in one place, right where you're most likely to be using it. Saves you so much time, which you can turn around and use for making things.
Especially things for wrapping and gifting special knits, ahem.
Hope this is a helpful step back from our usual menu of knitting delights. Tomorrow: back to yarn! Or the making of it, at least.
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