The Art Cabinet

When I was growing up I fancied myself an artist. I took many art classes and could spend hours painting and drawing. As a teenager I realized I was never going to be a great artist, and I didn't want to be an art teacher, so I decided to go into costume design, which incorporated my love of fashion, film and art into one job. As I became a mother and stopped working I noticed I have stopped doing anything artistic! I consider cooking, decorating my home, and my blog to all be creative, but not necessarily artistic.

I have also noticed my younger son has really bloomed as an artist. He loves to fill up notebooks with little pen drawings. But every time I tried to get him to be more creative with his drawings, like color them in, or paint, etc, it took forever to find the art supplies and find a space where he could get messy.

So I decided to repurpose an old armoire into an art cabinet. Want to see it?



It is located in our main 'hanging-out' room so it is very accessible. As I was organizing the cabinet, I also cleared off one of our two desks located to the left of frame. My big goal is to keep this area clear so anyone wanting to be artistic or crafty has a place already set up and clean.





Here is another shot, this time from head-on. As  you can see there are four shelves and two drawers. It looks like there is only one drawer, but the plain molding below the 'fancy' drawer is actually a second drawer!

As you can see, there is a place for everything! I figure if the supplies are easy to find, then maybe both my boys and myself might be more inclined to actually be creative.

As for those awesome teal and green containers, they are from Target. I couldn't find these online, but if you go right now you should be able to find them. The honeycomb box was in the homegoods section along with the brushes and scissors containers, and the 'y' patterned boxes are in the 'seasonal' section. Oh! I almost forgot: the metal things holding the paper are also from Target. They are napkin holders. The white containers with the lace tops are from Ikea in the gardening section. Just hurry because they are selling out fast.

Do any of you have a dedicated space to be creative? If so, do you actually use it, and what kinds of things do you create?