Four Tips for Creating a Kids' Craft Space

I was woken up this morning by my three year old using me as a shelf for his pipe cleaner collection. Right now, he mostly uses the pipe cleaners to make letter shapes and simple animals, like fish, but he's getting more advanced. And messier.

Crafts have been hot here at our house for the past couple of months and I am amazed - AMAZED - at the amount of stuff generated by one crafty toddler. We've got pipe cleaners and scissors and stickers and papers of every color and weight.

Early on, we identified a table in the basement as our son's "craft spot," but without any special fanfare around the table, crafts quickly spread across the entire house. It's time, now, to take the house back.

The first step of that is to create a truly dedicated spot for crafting. To do that, I'll be following these four tips:

Kit Pollard

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These clipboards, in a grownup studio, would be a great way to display the enormous amounts of artwork kids generate.

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4. Great walls.I love this chalkboard paint - it takes the craft to the walls.

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It's never too early to start creating those zones - adding a little table to a nursery is a great idea.

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The table in the center of this room will likely serve lots of purposes. Right now, it's a train table, but it can easily transform into a craft table when interests change.

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Putting all of the crafty stuff on one wall makes sense - and it can evolve into homework space as kids get older.

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3. Zones. While we don't have a playroom in our house, we have turned half our basement into a kids' zone. I like the way this room takes that even a step further, giving different parts of the room different functions.

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And these drawers look like heaven to me. They're so big, they can hide all kinds of things.

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2. Containers. I never knew how important storage could be, until I woke up with a pipe cleaner in my back. I love these little containers...

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1. Color. If it's fun, they'll come. This busy artsy spot is attractive, in part, because of all the great color, from the walls to the tools.