Now, I know everyone's situation is different and the space you can allocate to your craft stuff is going to be different than mine most likely. But I hope you can take some of my storage solutions to help with your needs. For those of you with minimal craft space I suggest using bookshelves and plastic bins to store your supplies. When i had my stuff in a "craft closet" my husband used a piece of plywood and some 4X7s to build a table right into the closet. I then used old shelves to hold my paints, glitters, etc. I will also link any tutorials I have for some of my DIY storage solutions, as well as links to sites where you can purchase some of the other items.
So here is what my craft space looks like now. Our loft came with a built in table and shelves so I use those for my storage.
I have found it's easiest for me to organize my supplies by type. I find that organizing things that way helps me keep my "flow" when I'm working on something. For instance when I'm art journaling and I'm working on a page background I know that most of the stuff I need is going to be on my "page prep & texture" shelf. I also find that the more organized I am, the more organized I stay. If I know everything has a specific place, I'm more inclined to put them back after I've had all my crafting fun. I didn't get a picture of it but the drawer for my embellishments I have organized using plastic drawer organizers from bed bath and beyond. I organize them based on type (stickers, rub ons, metal embellishments, etc). By having them in their own separate plastic squares I can just pick up the entire thing and take it to my work area. So that way if I know I want to use a sticker on a page, but I'm not sure which one I can just take the sticker tub out and then go through it and put each sticker on the layout and see how it looks and then put it back in the tub if I don't chose it. That also helps me keep everything organized while I go crazy!
I organize my distress ink pads with using an up-cycled CD case holder. Since I use my distress products the most I have them all on a single shelf right above my work area for easy access. For my distress markers I use to just keep them all together using a spare hair tie. However, I recently purchase the Tim Holtz Distress Marker Tin and it's AMAZING! Its great for taking them to friends houses, it's easy to open, and the window at the top makes it easy for me to see what markers I have to plan my color scheme. I also organize my my stencils and my bible journal rub-ons/stickers using metals rings. I just slide the stencils on to the metal rings and then hang them from a small command strip hook. I keep my stencils in their original plastic packaging so I just string them onto the ring using the hanging hole that's in the packaging. I do the same thing for my bible journaling stickers. The only stencils I do somewhat differently are my Tim Holtz stencils. They are made with small holes at the top so I just put them on their own metal ring through the holes they are made with. Storing them this way makes them really easy to flip through and having them right on the wall make it very easy to grab them.
I store all my cling mounted stamps in a stamp binder. and I keep my stamp pads and acrylic blocks right next to it so everything is very easy to see and grab. It also helps prevent me from losing the cling stamps. I use to have them in plastic drawer organizers, but I wasted so much time sifting through everything and I lost some smaller stamps, I decided to go the binder route and it worked perfectly! My paintbrushes, pens, pencils, regular markers, journaling pens, scissors, glue gun, etc are stored in a recollections storage carousel. I purchased this when I was in my craft closet. It was, and still is, so helpful to have my most often used items right there at the tip of my fingers. I also love that I can spin it around to find the exact item I need. For all my craft paper I use a recollections storage cube with dividers to organize my plain paper, pattern paper, and scraps. I couldn't find a link to this but I originally purchased it from Michael's. For my craft ribbons I use another recollections brand item. Its a shelf system that also has two rows of dowels for ribbon storage. Again, I couldn't find a link to this but I purchased it at Michael's as well. Also, as a side note, since I am doing all my crafts on the built in I'm very careful to protect the wood so that if we ever move I won't be trying to figure out how to get off all the paint, ink, and glue while not destroying the wood. I ended up using the leftover patterned paper from my DIY Kitchen cork board, the paper is really cute and just makes the space look even craftier, but I can also remove it very easily (I taped it down with washi tape). It's thick enough that the inks and paints don't run through it so it's perfect. However, I do use an old paper shopping bag directly under my craft just as another barrier between the wood to be safe.
The last storage item I have is this three drawer storage cart. I comes with wheels but I chose not to put them on so it could fit under my table in my old craft closet. I have one drawer for all my cricut items, however I also want to get a cricut cartridge holder as well. The second drawer I use for my wood mounted stamps, and the bottom drawer is for my craft scissors that have decorative edges. These drawers aren't super organized in themselves, but its a great way for me to keep my larger items that take up a lot of space. Plus, I can use the top of the cart as another shelf for more storage!
Well, I hope this gave you some ideas on how to organize your craft supply madness! I would love to hear from you guys how you organize your supplies and any product you think I might find useful!
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