Craft rooms can be a haven for creativity, relaxation, and fun . . . until you realize you’re missing something and can’t finish the craft project you’ve been looking forward to. 

Everybody seems to start with a small assortment of materials that grow and grow as your interest (or possibly your kids!) grow along with them. Through changing seasons, holidays, parties, and rainy days, a craft drawer might turn into a craft table, and then finally a craft room.

So, what are the essentials of crafting? Whether you’re starting your first craft drawer or filling a much larger creative space— we’ve put together a list of the materials we can’t live without so you’re ready for just about any paper crafting project.

Shapes:

Not a day passes that we don’t use something from the Everyday Shapes pack. It’s got Circles, Hearts, and Stars each in 6 sizes from small to large. And all of the shape designs come in a rainbow assortment of colors, too. Another pack we can’t live without is ARTshapes. It features 45 different funky shapes in lots of colors for unlimited fun and creativity. You can use the idea guide that comes with the pack for inspiration to decorate cards, bookmarks, and lots of other crafts. 

Also in the shapes category for paper crafting, we recommend having letters and numbers at your disposal. There are lots of colors to consider, but if you’re unsure of where to start, go with the Black and White Letters Combo Pack. You can use the white letters for dark backgrounds, and black letters for light backgrounds. You can layer them to look like a shadow or highlight, and they come in two sizes—3 inch and 1.5 inches—so you can make headlines and subheads. And with more than 700 in the pack, you’ve got a lot to work with.

Adhesives:

For adhesives, variety is key, because you might be working with small pieces, large ones that need heavier coverage, or you might be taping something together. We really like our options at FreshCut Crafts, so we always have lots of glue sticks and liquid adhesives. We love to use glue dots in different sizes, tape runners, and of course the always useful invisible tape. 

We tend to use permanent glue rather than repositionable adhesives, but that’s a preference, really. On one hand, it’s nice to have the ability to change the placement and to be a little bit non-committal with your designs, but we find the repositionable adhesives to be too wimpy and we hate when our crafts fall apart.

Tools:

The most important tool you’ll need in your craft room is a good pair of scissors. Next in importance would be a metal ruler. Another great thing to have is a hole punch—we like having different sizes to choose from for different types of projects. A standard punch is fine to start, and you can always add punches that are larger and smaller as you grow your collection.

Scoring tools are helpful for putting a clean crease into a sheet of paper, but if you don’t have one, you can always use the back side of a butter knife, or even a paper clip as a makeshift scoring tool with a ruler.

Drawing and Decorating:

Every craft room needs an assortment of drawing materials, like markers, colored pencils, crayons, and paints. This category is highly subjective. In our craft studio, we favor markers of every width, texture and color. We have white pens, paint pens, glitter pens—we’ll try anything. If we could only have one writing tool, it would have to be black Sharpie pens, thick and thin. 

You may also want to have a classic pack of crayons, and a rainbow assortment of colored pencils. We’re not paint people, but if you are—go for it!! This is a wide open category that will grow on you.

Craft Bases:

It’s always good to have some interesting materials to serve as bases for your crafting projects. We like using DIY Craft Cutouts, which includes blank paper bookmarks, tags, and door hangers in white and bright colors. 

Blank sheets of card stock for folding and making cards, frames, and works of art are also essential to have around. A nice, bright white is eternally useful, and so is an assortment of rainbow-colored papers to spark your creativity and make things interesting.

We’re huge fans of upcycling materials, and there are lots of things you can find around the house that can be reused in your craft room. Paper bags in all sizes are great for puppets, goodie bags, and place mats. Toilet paper and paper towel rolls are fun for critter crafts and other dimensional designs. Other fun bases to hang on to include egg cartons, cardboard boxes, bottles and cans, milk cartons, plastic lids and caps.

Accents:

We recommend always having different types of string and ribbon close by. It’s great for making garland and banners, hanging crafts, and lots of other things. We like to have different colors of yarn, ribbon, twine, and craft cord in the studio, along with a few metallic options as well.

Popsicle sticks, pom-poms, and pipe cleaners in a variety of sizes and colors come in handy for so many things. They add wonderful color, texture, and dimensionality to craft projects of all kinds. 

Note: Glitter is also a common craft accent, but since glitter is a microplastic that is non-biodegradable, we don’t use it in our studio at FreshCut Crafts. Ditto for google eyes. We make our craft eyes out of paper, rather than using plastic ones. That said, it’s your craft room, and your choice if you want to use these common supplies.

Storage:

The key to keeping your growing craft space functioning at its best is . . . organization. But don’t panic if you’re not obsessively tidy—you don’t have to be that serious about it. The key is to keep like items with like items, and to find efficient ways to save space while keeping your materials accessible and intuitive to find.

You also don’t have to spend a fortune, either. We have lots of inexpensive plastic storage caddies, art bins, plastic drawer storage units, and tackle box-style organizers. We find that carousel organizers are a great solution for smaller spaces and craft tables.

Make it your own!

We hope this has been a helpful list to get you started. Setting up your craft space is a uniquely personal (and fun) experience, and everyone’s space will be different. There is no wrong or right to it, so remember to enjoy the journey and make it your own!