Dream Scrapbook Room Organization

Organizing my scrapbook room, again...it seems my Cricut Cartridges and Quickutz alphabet needed a new home, they had overgrown their previous space. I think this means no moreQuickutz pink binders and no more cartridges. LOL

If you have looked at the slide show (in the right column of my blog) of my dream scrapbook room you may already know this story. These wooden bookshelves were made by my husband when my two oldest children were very young.  He made one shelf for each child, and they sat their bigger toys on the shelves and had plastic baskets that contained Star Wars, Gi Joe, Strawberry Shortcake and Barbie, get the picture?  These shelves used to be six feet tall. But when I started making a scrapbook room, I didn't want to put much money into the room and I do like to upcycle/recycle so the shelves were in the garage collecting dust and I thought, "why not cut the shelves in half so I have two pieces from one shelf and we can put a top on it to use for an island in the middle of my scrapbook room", so that is just what we did.  We used a box of leftover laminiate flooring on top of a piece of plywood for my counter top, it works perfect.  DH screwed a piece of wood on the sides of the two shelves to make them more secure and not worry about them drifting apart.  the cool part is it cost nothing to make and I use this more than anything else.  This island is the perfect height of 31 inches with the counter on it so I can either sit and scrap or stand and it works for me.  It has changed with me everytime I redo my scrapbook room.  The other side of the shelf has nothing on it right now, I put my feet up on it or lay things that I am working with to keep them off the counter surface.  If I could keep only one piece of scrapbook furniture, this would be it.

The following two photos show the extra piece of wood to hold the two halves of the shelf together.  I used to store my paper on one side and baskets on the other.  Then I decided I needed more room for friends to come over and scrap so I moved the island to make room for folding tables and it is a better location for me also, right next to my sewing machine so all I need to do is turn in my chair and there is my sewing machine.
I still have the other 6 foot shelf in the garage...I keep trying to figure out what to do with it in my room.  Maybe it will go upstairs in the office.