I've tried dining table cropping. Sorry that one is for the birds IMHO. It's too hard to maintain a viral scrapping process at one's dining table with a house full of young, energetic children. Well, at least if you want your pages to resemble anything you'd want to reflect on several years later.

I've tried carving out a space in our master bedroom twice over. Two different bedroom spaces, two completely different arrangements for workspaces and storage. Neither, resulted in getting much accomplished on the scrapbook horizon. That really was pretty sad.

My ideal would be a room dedicated to crafty pursuits (sewing, scrapping, gift wrapping, etc.) on the main level near the arteries of the home (kitchen & laundry). However our 1400 sq ft home isn't anywhere near large enough for all of that. Plus I don't think it'd go over well, converting our dining room into a crafting room. Our dining room is a very functional space already. We EAT all our meals at our dining table and it's a frequent snack/homework spot..

The only viable solution that truly made sense was to carve out a space on the main living level. Preferably a full corner somewhere close to all the daily on-goings, so I'm accessible to the kids. But at the same time not too near food/water sources, since either could  do irreparable harm to scrapbooks and photos. Plenty of storage (preferably mostly closed so it'll look all nicey, nice) for all my scrapping paraphernalia that comes with the cropping craft.

We have an odd corner in our living room that really seemed a natural fit. Especially once I rearranged some furniture for the millionth time (at least according to my sweet DH-C). The corner is cut off from the rest of the living room by a traffic flow problem (well at least that's always what we considered it before). Now it's become a pretty spectacular opportunity. There is a doorway to the front entry on one side of the corner and an over-sized opening to the dining room on the other. We tried including that corner into the living room functionality several times over the 6 going on almost 7 years we've been here. It just plain never worked! To finally see the possibility of a dedicated space with both functionality and purpose finally makes such absolute sense. It's truly amazing that it took us this long to figure it out!

Here's the main storage cabinet found after our church rummage sale for FREE:

Yes FREE, it's solid wood to boot! It'll get a lick of paint before it's finis.

Here's my temporary vertical storage solution:

Here's what's coming to replace it soon:

Much more dust resistant!

On this blank patch of wall:

...will be a roughly counter-height desktop. I have plans to skirt it in order to the not so glamorous plastic drawer carts that are so functional and necessary.

The original plan is to add a secondary desk that will slide underneath the first one. I'll have my ScrapRack set up on the first desk for ease of scrapping. My secondary desk will actually be my primary one when it comes to full on scrapping in the evenings while DH and I watch TV/movies and visit together. This will allow me to face him and the TV on the opposite side of the room. During the day I can organize/design pages or sort photos, etc on the primary desk right next to my ScrapRack. Should work very nicely. I also have some plans for a few special touches on the wall above the desktop. But I'll reveal those later... maybe with my next installment of Progress of the Scrapbook Nook.