Craft room

A craft room is the one room in the house whose colour scheme you do not get to choose. Thread, paper stacks, paint tubes, washi tape, half-finished things left on the table — the palette changes with every project and it is never quiet. That is exactly why the eight pieces on this page are the plainest work in the shop.

Why is nearly everything here black and white or a line drawing?

The split is even: four black-and-white typography and quote prints, and four single-line drawings of women and floral heads in soft pink, blue and pastel. Both forms survive an unpredictable background. A full-colour watercolour has to agree with whatever sits in front of it, and in a making room that changes weekly; black type on white, or one continuous line on a pale ground, agrees with everything and competes with nothing. If I were doubling the size of this page I would still be pulling from the same two drawers.

Where does the art go in a room that is mostly storage?

Above the shelving, not between it. Craft rooms fill from the floor up — desk, cutting mat, then shelves to about shoulder height — so the clear wall is usually the band near the ceiling and the strip beside the door. Both are narrow, which is why singles and pairs suit this room better than a trio: an 8x10 in (20.3 x 25.4 cm) or an 11x14 in (27.9 x 35.6 cm) fits a gap that a 16x20 in will not. Seven of the eight are singles and one is a pair, and all of them come in the full seven sizes, unframed on matte paper.

Do the motto prints actually work in here?

In this room, yes — more than in a living room, where a line of type tends to read as advice nobody asked for. A craft room is where you sit down to make something and then stall, and a few words on the wall get read in that gap rather than studied. The quote prints start at about CA$9 for a 5x7 in, and one of them also sells as a digital download from about CA$4.50 if you would rather print it yourself. Quote prints and line art hold the rest of both families, and black and white wall art is where to go if the no-colour rule is the part you want to keep.