A Place For Everything

...though not everything is always in its place...!

I'm so delighted with my latest piece of studio furniture! My hubby made a paper organizer for me! No longer is my paper in a box in the floor to be tripped over. I no longer have to fear my preschooler will use my paper storage box for a platform and trample my papers to death. Nor do I fear my dog's toenails piercing the papers walking over them when I've left my box open.

Not only is it an organizer's delight, it also doubles as another work surface, and I surely can't get enough of those!!

See that carved elephant puppet on the table? I love him but cannot for the life of me figure out where to hang him. My ceilings are all angles and I don't have a nice corner for him to hang in. He looks out of place hanging anywhere else. I'm determined to find a spot for him.

Now my papers are literally at the tips of my fingers and I can see what I have. *squeals with delight*

AND...the top opens up for even more storage of smaller sheets of scrap paper! Oh bliss! I'm so fortunate to have a husband who is crafty.

Fixing Up My Studio

Since I moved into my new studio space several weeks ago, I've been working on organizing and arranging things. This will be an ongoing process for me, so I will likely have a few follow up posts on this topic.

Here I am in my new space thinking about where to put everything...

I love my bright, sunny window! I had to drive nails in the window trim to keep the fleur de lis finials from bashing me in the head each time I open and close the curtains.

This tall, white cabinet was on the curb for the trash. My hubby picked it up on his way home from work one day, intending to use it in his garage. Heh heh! We see where it ended up, confiscated for my studio. It got a fresh coat of paint, new hardware, and I stamped this ivy design down the front door.

Everyone should have smoke detectors in their home and studio! Not lovely to look at, but a safety must- have. I thought about PhotoShopping it out (is that a verb??) but decided it would be a good reminder about fire safety. I also have a fire extinguisher in my studio. Hopefully I will never need it!

I found this orphaned drawer with the fabulous-cool lion hardware in a thrift shop. I wish I could have found the piece of furniture it originally went to. How does a drawer get separated from its place of origin anyway?? It has a big chip missing out of the front, but I think it just adds to the charm.

Stay tuned for more studio pictures. I have a wonderful new paper sorter to blog about! =)

New Studio Space

Ta-da! My new studio is finished and ready for business! The timing couldn't be more perfect since I'm introducing my new shop, Emerson Bindery. New shop - new space! Very cool.

Here is the main reason I wanted to move out of my old studio down the hall--this work table. My old studio (herein referred to as "Studio A", the new one will be "Studio B") was so long and narrow I had to push my work table to the perimeter of the room, which gave me only one side to work from as furniture was crowed on either side and I had the wall on the back side.

I was so thrilled to be able to use the entire table that I ran joyfully around it several times!
Another bonus is the closet, which is yet unfinished. All my stuff is in the floor until I get some shelving in there. I didn't have a closet in studio A and was using the closet from the spare bedroom.

The Dysfunctional Art Closet

If you're an artist, you have one of these. Unless you are Martha Stewart, in which case you'd better skip on to another blog and leave me to my pathetic self.

I am a very organized person, to the point of self-proclaimed obsessive-compulsive disorder. I drive my family crazy organizing everything. A while back I posted pictures of my studio. A lot of you told me I was far more organized than you, which left me puffed up and full of myself. Until tonight when I opened the doors to my art closet.

It all started with a trip to Michaels. I came home with some ribbon which was on sale, so I stocked up. The trouble with stocking up is where do you put it all? You know you'll use it (at some point--maybe 12 years from now, but you WILL use it), it's on sale, and if you don't buy it you'll surely find a need next week for what you didn't purchase today.

I have my ribbon organized by color in the little white containers on the top shelf. My drawers are nearly full, so it took me almost an hour to figure out the best possible arrangement in each drawer to accommodate all the spools. In the end, a few spools got kicked out but I got them all in. (Until the next trip to Michaels!)

While placing the white containers back into the closet, I thought about how difficult it was to get them in and out, so I rearranged the top shelf which took another hour. I moved all the fabric containers to the far ends and stacked them to the ceiling. That cleared an area in the middle and I can now get to my ribbon without pulling stuff down on my head and pinching my fingers in the drawers. Yippee! And look! I even have room for one more container!

This closet is still a work in progress. Some of you will think this closet looks very organized compared to yours, and maybe so, but that's just the top shelf. The bottom is a mess! We've been here just over a year and there are still some unpacked boxes in there.


You can't open the doors too fast or the mat cutter will attack you. Pulling anything from the floor results in an avalanche of pillows. I have no place to store my scrapbooks, so they're all in crates in the closet floor. And then there's the circus tent, which I fall over on a regular basis.

Why, oh why, did I ever buy that thing?! Because it was on sale, and you never know when your child may need a circus tent!

Next in the series of dysfunctional storage will be my side attic. Stay tuned for the exciting narration of that space!

Will I ever...

...have a clean studio?? Martha Stewart needs to come to my house. She can tackle my closets while she's at it. But that's another blog posting. A very lllllooonnnnggg posting. Here is Martha's studio. Do you think she uses it?! photos from MarthaStewart.comIt seems I do nothing but clean my studio. It never lasts for more than a day before I've messed it all up again with my projects. Papers everywhere, missing my bonefolder, glue stuck to the table, containers meant to keep things together open with their contents strewn across the table...

My studio is long and narrow with short walls like Martha's in the first picture, but not as wide. I have a table I used as an island in my former house, but when I tried it in my new house I kept falling over it. I get injured enough as it is without setting up obstacles for myself.

I've blogged about my studio before and posted photos. Some of you said my studio looked neat and organized but that was just for the photos! Ha ha ha! It never stays that way. If I were to photograph it right now you'd see!
I love all the drawers. They're shallow, just the size for small art supplies. The paper organizers are nice also, but I would need about 35 of them for all my paper!
Just look at all her little glitter jars all lined up so you can see what color they are. I have my glitter and embossing powders in a small stationary organizer with drawers. I am forever opening the wrong drawer and picking up every jar in it to find what I'm looking for. And the sad thing is I even have the names of the colors written on the caps. Obviously that doesn't help me much.

But seriously, look at all that wasted space in the sharps drawer! All those scissors could fit in one compartment and the others could be filled with something else. It is exactly that kind of thinking that has gotten me disorganized. I can't find anything for all the *things* in the drawer.
I've always wanted to keep my ribbon in a little box for easy dispensing, but the trouble is I have too many spools, they're all different sizes and wouldn't fit neatly into the same box. I do have cute little jars like these pictured but I have nowhere to display them because every flat surface is cluttered with something already.

It is beginning to sound like I need to downsize and reduce. I have accomplished that in much of the rest of my house. However, I refuse to budge when it comes to art supplies. I am a packrat and a hoarder, I admit it. You never know when a project might call for an old candy wrapper, a shamrock green bamboo twig, or a torn page out of an Agatha Christie mystery. These are just a few of my treasures stashed away. If I could just remember where I put them...

In the time I have spent drooling over Martha's organized space I could have cleaned out my art cabinet. Sigh. I just need some inspiration. Maybe these photos will help me aspire to be more organized. Or more likely, I'll continue to drool over them until I get cross eyed and sleepy. Then I'll just go to bed, dream about having Martha over and my studio will still be a mess in the morning.

My Studio

I always enjoy seeing pictures and reading about other people's creative spaces. I'm glad to have a room to call my own...it wasn't always like that. In our first house, I shared a tiny 8 x 9 room with the computer desk. If my husband was working at the desk and I was at my work table, we'd bump the backs of our chairs into each other! I utilized every square inch of my space, though.

I spend a lot of time sitting in this chair working on the computer! (Not the little blue chair, the big one! The little one is for my creative assistant.)

This is where the journals and my other works of art are born! I love my "new" floor lamp inherited from my grandmother. It's true vintage! And behold, I can see what I'm doing now!!

Here is the studio watchdog, hard at work! Don't let him fool you, no one can enter or leave the room without his knowledge. He sleeps with one eye open. Sometimes I try to sneak by him to get a snack from the kitchen. Just when I think I've been successful, he usually appears quite suddenly behind me in the pantry! "Whatcha got there, mum? Any to share?"

My sewing table (which is not often used!) and my "resource center". My husband built the bookcase for me. I got sick of the cheap store bought ones that warp under the heavy weight of my art books. I had to keep flipping the shelves over to bend them in the opposite direction! This bookcase is solid wood, and guess what? No warped shelves! Yeah!

My bulletin board, cluttered with inspiration and little gifts from friends!