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We moved into this house in 2003 and I had this whole room to myself. I also eventually took over the hall cupboards, which were designed as linen closets, but as I keep all our linens in our master closet and a wardrobe we purchased in England in 1984, only a small part of these cupboards need to be used for linen storage. Both dogs love to lie in this hallway, but in this photo, Gander is lying waiting for me to finish so we can go play!
I keep my tote bags, polymer clay tools and supplies and knitting supplies in the bottom cupboards, but the top cupboards are for fibers, ribbons and embellishments. I found that fibers worked best for me when I wind them around floss cards and keep them in clear plastic tackle boxes. I label everything! Ribbon lengths are wound into hanks and wrapped in paper and then sorted into more clear tackle boxes. Spool ribbon fit in those nice EK Success ribbon boxes, but bigger spools just have to sit as they are until I find something that works for me.
The window in my studio faces east, towards the tree line at the bottom of our acre and with a view of my garden which I installed in 2004, and keep adding new plants to each year.
The shelf that fits behind the closet door holds most of my punches, and hanging from the side of it is a long ribbon with some of the pins I have collected over the years at conventions. The Iris carts hold border punches, supplies for the American Tag Long Reach Punch which is one of my favorite tools, and all of my larger stamps and cube stamps. The file drawers hold paper ephemera and 'works in progress.' There is a stack of shoebox drawers at the end which hold scrap cardstock, separated by color.
I keep all my Ellison Die Cutters and Sizzix die towers out on the work surfaces, as they are too heavy to move around. The larger Ellison dies are kept on the shelf under the paper storage on the east wall. The little dies are in boxes in the closet, and the stencils made for die machines are there, too, in specially designed, zippered notebooks.
On the wall are dolls I have made. My favorite is my beaded journal doll which I did in 2003. It is entirely covered front and back in beading and took me six months to complete. Other artwork there is stuff I received from the now-defunct Brainwaves Art Exchanges. The large print on the wall is a Japanese story print about tricky rabbits and was a gift from my friend Kathy Martin, owner of Postmodern Design. The smaller one on the east wall was a gift from the other owner of Postmodern Design, Bird Burnett and is a print by David Bigelow. I also have a framed sheet of artistamps made especially for me by Greg Byrd, who helped me immensely with my perforator in 2001 (The perforator lives in the garage!). The fabric banner reads "Don't just sit there, make something!" printed in my own carved alphabet.
Upper surfaces of my room (tops of shelves and storage pieces, shelves above windows, etc) are entirely covered in rabbits! I get rabbits all the time as gifts and they have to live somewhere!
The green cabinet is an antique music case which belonged to Chuck's grandmother Dora Nell Smith Bryant. She received it in exchange for piano lessons during the Great Depression. It's entirely handmade from packing crates and other wooden furniture and each drawer is a different size. I keep all of my carvings in the drawers. The top of the music case holds a mirror from an antique dressing table, a turntable with frequently used tools and a small plastic set of plastic drawers that holds things like sponges, staplers, knife blade refills and clips.
This is the southeast wall of my studio and where I store the majority of my paper. The little drawers next to the window hold punchies and small diecuts, as well as a box for hole punches and a mug for corner scissors. The rolling caddy underneath has all my carving tools and supplies, and the Speedball press I use for printing. The train case holds all my PZKut and I have a ton of erasers in packages on the bottom shelf. I keep LOTS of carving material around! My paper storage is simple: I have two document holders stacked on top of each other and it all sits on two shelves. All my cardstock is separated by color and the extra cubbies hold document boxes that hold things like printed tissue, sticker paper, text paper and origami paper. The bookshelves hold cut cardstock in boxes, folders for my stickers, a postage stamp 'safe,' and my Ellison dies. The top of the this piece holds my mother's old train case which is full of vegetable tanned leather pieces, and plastic document cases. Some of them hold other supplies but most of them are empty and waiting to be filled with paper and supplies for the classes I teach.
This is the southeast corner which has a little wooden shelf I rescued from the trash. The box on top is full of bulky ephemera like bottlecaps and metal bookplates. The top shelf is my box of perforating pads and cut up mousepads for punch flowercraft, as well as my notebooks recording ink colors and embossing powders. The next shelf holds PageSage DVDs and all my stencils. The bottom shelf holds SAR stamps and three Craftmates full of punchies. The scrapbook rack is separated by color and pattern and the top holds wheel stamps and other tools. My decorative scissors hang in between on removable hooks made by 3M. If I decide to move them, they remove from the wall without damaging it. I use those 3M tapes whenever possible for hanging things.
This is the south wall of my studio and the Iris carts here hold all my dye inks and more rubber stamps. The shelf on top of the surface was recycled from a computer table and give me double storage: I keep acrylic blocks and tape and heat guns underneath and slab spindles (Postmodern Design) and all my markers and pencil holders above. The wall is covered in artwork (mine and other people's) and small shelf holds all the handmade books I have made or have received in carving swaps. The wooden shelf fits behind the studio door and holds more punches and all my bottles and other tools. Everything is grouped by type wherever I can, and whatever is not obviously marked gets labeled. I HATE hunting for stuff!
This is the southwest view of my studio, so you can see that I use the backs of my doors for storing large papers and the printer table I recycled into a paper cutting table. I store all my Xyrons and refills on the bottom and other tools on the top shelf. Two of my favorites here are the Powerpunch, originally by Tapestry in Time but now carried by the Punch Bunch, and the Snappy Tray by JudiKins. Above it all is a metal counter protector which I hung on the wall with 3M removable hangers and I use it for all kinds of handmade magnets.
This is the closet, which Chuck fitted with shelves for all my books. I keep all my stamping books in here, as well as notebooks holding carvings from RAPS and the Swapzine from Erasercuts, all my own work and larger books received in swaps. I have all my smaller dies in here as well as cigar boxes holding calligraphy supplies, Twinkling H2Os, Radiant Pearls, and binding supplies. The boxes on top hold paper making supplies, extra binding coils, and rarely used tools. The rack on top holds cardstock still in wrappers. I also keep large pads of paper in here, as well as my sewing machine. I stopped keeping the magnifying light I use for carving on the table all the time (the clamp with the hole it fits in is still on the table, so all I need to do to use it is pop it back in the hole and plug it in!), so it sits on the floor.
So now my table sits in the middle of the floor and holds only a pad of sketching paper that is my work surface, and the turntable that holds all the cleaning supplies (my paintwell, soap, stamp cleaner and Kiss Off).
In 2008, after a lot of discussion, Chuck and I ruled out the idea of adding onto our house anytime in the near future. This left us with a problem. We have a three bedroom house but use the two extra bedrooms as our computer room and my studio, so we had no guest room! We hope our guests like staying with us, but it is a bit much to expect them to sleep on the floor with the dogs! So I decided to redesign my studio.
I took several months off of teaching classes so that I could work on this project and I hope you will agree that I made a good job of combining a studio and a guest room into one space. First came the online shopping, pricing, measuring, shopping again, remeasuring and more budget work. Lots of discussions with Chuck and many changes of mind. I had seen a tablebed shown on HGTV's Mission Organization several years ago and had tucked it into the back of my mind in case I needed it, and after measuring everything twice, I figured out I could fit all my supplies AND a queen-sized table bed into my room. So I went to The Inova Company and placed my order. It would take four months for my tablebed to be completed and delivered, so it was time to start clearing things out!
I dismantled the iris carts along the north wall and raised the level of the iris carts on the south wall to take up the slack of the drawers that wouldn't fit under the window. My plan was to get as much moved out of the way of the incoming furniture as possible and still keep things in the studio.
You might notice that one of my new additions in the past year is the Clip It Up by Simply Renee.
I love it. It holds all my stickers and rubons and bits and bobs that are too bulky for the Craftmate organizers and I use a lot more of my stuff when I don't have to hunt for it! My first acquisition while waiting for the table bed was to get some rail storage from IKEA for the closet door, to hold all the things I had been keeping on racks and in jars. I got the Cropper Hopper Lisa and Becky Ribbon Spool Holder for the top two rails to hold all my large ribbon spools, and hung IKEA baskets for the rest (tarted up with ribbon, of course!). The rest of my ribbon went into two of those Ribbon Purses by Your Pictured Memories and they now reside in the hall closet with the Cropper Hopper ribbon boxes for the smaller spools and all the ribbon is tidy and easily accessed.
The only thing I decided had to leave the studio was the old music case which holds all my hand carved stamps. I needed a table by the back door anyway, and this piece serves that function well. I can always go get a stamp if I need it!
Another project was to clean up and paint my turntable for my tools, which was cobbled together with pill bottles, an old gel pen display, shave cream can lids and even an old Clinique travel box!
Finally, the big day arrived and the 800lbs of table bed on a pallet of ten huge boxes arrived. I actually managed to put 80% of it together myself, only needing Chuck's help to lift some of the final assemblies into place. It is a completely free-standing structure and the bed can be raised and lowered with one hand: the table folds down to become the base of the bed. Within a few days of the tablebed arriving my new storage furniture arrived from the BEST Scrapbook Shelf company and I got it all assembled and up in just a couple more days. As I assembled, I put things away from the Iris carts, took them apart and removed them to the garage. A friend relieved me of my Iris carts and the paper storage I didn't need anymore, I sold the scrapbook rack and all the packing boxes for all the furniture were recycled at a local cardboard recycler. So now take a look at the finished room!
This is the studio entrance, with Gander, as usual, keeping us company.
