Studio Tour!

After my recent decluttering/reorganising/tidying mission in my newly christened studio (formerly known as my craft room or my art room or just my room!) I took some photos while it's looking pristine (well, as pristine as it gets!) to share on here. So, here we go with the guided tour!



Ok, so, here we are looking at the back of the door! Ooh, how exciting I hear you cry! The bookcase came from Ikea's casualty bay and fitted the gap behind the door perfectly. It's way overloaded, of course, and is one of the sections I still need to declutter. Mr S put hooks and a magnetic board on the side to make the most of the space. ;o)



This area is all new! Until Monday it was just a massive heap! The little table was where it is now but was piled SO high it was an amazing feat of engineering! LOL The racking used to be in the room in a different position and has enjoyed a sojourn in the spare bedroom before it's return. The creation of another workspace at the little table means I have more room to have different pieces out on the go and also that I can have arty friends over to play! :oD



This is my main workspace. As the windows of our house are so small it was the only place for me to have my desk really if I wanted any natural light. I love sitting in front of the window listening to the birds and feeling the breeze as I tinker about. ;o)



This is one of the 1960s kitchen larder cupboards that we bought earlier this year. We actually bought one but the owner offered us two smaller ones so we took all three. My in-laws had a very similar one which they used up until they moved house in the early 1990s when, horror of horrors, it went in a skip! I wasn't into vintage at the time, if only I had been! Anyway. it's very roomy and has masses of stuff crammed into it! The heap on the floor is some of the (mostly) metal goods that came from my late FIL's sheds. I want to work on pieces incorporating this stuff so it's out where I can see it and think about potential pieces. The chest of drawers on the right is really quite flimsy and the drawers are groaning somewhat! :oD I think this may be replaced for a stronger beast at some point in the future!



Moving on, we have my two vintage filing cabinets gleaned from Freecycle. Again, very capacious and crammed with all manner of goodies! The map drawers on top of the cabinets were being thrown out at Mr S's workplace so he brought them home for me, knowing how much I'd love them! One of the drawers holds my rubber stamp collection, just! The cupboard on the wall was a car boot find. I think it had a previous life in some sort of medical capacity. It's not very deep but has lots of narrow shelves. I'd like to change the curtains for something a bit jazzier at some point. And there you have it, to the right of this pic we're back to where we started with the door.

Sketch

I've come to the decision that I REALLY need to get back to some regular drawing! :oD This is a pen sketch I did at the beach yesterday afternoon. I added some watercolour tonight but it didn't really perk it up much! LOL

New Skill

My lovely husband has finally given me some instructions on soldering and this evening I made these little babies:



Well, I say made, they're vintage fuses and I've just soldered the loops to the top. Some of them are destined for a piece I'm working on inspired by my recent back problem and I feel some earrings coming on too! Oh, happy day! I do love learning something new! :o)

Background Technique

After coming up with the background for the art journal spread in my previous post I decided to have a play with what I'd done and see if I could recreate the look or whether it was a fluke! :oD I'm sure I haven't invented a new technique here but here's what I did, start with glossy card, a stack of Staz-On ink pads and some different plastic foils (like Tonertex). I got a good layer of one colour of Staz-On over the card and then, while the ink was still wet, I slapped the foil down. When I removed it some of the metallic foil had stuck to the wet ink. I then just continued in the same vein, alternating layers of Staz-On and foil. As it involves foil (which bounces off the light when scanned) these scans don't quite capture the delicious nature of the colours but here they are:

Journal Spreads

I've spent much of today at my friend Becky's place having some arty time together. :o) This is my spread in a travel/holidays themed art journal for the Yahoo group Travelling Journals.



Although I've never been there I chose Australia for my spread. I would love to go there and also to New Zealand one day. This is supposed to be Aboriginal-esque! The spread is upside down in the journal, of course! After I'd stamped Australia in the box with the middle three letters upside down it dawned on me that, for anyone going through the journal the right way up, TRA spells ART! Wish I could claim that I did it with intention but alas I can't! LOL

Another project I'm working on via the Travelling Journals group is a journal swap where players work in a journal for a month and then send their journal to another player for them to keep. This is my favourite spread so far in the journal I'm working in. Annoyingly, the book I've chosen to use, is just a tad too long for my scanner! I love the background I made for this spread so wanted to keep alot of it visible!



Now, onward to arty play time at my friend Skippy's this evening!

Stencilling

Everywhere I go in blog land I seem to come across stencilling and I've been hankering to jump on the bandwagon so today I bought a couple of cans of spray paint from a pound shop and this evening I had a play with them out in the garden. This is some of my experimenting:



It was great fun and I can see why it has an addictive reputation! LOL I also had a play with some stencils in an art journal I'm working in at the moment. I'll post some pics of that when I've finished the spreads I'm working on. If you haven't tried it yet then I can highly recommend it!