int'l desk day

A long shot of my work table. When we moved here last March,
I took the entire dining room/living room as my studio,
with the full approval and encouragement of my very
supportive husband.

Not sure exactly when this was, but came across some marvelous images of other people's desks here and just had to play.

After you chuckle at my mess, let's see some of yours!

Right side of work table.
There's a sewing machine on a little stand to the right.
Mostly do painting, gluing type work here.

Left side of work table.
Sort of the cutting, stamping side of things.
The two journals on top of the large book are my TTV and garden journals.
The large book is weighing down two postcards for
upcoming Mail Me Some Art swaps.

Terrible shot of my computer desk which is 90deg
to the right of the work table.
My daily calendar journal is open to the left of the keyboard
where I cannot fail to see it and thus record something each day.
There's a flat screen on the shelf above so I can get a crick in my neck
watching football or Downton Abbey while working,
or trying to work LOL.

Not sure what to call this desk. It's behind me when I'm sitting at the computer
and ends up with all sorts of junk piled on it.
That scarf needs to go off to the Pink Scarf Project
but I can't remember to take it to work to mail it.
The Starbucks bag contains a knitted scarf that just needs to be blocked.
The work table is along the wall to the right of this desk
so I can just roll around in the same chair from place to place.
Very convenient except I can't quite roll to the coffee maker
as there is a bumpy molding between the studio floor and the kitchen floor.

Sunday studio shots

Hi. Today I'm all about markers.

I can't imagine a life without Sharpies, hi-liters, etc. Given half a chance, I mark up documents with hi-liters, write labels with Sharpies, color in the centers of Os, Ds, Ps, Bs, Rs, and Qs, and just generally make things more fun to look at. My desk at work has a beautiful made-to-my-specs organizer, made by my woodworking husband from cherry wood. It's full of hi-liters, a rainbow of gel pens cause who wants to write all day long in just blue or black, some Sharpies for marking boxes and making file labels, roller ball pens for document filling out and a straw from somewhere.

Here at home I keep my markers laying down flat because a few artists said to on their blogs. Right now they're in nesting cardboard boxes but I'd like to find a pretty wooden box or a cool organizer of some sort so that I can haul them out and about without dumping them all over the place.

Here they all are, loosely sorted by color family. There are 3 or 4 different sets of Sharpies - different color assortments, different thicknesses such as very fine, fine and the plain old original. Also in there is a set of 24 Prismacolor double-ended markers and a set of (I think) 48 Super Tips water based markers from Crayola.

They're all quite nice, but there was still a hole in my marker collection, still something missing, still something I had a yen for since I bought 3 of them in January at Road to California while visiting Julie. They have a tip like a paint brush and you can do things with them that you simply can not with other markers. I am so far from being an expert in their use that it isn't even funny, but still... I wanted them.

Copics

Very pricey, but oh so cool. They come in a wide variety of color assortments and I waffled around for a while but eventually settled on set A, 36 sort of basic colors to get you going as a Copic owning artist. It had only one duplicate of the three I bought earlier, and it had lots of greens and pinks. Perfect.

I scoured the net for months, bidding on a few sets on eBay but never getting serious enough to win. Then I sold a bunch of stuff on eBay and found myself with enough money to buy a set of 36. Thought about it another few weeks but finally went to the website, stuck one in my shopping cart and headed for check out. My finger hovered over the FINALIZE key for many seconds as I reviewed my decision, but eventually I dropped the hammer. 

$112 and 5 days later, my Copics showed up. I've been using them sparingly but am getting more likely to reach for one now that I'm journaling quite a bit. The color lays down differently than other markers and the brush tip is just neat. Everything from tiny dots to sweeping swathes of color, Copics are markers worth having. Amen.

Sunday studio shots

More interesting ones this time, I hope.

A small table just inside the door is covered with an old dresser scarf and holds a couple (empty) boxes I like and some nature stuff from walks with the dog.

Dried leaves, flowers, berries, a twisted bit of vine. Nothing special about any of them, I just like the look of them laying there. My mom did stuff like this all the time, so I come by it honestly.

The little drawer holds part of my button stash. And for as many buttons as are in that drawer, occasionally I still can't find exactly the color I need.

The straight-on view of my craft desk. I work on a pile of single sheets of newspaper so I can just throw the top one away when it gets too grungy. Same with the pile on the right. It's scrap paper from work, and I do my glue-sticking there. I always run over the edges of the piece I'm gluing, so I work from top left to bottom right, kind of in rows, then fold the paper in half and keep gluing. Then it goes in the trash and I move on to the next sheet. When I'm elsewhere than my desk, I use an old Pennysaver or other trash mail magazines that I can just flip to a new page as needed. 

The little drawers ad the V8 box at top right hold my rubber stamps. You can see where I was testing stamps earlier today. Metallic and other various markers are in the mug-in-the-box at far top right. 

Paints at back left and front center. Pearl-x powders at front left. ATC blanks and ATCs in progress behind. Various bottled inks at top right. Misc tools and knives in the back right boxes.

Crayons, chalk pastels, watercolor pencils.  

This is the shelf above the previous pic. Colored pencils, crazy quilt pincushion, sequin waste, misc junk, all of it very important lol.

Immediately to the left so that I can swivel to it - cutting mat, rulers and roller blade on a rolling cart. I have no idea what the files hold, haven't looked in them in months. Misc strips of paper for edges, borders, etc on the little shelf below along with some pretty post-its and paper tapes. 

And that's it for today. I might have works in progress tomorrow...

Sunday studio shots & the dog

Cleaned up a bit from last week. Boxes of books line the back of my car, headed for the library book sale after the members of my Thursday book club paw thru them.

These are pretty boring, huh? I'll have to show my works-in-progress next time or something. But I did mend the pillow case and put the fleece jacket away since I now don't need it until next winter...

Sleeping with her butt pushed up on DH's leg.

All legs.

The cat down the street. They're in love. 

Snoozing on the old quilt on the guest room bed. 

More legs. For a small dog, she takes up a lot of room.

She lived by the heater all winter. The closer, the better. She'd edge you out if you got too close to it. We were worried she'd singe herself, but no.

Sunday studio shots

Except today they're mostly just around the house and in no particular order.

My grocery store tulips. They were lovely on the table when we had friends over for Easter breakfast. Then we got invited next door for dinner and I took them as a hostess gift, so I got to enjoy them for only a few hours, Might stop and see if they have any more on the way to work tomorrow...

My various tote bags hanging in the hall with some berry garland that I leave out year-round just cause I like the way it looks. The two crazy quilt items on the left will be going on eBay soon.

Some of DH's exotic wood standing in a crate. Every time he looks askance at my growing pile of art supplies, I glance at the door to the garage which houses tens of thousands of dollars in wood and tools and machines. 'Nuff said.

The gopher snake found by the girl next door. It was swimming in their pool, by accident, I imagine. She turned it loose in the big drainage culvert behind our back fence. Snakes are very cool.

Me in front of a crazy quilt underwater scene in the downstairs bath. 

The enchiladas we made. They were amazing. I could eat Mex once a day for the rest of my life. 

The first piece of Teesha Moore inspired art I made. What crazy fun these are. I'll do a whole post on them soon. So different from my quilting years where every point had to match and everything had to be squared up. These goofy pages are a total 180.

And last but not least, the studio in all its messy glory. Boxes and boxes of stuff for eBay and Goodwill. The fleece jacket and pillow case that need mending are still hanging over the back of the far chair on the right...

Sunday studio shots - the inaugural post

Because I have no shame and because I love seeing other people's creative areas, every Sunday I'm going to post pictures of what my studio looks like that day.  Here goes.

This is my computer desk, just to the left of my craft desk. Color printer hulking just to the left, b/w printer in the center, up on top of the paper trays. Above it a little green shelf with various hand made items on it. Sewing machine on the far left, under the window so I can see well. Fleece jacket that needs tailoring draped over chair (been there 3 weeks). Pillow case that needs mending under jacket, been there 6 weeks. Michaels coupons at lower right. Just enough room for my hands to get to the keyboard.

Craft desk. Finished ATCs for book page background swap at center. White sports tape DH didn't use for basketball hanging on front of stamp storage drawers (wait - don't throw that out! I'll use it in a journal!!  big eye roll from him). Newly acquired rolls of Tim Holtz tissue tape on shelf just below sports tape. Old wooden box of paints at left from making journal page backgrounds a couple days ago. Hand made pottery mug of glue sticks at lower right edge, next to little flower-topped glass jar containing Vaseline from peeling paint technique swap weeks ago. Wire box of ATC blanks below and just to left of Tim Holtz tissue tape, next to margarine tub of water from painting session. 

Roller blade cutter, ruler and mat at center front, left over from quilting days, works great for paper. Ironed lace hanging on back of door, right above the18-drawer chest I bought one time with Farrah while coming back from lunch when I worked in Oceanside. Love that thing, perfect for holding all the little stuff. I have it arranged alphabetically. I'll go thru it some day row by row and show you all the goodies. White shelves in center hold all the stuff I use most - flat boxes of various papers on top, stamp pads, paints, clips to hold things together while glue dries, etc, etc. 

This is the wall across from the desks. Bookcase chock full of books to alter, to scan, to tear pages from. Dog bed for Mags, box of books for library book sale, old white table drug in from family room cause it was easier to carry the table than put all the stuff on it away. Big TV I hardly ever look at except every July for the Tour de France and every two years for the Olympics. Makes a great place to hang the hand dyed crepe paper rolls I bought while in San Diego in January.

And because this is the first look at my room for some of you, let me say that it almost always looks at least somewhat like this - stacks of stuff on the floor (eBay piles, Goodwill piles, etc) but right now it's particularly bad because I'm weeding thru the way-too-much-stuff I've accumulated since I got into paper arts.

1 plus 58...

me at 1 year

...equals 59, which is what I am today.  

I've been reading about various journaling artists in one of those $14.99 Stampington magazines that I can't resist now and then. One of the women felt that self-portraiture was key to understanding yourself as an artist, finding your true voice,etc, etc, so this morning I grabbed my camera and fired off a bunch of shots in the front hall while trying not to have a goofy self conscious expression on my face.

me this morning

God, were they awful. Bulbous nose, double chin, eyes of two different sizes. I'm just not a photogenic person. When you say that, everyone assures you that you really are, but, no, some of us just aren't. Anyway, I picked one and tweaked it a bit in photoshop. My face isn't red like it looks in the photo but I couldn't figure out anything in photoshop to fix it.

Also grabbed a couple shots that Steve took of me the other day as I was working away on something at my craft table. I actually like those. I'm wearing 5 layers of clothes cause we keep our house pretty cool and I was freezing that day.

I don't feel especially enlightened by my self-photo session, altho I am somewhat more determined to get that eyelid lift sooner rather than later. The dark chocolate cake I baked and took to work seemed to have a more positive effect on my sense of self than did the photos of my face.

The Starbucks in the studio shots is an imposter. I make my own mochas and just use a Starbucks sleeve on the cups I buy at Costco. It's to the point now where I like my own concoction better than SB.

I bought the drawing lab book at left in the bottom shot in a vain effort to locate my inner van Gogh. I really can't draw worth a damn. Maybe taking a class with a real person is the way to go. I'd like to be able to at least sketch a bit in a journal or add silly animals or people to ATCs. I started at the front and worked my way thru the exercises one evening on the couch. When I showed my ten little dog drawings to Steve he spit his water all over Maggie, who was sleeping between his knees on the stretched out recliner he was sitting in. Not very encouraging , honey...