Studio Spaces and Work Places

Well I don't know about you, but my studio / workroom becomes a dumping ground over the Christmas holidays, all that stuff you have to remove to put up decorations, make the house look tidy etc. all goes into your precious space because you know you just won't get to play out there anyway. Now the decorations are down, the house returning to is' t usual state of chaos, it's time to go and clean up that mess and get you space back in order. With that in mind I thought I would share with you a couple of cheap household objects that I have found very useful to store and create with. Beware there's a couple of ugly photo's here, not for the tidy sort of person !!

The first is one of those wire herb holder thingys you can get from the dollar shop, they make excellent scissor storage units. This one is screwed onto the wall right next to my work table so I know where my scissors are at all times, well not all times, because in one of those creative frenzies they get spread out all over the place, but at least they have a home to go to when I have a tidy up. If you are anything like me, you will have numerous pairs of scissors, your fabric ONLY ones - those that are fabric but can be used on other things - ones for paper only - ones that are for paper and all sorts of things, Embroidery scissors, your newest sharpest embroidery scissors, pliers, needle nosed pliers, haemostat, the list could go on and on but you get my drift. Don't try and use the rack the other way up, it just doesn't work.

My next little gem of wisdom is to make one of those clothes drying racks into a paint table. I started using this when I was doing the Textured Surfaces workshop. I have put one of my printing boards on top, which is just a piece of MDF covered in sweatshirt material, this gives you a good surface for applying modelling paste ect. and allows you to pin the piece down if need be.  Ok it's not the steadiest of things, but you're only applying paint and such so don't need a really firm surface, but as you can see, it's very light and portable so you can move it around easily to get out of the sun, wind rain or whatever is plaguing you while you work, it's the perfect height to work on and you can peg up you pieces to dry as you go. 

My favourite, most used piece of equipment I have has got to be my Horn craft table. I only have a small work room so use it with just one flap up, but, when I need more table space I can swing it around and open it right up, these things are just brilliant. while I was looking for the link to the craft table I found this storage cabinet, going to put this on my wish list, look very useful.

I would love to hear about your favourite thing in you Studio/ Workroom and if you have any clever storage ideas to share .