Atelier

tucked away in the corner of my bedroom last month

I've had various studio arrangements over the years. When I was first married, a large drafting table filled much of the space of our bedroom. After we had kids, I moved my things to the awkward end of our long kitchen. During that time, my studio evolved more and more into a sewing studio, and I collected bins of fabric and notions stacked alongside the map table where I stored my paintings. When I had a big job to do, John and the kids would leave for a weekend at grandma's so I could take over the living room.

There was a brief time, when we moved into the new house, I had an entire room with a door. The closet and shelves and desk were all mine for sewing and painting. [See my pretty portrait in the sidebar?] Oddly it was a year between projects and so I didn't really use it much. And then again things changed, John started working from home, and sometime later we needed another nursery.

So I've been using my table top easel here (bedroom?) and there (kitchen table?) for the last few months.  As the new year begins and I am trying to devote myself to a new project. Oh, I'm so easily distracted. So a new space is in order.

a tidied-up lego-land loft

Our loft has been used for nothing but lego-land for months since we're doing school downstairs. I think lego-land, when kept tidy, might just be an inspiring place to work. My giant crocodile and the girls paintings adorn the space, making it a pretty happy place. So, I've carved out a corner for my old sewing table with the desktop easel nested on top (drawings courtesy of little ones). My own little attic atelier.

a table top easel for a new year and new project

As I'm focusing more on illustration projects and homeschooling, I'm posting more often at Many Mercies than here. You're welcome to join me there, or wait around for me to pop in here. Either way, I'll try to keep you posted when I've got more to share about my latest project.

Happy New Year, friends! May your projects be full of joy and success!

Sneak Peek [with Embarrassing Photos]

I don't usually have much trouble designing with the kids around, but the actual sewing, with pins and projects spread out on the floor and the dining table, the hot iron steaming - that can be a bit tricky.  So during the months I was working on Flip Dolls and Other Toys, my dear husband gave me many weekends home alone to put in some serious hours sewing. He and the kids would go visit the grandparents for a weekend, and I would have 48 uninterrupted hours to make a huge mess, assembly line stacks of projects, and do my hand stitching with a line up of cheesy movies. It was fabulous.

I would keep in contact with John and the kids with a quick skype over breakfast, and loads of photobooth shots of me, cheesing for the camera with the projects I was working on. I was giggling over some of these photos this evening, and thought you might enjoy a peek into my working process. Be warned: there's quite a bit of goofiness, some failed prototypes (read the captions for the details!), a bit of bed-head (with a surprising number of hairstyles over the last two years), and lots of coffee!

Unfortunately, this female super didn't make it in the book, because I made her shirt from the same fabric as her SKIN COLOR. Sheesh. Let's keep it clean, folks.

Coffee, and cheerful first morning. 

Coffee, a drafting ruler, and a frantic second morning.

The productive mess in action - can you spot the three different projects laid out here?

Not pleased with this square bottomed ukelele with floppy strings.

Sharing secret plans with one of my crocodiles!

Many months, and many ukuleles later... shape and string success!

Sitting pretty with my first finished birdie.

Prototype and finished Bearded Ladies - no more nubby arms, simpler hair, and a scale that matches the other flip dolls.  And I'm still totally sane. No really.

Prototype and finished Conjoined Twins. The bigger one is better, right? Wait, is something missing?

Blue Birds and Robins keeping me company. 
Nothing goofy here, just my favorite little toy. :)

Many months and a move later: 
doing book revisions with my cheering squad present this time.

The book arrives in the mail, and we can't keep our hands off it!

That's me! 
Wait, I'm flipped, too...

Thanks for reminiscing with me. Quite a lot of fun over the last two years! My only regret is that I didn't take pictures of all my mistakes - although the topless super hero is definitely a favorite. I think toy design may be one of the most fun jobs ever - at least one of the most playful, eh?

How about you? Do you mix work and play?

Come As You Are

Being at home all day, in a tiny (cozy), messy (full), old (beautiful) house makes you keenly aware of the disconnect between a practical home and homes in those design-y photos.  You know the ones: the house always has a clear design scheme, a perfect color set, and one pair of crisp clean Chuck Taylor's haphazardly laying on the rule of thirds.  I love these.  They're beautiful.  They make me feel bad about myself.

I've noticed a blog trend lately to post about what your house really looks like.  Leave it to women to pull together and say, "hey, don't miss what's beautiful about my messy house."  And we moms may not be winning awards, making history, or, at times, coming up with anything interesting to say in adult conversation - but we are saturated in little pure and joyful lives every day.  Let's hope it rubs off.

She can tend to 6 babies, a fire engine, and a wolf in the village all at once.

No fancy dinner parties, but we're 75% of the way through the alphabet.

Resting after thoughtfully arranging the crayons into families.

A large playroom is only fun when someone is there to play with you.

Flour on the counter top means bread in the oven.

Usually organized studio, sometimes tidy, rarely pretty, always busy.

New Year Organizing

I try to fold my fabric, like, once a year.  It lasts a little while and makes me feel good.  Plus, it reminds me what I have, and I'm able to fit it into the space I have better.  I always consider organizing by size or type of fabric, but in the end, it's always by color.  The upright crate is filled with scraps, and this is where most of my favorite vintage bits are.  I enjoy dumping it out and rifling through it whenever I need a little special piece.

 

My studio has never been pretty.  I get really jealous of beautiful studios, and hope to have my own eventually.  But for now, I have a multi-functional space at the end of my galley kitchen.  What it lacks in prettiness, it makes up in organization though.  

John built me an odd sized counter to fit in between the pantry and the wall.  The top is my work space, complete with marker board, and neatly labeled piles.  Underneath, I have a shelf for my scanner which is essential since I use it so much.  My crates of fabric hide the vertical storage for my paintings and canvases.  The crate under the scanner is my filing cabinet, with manila folders for pattern pieces and all my old sketch books.  The neat picnic basket to the right sits between my counter and sewing table and is full of bags of projects in progress.  Each is labeled, and contains all the fabric and bits that I've set aside for that project, so I don't accidentally use them elsewhere. 

I may be slightly addicted to rearranging all of my small spaces.  But I really do think it helps get me excited about the new year and all the new projects ahead.  How about you?

In the Studio Again

January is traditionally time to organize my studio, so I've done it once again. No pictures of perfectly folded fabric for you this time, but a little fun nonetheless.

This year, I'm planning to slow down a bit and enjoy myself more. Once again my studio organizing is reflecting this shift, I think, because I'm shifting a little more towards painting again. Watercolors, not oils, because I still have little ones about.

In fact, the other day, after painting awhile I was tickled to see a big blob of cadmium dark on my shirt. Paint clothes! Granted, the paint spatter was from trying to paint with a baby on my hip, but it's been ages since I've had paint clothes, so I'll take what I can get.

Photography Setup

I've been putting some new things in the shop, and I always think my photo set up is kind of goofy. My itty bitty kitchen converted to an itty bitty studio. he he.

Studio Redo - Again

I've done several studio redos over the years. And every time I see these beautiful studios on whip up I think I need to do it again.

One thing I always notice is the neat stacks of fabric beautifully color coordinated. When I first saw this post on how to do it, I thought, "I would never take the time to do that."



I stayed up till one last night folding and ironing my fabric. I condensed four large baskets of fabric to one basket of scraps and these beautiful stacks. Not only does it take up less space and free up my baskets for other stuff, now I won't have to rifle around in wrinkly mounds of cloth with every project. I also have nicely separated spaces for sewing and painting.





I was proud to switch my unfinished projects to a smaller basket, get all my etsy wares and supplies in one place, and still have room to grow. Also, since I'm not doing a lot of painting, i set a couple of small paintings I like around to remind me that I can still do it.





It may not be a super beautiful room, it may not even be a room, but today it's a happy place.

Studio

I like to post pictures of my kitchen because some of my most favorite things are in that room. Plus, I've got this great wrap around window, and, in a small house,windows are key. But I hardly ever show pictures of the other side of the kitchen...

The other end, is a mult-use area - and by multi, I mean MULTI. It includes the pantry, microwave and some dishes; it's also storage for the broom, vacuum, and ironing board; then there's the printer and scanner and our computer software; the litter box; and finally, and most importantly, my studio. We have a tiny house, so we put things where we can.


When mom gave me her old sewing machine table, I had to reorganize to get it all to fit in some kind of orderly way. I tried to make it as accessible as possible, and I realized I've been doing a lot more sewing than painting lately, and the space shows it. Anyway, I'm pleased with my little corner.

Painting

You may remember that I don’t have an office any more, so today when I was reading my cousin’s blog on one of the library internet computers, it was a little difficult to disguise my sniffling.

Listening to my cousins talking about saying goodbye kind of struck me. I didn’t say goodbye. I just visited with her about our trip and the birds we had seen lately. I just wanted to be with her. Her eyes were so bright and she was smiling so big. I thought she looked so beautiful.

Now I have these two paintings sitting in my studio. They are a couple of Granny’s paintings that she didn’t finish. I told two of my cousins I would finish them. I thought I was going to go straight to work on them when I got home, and I almost did. But then I was walking through my living room one morning, and I looked out the window and saw a hummingbird at the feeder on the porch. John got me a porch swing for my birthday, and I have a bunch of my favorite plants out there, and I put up some pinecone bird feeders. I’ve begun to enjoy my little porch the way Granny enjoyed hers. So I stopped there and set up my easel in the living room and started painting my porch as it looks from the living room.

Now that I’ve hesitated I’m not sure when I’ll start on Granny’s paintings. (But I promise I will do them.) But, after a painting dry spell, I am glad that I am finding beauty in things, even if it is bittersweet. I don’t want to be so distracted by my expectations of what a good artist should be that I quit enjoying painting. I guess, living is kind of that way too. I think living a good life is probably a lot simpler than I make it out to be. I want to live a good life too.

Before and After

When looking at the pictures, I realized the "after" looks more junky than the "before". But it's not. Really.

Before: there was a great deal of clutter on the floor, paintings, gesso, typing paper stacked and shoved here and there. I had two mismatched rubbermaid drawers and a tiny wooden table with my palette jutting out and papers sliding off.

After: Paintings are carefully stored in the horizontal storage. The rubber maid drawers support a table top for books, sewing, planning, cutting etc, and under the table a little more storage space for those odd shaped things. The top of the map table is big enough for a much larger painting palette, and the top drawer stores all my paints and mediums. Where the vertical shelf use to be, there is now a skinny vertical space for my easel, ironing board and tripod. My previously inaccessible printer/scanner is now accessible.

Obviously, this is a very multipurpose space - So I feel like I've done this best I can with what I've got.

Eventually I'd like to exchange my cardboard boxes with colored tissue paper for pretty baskets - but the rest - I like.

*UPDATE - okay I lost the before and after image in the blog out of '07, but here's a picture of what it looked like while set up this way.

I'm trying to get organized.

A month or so ago, my sister Tara bought me this map table at a yard sale. I've been needing something like this since high school. It is a tall 4x4 table with lots of skinny shelves for storing all my large flat things, like paper, unfinished paintings, watercolors. The top is large and flat, perfect for a nice large glass pallette.

I have so many different kinds of things: oil paints, watercolors, fabric and sewing machine, yarn, books, old paintings I don't know what to do with. So with this new table, I decided to organize my studio, and get everything in better order. The result is very exciting. My space is really small - as is our house - and doubles as the pantry, so organization is a necessity. I forgot to take a picture, but I'm very pleased. So I'll post a before and after next week.

I'm also trying to keep all these craft ideas I'm reading online, in a more organized form. Now that I'll be working less (I'm only teaching one class in the fall), I should be painting/sewing/knitting more.

My favorite craft site Whip Up (because everyone else contributes to it) is proposing a "Finish What You Have" month. So I'm going to give it a shot. Last summer I started a small cathedral window quilt, that has been jammed in a Big Star bag for a year. I'm going to try to finish it - or at least make it into a whole square!

Pantry Studio

I moved my studio home at the end of last week. I had a small space in the studio on campus where i was doing my oils, but i decided for convenience and privacy, to move it home to my pantry. I was only able to get there during office hours before, and the students had open access to all my stuff. So, I know this is small, but i think its working out great.