Studio Tour: Part One

For the next three days, I'm going to take you on a tour of my studio, my crafty space, my safe haven, my little place in the world.  This is part one!

I am a lucky, lucky, lucky girl.

We live in a two bedroom/two bathroom apartment.  When we moved in, my husband announced that I should take the master bedroom (it's larger, has better light, and an en suite bathroom) as my studio.  What a nice guy, right?

Here's a basic shot of this magical room (which never looks this clean in real life, but I recently did some spring cleaning):

It's a rectangle room with a mirrored closet at one end and windows on the other.  You can see that I have two desks set up in an "L" configuration.  One is a playing desk...

...and one is a working desk.


Let's take a closer look at the playing desk, shall we?

On the right side of the desk is my sewing machine.  I try to keep it covered most of the time, because it gets really dusty in here.  But, I'm not always good about it.  Right above the sewing machine is my collection of thread and ribbon.  Since I generally use the thread and ribbon with the sewing machine, it helps me to keep them together.

The large pink mat that's taped to the desk is a huge (2'x3') teflon sheet from Tattered Angels.  It's the best work surface in the world.  They're a bit expensive, but worth every penny.  And can you see my heat gun dangling in the lower right corner of the photo?  Here's a close up:

This is the Ranger Heat It Craft Tool and it comes with a little loop on its cord.  I use it every single day and I wanted to take advantage of that loop and hang it from my desk.  I put  a binder clip on the edge of the desk and then twisted up some armature wire to create a hook for it.  It goes through both parts of the binder clip because I didn't want the hook to wander.  It's very stiff, so it's easy to put the heat gun on and take it off.  Genius (if I do say so myself)!

On the top of my desk sit a few important things.

My water jar is a spaghetti sauce jar.  Usually it's full of dirty water and ten paintbrushes, but I cleaned it up for the photo.  I am proud to say that I have never tipped over my water jar.  Because it's heavy glass, it just isn't that wobbly.

A repurposed can full of paintbrushes.  That green basket next to it has acrylic blocks, a toilet paper tube, my tiny attacher - often used tools.

I have some tiny drawers that sit on top of my desk creating a backsplash of sorts.  They're full of small embellishments arranged by color.

You can see that I label all of the drawers.  I think labeling is key to keeping organized.  No need to remember where things go, it's all spelled out for you!

On top of the drawer units are some more of my most used products.


Spray bottle of water, black acrylic paint, Fabri-Tac, Gel Medium, Gesso, and acid free tape.

Mini Misters full of homemade Glimmer Mist.


These are the basic tools I use every day -- scissors, pens, craft knife, etc.  My ATG sits nestled between the two drawer units (it's the bit of red in the photo below).


Above is my paint rag.  My one nod towards environmentalism.  I would go through a roll of paper towel a day, so I stick to a reusable rag.  It makes me feel better about running the air conditioning all summer.  Sort of.  You can also see a trash can under the desk.  I have two trash cans in this room -- one under each desk.  Easy access ensures that I clean as I go and don't have a huge mess left at the end.

Next to that trash can is a plastic drawer unit full of good stuff like paint and dye and lots and lots of spray ink!


One of the things that I adore about this little plastic drawer unit is that it doesn't tip over when you leave a heavy drawer open.  It sounds silly, but that makes a huge difference to me in terms of practicality of use.

Well, that's it for today.  We'll explore more of the room tomorrow!

Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for stopping by!