At last, at last! My Studio!

For those of you who know me, you know that I don't really have a room in the house to call my own, a place where I can create and feel free to leave my stuff laying around however I like. In the last year, 1/3 of our family room (a long narrow room) had been set aside for me. But it lacked a lot of what I needed: shelves and a division from the kids' play area. I decided that if I could create this space myself, with a limited budget, I would be that much prouder of it. The first step was to take what I had and organize what I could. I started out with my sewing cabinet, 2 sets of plastic drawers, a 6 foot conference table, a sofa table and a homemade shelf that could stand on a table, plus a few odds and ends like plastic storage boxes, a drawer-style organizer (like my husband uses for nuts and bolts,) and baskets. I am a huge Pinterest user. So I've been pinning my ideas for Organization and Decor on a dime. I figured the best way to start was with my messiest supplies. So I decided to organize my ribbon and fibers. I took my inspiration from Sippy Cup Mom, I went to Wal-Mart's paint counter and asked for some paint mixing sticks. The lady gave me a handful without blinking (they also don't care if you take one of every single paint sample card they have.) I took my homemade shelf and attached a small curtain rod that I had laying around. I also had the little hooks designed to hang the curtains, so I used those to hang the paint sticks which were wrapped with my ribbons. I have a lot more ribbons and fibers than what you see on my paint sticks, I just didn't have the time or space to add them all to this organizer. The ones already wrapped nicely on cardboard bobbins stayed in their case and the ones too big and bulky were placed in a drawer of one of my plastic drawer sets.

I also liked Sippy Cup Mom's jars, so I picked up small jars during canning season so they were on sale, and nailed the lids to the underside of my shelf. Arranging the buttons by color has helped so much! I also keep my hot glue sticks (plain and colored) in some of the jars and my sequins. On top of the shelf is my little drawer organizer. I decided to make it pretty by cutting and gluing paint sample cards to each drawer (I kind of have a thing for rainbows.) But then I realized there was no way to tell what was in each drawer, so I used little plastic game pieces and rub-on letters and numbers to set up a grid system. Then I wrote out an index of what is in each drawer - in pencil for easy changing. It's a new system and I'm still working the kinks out. I have a wonderful husband who can do just about any job around the house, but he hates to hang shelves. So I decided I could do it myself. In our back yard I found deck planking salvaged from my brother-in-law's house that was around 12 feet long. So I got out the circular saw and cut each one in half. I had room for 3 shelves, so I save the 3 in the best shape (as a side note, my husband has forbidden me from ever using the circular saw again, saying I was going to cut my head off one day, whatever that means.) After the shelves were cut, I scrubbed them down with pine sol and attached my brackets. Okay, as a disclaimer, I thought I placed them correctly. But 2 days ago when my husband came to help put them up, I had apparently measured the studs wrong and the brackets had to be removed and replaced. That's when I learned how to remove a stripped screw. But yesterday we got the shelves up and I started putting my stuff on them. It's nice to get all my stuff up off of the floor!

We tossed around a lot of ideas of how to divide my space from the kids' play area. My first thought was to wall my section in and make a bonus room, but my husband didn't think that was a good idea. So then we decided on a false wall of some sort. The first plan was for a room divider made of old doors. Old doors can be expensive, but when you check with your friends and in your community, you can get them pretty cheap. So it seemed like that was the plan until I realized my only light source was from the ceiling fan in the kids' play area. A divider made of doors was going to remove most of my light and the air-flow the fan provides. So plan b was to create a false wall with pallets - with the stipulation that he find them. They had to be oak pallets. The false wall I like came from this article on Dump A Day. So that was the plan...until I found a brand new 3 section room divider at a garage sale for $15. I talked the lady down to $12 because that was all I had. The divider was meant to hold pictures, but I figured, why not make it more functional? This is also a work in progress, but I started with the first panel adding my wine cork collection to make a simple cork board (I ran out of corks so I might go back and cut them in half and re-glue.) The second section I just put black paper in and then I hung my thread organizer in front of it. I got the organizer for $10 at Wal-Mart and painted it black. Since I earn extra money by sewing badges on Girl Scout vests, I need a lot of colors. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my favorite thrift store sells them for a quarter apiece! The third section is a fabric picture board. I have not yet chosen how to utilize the next level of panels, but I'll come back to it when I do.

The last big issue was how to store my pens, pencils, markers, brushes, pliers, tools and other small odds and ends. I have a 5 year old daughter who can't seem to hear me when I explain that my scrapbooking pens and markers are not for her coloring books, and I still can't figure out what she did with my good acrylic paint brushes. Plus I had an open space where the corners of the big table and the sewing cabinet met up. I decided to use a homemade card case (my father-in-law built the cases and the shelf, plus some awesome CD cases. He's pretty handy), as my tool case. She would have a harder time getting into it, but it wasn't tall enough on it's own. I considered buying premade table legs for it but then I realized I had the larger of my 2 plastic drawer sets available. It houses all of my Girl Scout supplies and didn't need to be opened up from my main work area, so I faced it out into the play area and placed the tool box on top. It worked pretty well.

So that's where I'm at with the studio. Not a bad start. I'll update things as I work out the bugs. And look, I even had room to hang my toy collection, my favorite poster and to display my own art.