For those of you who thought my studio was too neat

After the posting where I shared my nearly finished studio, I had a number of comments back from people that it looked very neat. I knew it wasn't going to stay that way. Here is what it looked like after I'd come back from Stitches:

I have done some tidying since this photo, but there's a long way to go. So, you can see, it goes from neat and organised to extremely disorganised rather rapidly.

Hey guys, I'm back from Stitches and we had a great time. You can see how good the booth looked. That's Wendrie setting up for a Make N Take and Zandy folding promotional leaflets for me.

The white signs you can see are Sold Out signs. That means that some of my stuff is now gone - never to be seen again. If you're a retailer and reading this and you want some of the end-of-line products, you need to let me know now because the remainder of stock is going up on the website next week and will hopefully sell out straight away.

Yesterday, I met up with Stacey & Jeff Caron and Kim Hupke and showed them around London a little. We ate lunch at Harrods and then walked around the store. Stacey bought the most gorgeous collar for the St Bernard (who's name escapes me at the moment) and had so much fun going back into the Egyptian room and trying out different perfumes. After much procrastination (and refusing to buy one that had Martha Stewart written on the bottom of it), we found the perfect, simple teapot and a selection of teas, tea ball and strainer, so now the Caron's have exactly what they need to make the perfect cup of tea. We spent so much time in Harrods that we didn't make it to the Victoria & Albert museum.

So we caught a taxi up to Piccadilly Circus and admired the lights, then walked through Leicester Square where all the movie premiers happen, up to Covent Garden where "My Fair Lady" was filmed (Jeff liked these gas heaters so much that we had to

have him pose in front of one but apparently they look good but aren't that heat efficient), down The Strand to Trafalgar Square and back up into Soho where we found a reasonable Chinese

restaurant to have dinner at.

I had to get some work done today, so tomorrow I am going back in tomorrow morning and we're going to aim for the Victoria & Albert Museum. They've got a lovely exhibition on at the moment showing costumes of the Tsars and since Jeff's family came from Russia, I hope we'll enjoy it.

After the V&A we're hoping to make it to the London Eye to do a flight. I've recharged the camera so I'll share photos of it with you tomorrow night.

We had more snow today

The snow arrived again. This is more snow than I've ever seen in this country. Everything was covered in about 4 inches of snow when I came out to the office this morning. So I just had to grab the camera and get a photo.

An artist needs refreshment during the day and I've been taking a Kikkoman Soy Sauce bottle up with me to the studio with milk in it for my hot drinks during the day. Today I was treated to my own personal fridge on the deck just outside the door.

This little guy sits on the wall at the bottom of the garden looking down the stairs. He was looking extremely unamused by the snow by the time I took this photo.

Zandy couldn't get into work this morning because the roads hadn't been gritted sufficiently so, after lunch we went for a walk down to the river.

I love the view over the fields nearby. Absoutely beautiful. As long as I don't have to work in it, I love it.

So this has been my work today. It's the poster for our next concert. If you want tickets, I can get them for you too. The background was created with alcohol inks on glossy cardstock. It's a little blotchier than I normally do. This is really thick photo paper. As I carried it up to the studio, the paper got wet and damaged the emulsion. I inked over the top and the blotches show through the inking.

Snow it's not!

For those of you who haven't heard, the UK had the worst snow in 18 years fall today. Now, I love snow, so I think it's brilliant. But I have noted that when the snow falls in Britain, the entire country screeches to a halt. This year it has been fun to watch the chaos because they were warning us about this snow two days ago. But a lot of councils didn't deploy the gritters so this morning when we all woke up to a white carpet, the roads weren't prepared. DH got sent home from work at lunchtime so he's working in the house, while I'm up here in the studio.

Speaking of which: this is the studio in the snow. Isn't she pretty?

I promised you more photos

I'll try to give you a 360 degree tour of the room so that you can get a feel for how it feels at the moment. Today, we moved in two of the three desks that will eventually be in the room. Now, if you look over to the IT corner, you can see my glass-topped desk and my Herman Miller chair that I picked up at an auction for a 6th of it's retail price. The desk will host my computer and main printer and the bench next to it will be my main repair station and the location of the other two printers. Underneath the bench will be storage.















This is my craft table. It's an old kitchen table that a friend of mine gave me. I've now covered it completely with a non-stick craft sheet to protect the surface. The second photo shows the 13" square light box that has been sunk into the surface. It's facing toward my IT desk so that (once I've got my desktop working again) I can watch DVDs while I craft.





















This is my craft desk from the other side. As you can see, from my seated position, I can reach most of the things I need without having to move too far. My Distress Inks are on a display next to me and I have a little netting bag with my Cut N Dry foam squares easily reachable.





















Right, so this is a close-up of the bench next to my desk. The drawers are from Ikea (but they don't make them anymore, pity) and they are screwed to the wall. Underneath, is a curtain pole that is designed to be hung from above and about 120 curtain rings with clips so that I can clip all manner of things to them. It's working out really well. To the left of that is a letter organiser thingy that I have all my cutting mats in. There are three stamp displays that I picked up from a store going out of business. On top of the drawers is currently where I'm storing my Radiant Rains, Colour Washes, Zig pens, Heat guns and little clock radio so I can listen to Radio 4.

Above the drawers I have two cupboards that I bought off eBay. One is currently where all my Bind-It-All stuff is stored. The other side doesn't have much in it yet. Fixing it to the wall was interesting because the fixings that came with the cupboards originally where broken and my plasterboard walls weren't strong enough. I screwed a piece of timber across the top of the inside of the cupboard which afixes it to the wall, and then put another piece on the bottom to support from underneath.





















If you turn 180 degrees upon yourself, you can see my bench that I showed you yesterday that is covered with non-stick craft sheet. Because I like to keep this clear for when I'm doing really messy stuff, it is also a really good place to put out stuff that I need to photograph at the moment. However, I have another glass desk that will go in front of this bench. So, I may move the non-stick craft sheet over to the bench on the left.





















We have all the amenities here. That's a coffee machine and a water cooler. The water cooler also doubles as my water source for cleaning brushes etc. Immediately to the left of this bench, are the double french doors.



























Excuse the rubbish boxes on the floor. Now, I have to explain this large frame. This is the frame for a "cupboard" that forms part of my stand at Craft, Hobby & Stitches. It gets clad in white corrugated plastic and provides a great storage space during the show. I will clad it after CH&S is over, but the plastic is too tall for the ceilings in my studio. To the left of that, you can just see the start of the storage area.



























My stamp storage. I've removed most of the wood blocks from my stamps (and they are now providing nice heat for us on our fire) and stored them in a combination of CD cases and file folders. Everything fits neatly onto this shelf and at the moment I even have space for my Wizard and Big Shot. This shelf was given to my by a friend who has returned to New Zealand (thanks, Bron). There is even space for my chipboard shapes on the top shelf.



























Okay, so this is the storage. These are two Billy bookcases facing three Sten shelving units (both from Ikea, but Sten is now discontinued). At the moment, I am simply dumping things on these shelves as they come into the studio in vague categories. I will do more organising once everything is in and I know how much stuff I have to put away. I also have left-over stuff from the construction of the studio stored here and again, that will be moved out - either to one of the garden sheds or given away on Freecycle.

These shelves will also hold all my books and magazines that I keep. Being a book person, I have quite a few so this may take a bit of sorting out, when the time comes. You can just see agains the back wall, my Really Useful storage boxes that will hold all manner of small bits and bobs once I'm more organised, but currently just hold extra screws from the building.



























These are the Sten shelves I referred to above. I have bought some inexpensive boxes from Tesco to sort things out into and this process has started today. Somewhere I have a labeller which I will use on everything.

So, that is the tour of the studio as it currently stands. I do need to do a lot more, because I looked at the house office today and was gobsmacked as to how much craft staff I still have to move up and that doesn't even start to take into account the IT stuff that has to go up. Anyway, this week I will be concentrating on moving all the stuff that is still in the barn up so that my neighbour can have his barn back. Then, I have to prep for Stitches, so I probably won't journal about the studio for a while.

If you're trying to find yourself a place to build as a studio, I hope that this might give you some ideas. If you're not, then hopefully it has been a little entertaining!