A Week of Cleaning in the Studio

Perhaps you've wondered what I've been up to for the past week? I can tell you - cleaning, organizing, and building IKEA furniture for the Daft (dining/craft/studio room).

Here's some before and after photographs for you. It is by no means "finished" but I'm scaling back and only working on it a little bit a day instead of spending all day on it.

Before & After:



It's those IKEA Billy shelves I've been wishing for! Yay! They work so well, and they fit on the wall pretty much perfectly! If you want to see notations on what everything is in the after picture, just click on it. I kind of went crazy with the notes on Flickr.

Shew. Now I can get back to making ridiculous stuff. I am in a sewing mood!

Studio Cleaning 2009: Mostly Done!

Northwest Wall of My Studio

After a few weeks of intense work, I think I'm done cleaning my studio for this year. I have a very satisfying box of stuff I'm getting rid of. Plus, I've created a few storage solutions that I'm pretty proud of. Of course, I have a few storage failures that I'll share with you, just so you know that I'm a human, and not a robot.

Storage Solutions!
Plush Animal & Robot Corral / Storage
(click on the image for instructions on how I made this)

I'm making more and more stuffed animals, as I think they're really cute, fun to design and... well, anyway, they were all over my studio. And when you spend a lot of time painting and other stuff, you can't risk your stuffed robots, kitties, platypenguins, or what-have-you getting ruined.

I wanted floating shelves, but I knew they'd have to have some sort of corral-like action to keep these top-heavy friends from flopping right out. Taking cues from various stuffed animal storage I've seen (like plate shelves) I decided to make these. They do what they're supposed to: cutely store the stuffed animals out of my way!


Embroidery Thread! Finally off the floor!

I know, it's not exciting or innovative to actually store your embroidery thread on the little winding cards, but it took a lot of episodes of "The Wire" for me to finish this, and the colors are just so pretty that I had to post a picture of it. Mmm, satisfying!


Storage Failures!
Ribbon Storage FAIL

I thought that ribbon and trim storage was a simple thing. I cut an old wire hanger and put all my ribbon on it, re-connected the cut with tape and hung it up! Hooray! Problem solved! Ten minutes later the tape popped and the beribboned metal hanger hit me in the head. Boo.

For the future, does anyone have any storage ideas for storing ribbon or trim? What about polycotton stuffing, where do you keep it?


I'll post some more of the goodies I've found that I want to get rid of - perhaps we'll have a giveaway! I still have a huge pile of paper to go through. Oh, and I guess I should post pictures of the other side of the room, just to prove there's not piles of stuff hiding over there (here's a secret - the piles are hiding in the hallway).

If you want to see more detailed photos of my studio, with tons of notes, head on over to my flickr photostream and check it out.

Studio Cleaning: In the Midst of Madness

Who Knew the Old Lady Had So Much Thread in Her?

Twenty years. Twenty years is how long I've been making stuff with embroidery thread, and therefore buying embroidery thread. And never throwing any away. It could be longer, but I'm not going to admit it for fear of making you think I'm incredibly old and weird. Too late, I suppose!


Speaking of weird, look what I found while cleaning in my studio: