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My Clay Table
Indulge me in a little creative procrastination. Or productive avoidance. Anyways. I’m avoiding a bead order I should be working on by taking pictures of the clay table in my office. It’s a 5 foot by 2 foot counter top on trestle legs. I’m hoping to have it be white soon because the blue of it is harsh on colour picking.
If you click the picture, I have notes on the Flickr image. But mostly it’s crowded on the one end because that end is where my chair and computer desk are. So I tend to work where I can swivel back and forth. The far end has my shelves, organizer and my pasta machine. If I shove the chair I can roll right there.
These are the projects on the go: beads in progress for the order and for my shop. Beads that need holes made from the last of a cane by the fabulous Kathi Gose.
And some clay that needs to be tucked back in it’s home and blends that need to be caned ASAP.
These are over the far end of the table and are currently in a sort of ‘See if it works’ arrangement. The very top shelf will hold jewelrymaking supplies as I use those less often. The two below have tubs of cane pieces, various clays, tools, wraps, tiles, glass, cutters… you name it. We see my little Atlas and the green rolling cart in the lower right. The cart has the sort of random additions you can’t live without: more cutters, molds, stencils, sandpaper, pointy things, paints, inks, chalk, brushes, glitter, mica and general chaos.
OK, confessing to this insanity has cured my absent motivation. I now want to go hide and finish the dang beads.
September Ambles In
School started last week which means that we are struggling to get back to the regular routine. Of course, with the move from the city to here, from primary to middle school, the new bus route, we have the next set of challenges. So far, so good though!
September didn’t seem to rush in but more of a leisurely ambling walk in. I’m starting off the fall with a final mad organization and cleaning run in the studio as the season kicks into high gear. First off, my shelf with labeled tubs (I can’t really justify all the pretty brightly coloured boxes and cute vintage tins I see – little plastic containers are my budget) for beads in ‘process’ and the ones that are listed for sale on Etsy and Artfire. Elsewhere in the studio are other tubs with other Me labels… Ship Me, Make Me, Order Me and so on.
This last flash-arific picture is a DVD rack I grabbed at the thrift store. I think it’s a wall mount rack. I’ve repurposed it into an earring rack on my jewelry & shipping table. The little silver one beside it is a CD rack that was damaged in the move. I may finish damaging it and turn it into another rack.
How’s everyone else’s September starting out?
Other People’s Studios
Since I moved from a small apartment to a house at the end of June and picked up my own office-studio-cave in the process, I’ve been a tad obsessed on how it should get set up.
Part of that obsession has resulted in me stalking the studio, home office and craft room groups on Flickr. And then there’s the results for a simple Google image search on ‘craft room organization’.
I found a book in the library – amidst the other house decorating books – called: Where Women Create: Inspiring Work Spaces of Extraordinary Women by Jo Packham.
Overall, the studios are overdecorated and cutesy for my taste but you could easily just pick and choose ideas to take away. I was happy to see a whole, contemporary, book devoted to professional craft artists work spaces.
I have to admit that I haven’t got my little space quite how I want it yet – it will require some more TLC and different wall shelves but it has gotten good use even as it is. I am hunting up textiles at the local thrift shops after seeing a few of the amazing simple sewing projects Lisa has done with such the last two years.
Post Move
I have this whole series of studio building posts in mind but moving has resulted in more mess than I was able to imagine. And my imagination is excellent! So here’s a little clip from the garden where I had ladybugs earlier.
The last of my furniture and shelves came with my stepdad yesterday. That means the bookshelves and racks are here which will help with the unpacking since the stuff will have a place to stay.
My studio thus far – and yes, the first functional spot is the computer station – is chaos. In two weeks when Lloyd gets back from scout camp he promised to help me out with wall shelves and I should be ready to put baseboards and window trims in then too.
Bowl Goals: Beady Weekend
Funny story. This morning my Mom phoned me to make sure we were on for doing errands together and said she’d be over in 30 minutes. I said that was perfect as I had stuff coming out of the oven then. When she arrived she asked what I was baking. Of course, at that point, she realized it was clay.
We were back in town by mid-week and the end of Easter break marked the Calgary leg of the Oasis Bead Show. This year there was less of what I was looking for – a good selection of base metal findings – so I didn’t break the bank. I did pick up a few strands of stones and pearls in my regular colours. Chloe picked up a lampwork cat bead similar to Sam, our future house cat. The cat bead is made by artist Fran Davis of Dragonfire Beads.
I believe next year I will make a serious effort to have a table at the Bead Show! It was a candy store of goodies even if I was on a strict diet.
Bowl Goals: Happy St. Patricks
There’s nothing green in that bowl of beads except a few leaves on some of the caned pieces. St. Patrick’s here meant that my daughter made sure her tshirt had some green bits on it and she put a green skin on her Shuffle (which made me think, can I make a clay Shuffle sock? Anyone done that?).
I cheerfully went greenless today, I’m sorry. Here’s the bowl of beadies for my weekly checkin:
They’re off to join the other friends they just came out of the tumbler with to get holes, layers of glossy goo, photo sessions and generally fondled and appreciated as all beads should be. Expect to see them up on Etsy and environs soon.
Those UFOs
And by UFO I mean the (in)famous Unfinished Objects of the crafting world. My current one is more of an unfinished project. See, last year I scored a nice big chunk of clay from someone who was selling off her supplies. What’s in the picture is just a small portion of it. The rest is partially used, so in plastic baggies and less pretty to pose.
The problem is that this is all old Fimo. By old, I mean mid 1990s. It predates the company making ‘Fimo Classic’ and ‘Fimo Soft’. Every single pretty ounce of it is rock hard.
So I am writing about it to goad me into finally get processing it. I don’t have a food processor and I haven’t found an old, second hand one in my price range that didn’t break two minutes in. So I have to do this the old fashioned way. Dice it up, toss with mineral oil and softer clays and let sit. Blend. Repeat. Eventually I will have about 30 lbs of good clay but it is going to be a while.
Anyone else have some tedious craft projects waiting for them?
Bowl Goals: A Common Theme
This weeks lot of stuff was diverse – little teeny clay heishi, regular cane covered beads, cane slice flower beads and slightly fancier, larger, slice shell beads. There is an underlying theme though: I’m thinking spring and summer stuff. Spring green heishi for stringing. Pastel flower slices. Pink roses on pink beads for mom’s day. Shell beads for summer designs.
With weeks like that I am going to fly past my bead making goal. With the lil’ heishi beads in there, there are around 2000 beads in that bowl. Even without the 20 feet of heishi, there are around 400 beads. Phew! Hope your weeks are similarly productive.
Bowl Goals: Mayhem
Life is getting back into the swing of things around here so here’s the weeks bowl o’ beads – and production is on track for my end of May show which is good – that happens to be 45 heart pendants. These are off dancing in the tumbler right now, so we’ll see them later in the week!
My ‘office’ is in the corner of my living room and is still in the process of ordering, packing and unpacking after February’s chaos in the apartment. I’m taking the opportunity to sort all my show and inventory totes while they’re out and floating. The mayhem is slowly clearing up but my little corner is still buried it seems!
Boxes
I recently changed my web shop’s categories to allow shopping by colour which is pretty cool to me. I then had a small brain wave. Why not organize my pieces like that OFFLINE? I mean, they all lived in boxes before hand but it was somewhat haphazard and I waffled continually about what would go where.
Now, the boxes are arranged by my colour codes: top left is the yellow & orange and red & pink, below it are the blue & green and purple, to the right are the black & white and brown & neutral (plus cane components that usually live elsewhere).
The box with the bags in it is where my unlisted beads go and the bags are labeled the same as the canes: blue & green, purple, yellow & orange, pink & red, black & white and brown & neutral. So much simpler.
