Day 93: My Studio

One of my online groups I follow recently was talking about their workshops / studio's / whatever creative name is their preference for the space in which one creates, and so I was intrigued and went on to the group to view some of the pictures a few posted of their spaces, and then thought maybe you'd like to see where I "work" also...SOOOO.........

This is my studio!

I'm actually sitting in this chair right now as I type this :) 

Yes it usually looks like this, I work best when everything is clean and organized, and I like to walk in and jump right to it, so I try to clean up after every project (or day...whichever happens 1st :)

A lot of times though there will be either brown paper covering my work surface, or the paper the movers OVER used when we moved here, best thing I did was save most of it.

Up until about a week ago, George and Annabelle's house was on the large open shelf, but since my studio is so small, I needed more room, which means our bedroom got another house moved into it.

My husband is truly soo wonderful for not saying a word.

Now this is my project shelf, and as you can see, I have 2 projects in the wee stages of development.

And that's it!  it's roughly 8.5' x 9' of space that is just for me.

It's nothing like my dream studio, which my husband tells me I can have when we finally move back to the states in a couple years and 'settle down', but for now it's perfect!

Day 92: Shabby Chic Cottage outside photoshoot

Well, it took a little motivation, but I finally got around to photographing the cottage outside, where I have been thinking about (and talking about) since the day I finished it, and took the original exterior pictures, which I was not fond of.  

And since I am horrible at narrowing down pictures to the best couple, here are a bunch :)

And this one is where the cottage owners installed an insanely large pool :)

Love the front door and pot chair!

Day 91: Motivating...for the sake of inspiration

Do you ever struggle with inspiration and motivation?

I do!  and it seems completely unnatural to me.  Here I am with a beautiful (even if it's small, the lighting isn't great, and it's missing a lot of tools that are on my dream list) studio that is dedicated to miniatures, I have tons of new supplies that I picked up while on a 91 day trip I took to the U.S., Canada, Scotland and London this fall, and still I'm uninspired.  I've been at a loss as to what to work on.  I actually forced myself into working on some smaller scale stuff I really wanted to get into, and I quite enjoyed my week of working in 1/48, 1/144, 1/160 and 1/220 scale (cause I can't just do something a little bit!)  I guess I could share with you those projects, but I just don't think I'm ready to share them (other then Mae's you saw that :) 

Anyway, so to try to get me over the 'hump' and elbows deep into another "I can't sleep at night because all I can think about is project X"...I have been fiddling with these 2 store fronts

I really like the paint on this green trimmed front, believe it or not this took me an entire day to paint. But I do love the techniques and the outcome.  Not sure what I'm going to do with the outside of the building yet though. 

Obviously white trim is pretty common...now what to do with the outside of this building

Then one day I decided to just grab some wood and see what I could come up with, 

and this table was born.  It has no home yet, but may come in handy

The other table got me thinking that George and Annabelle could use a coffee table, 

so I whipped this out.  I'm not super in love with it, but it works in their space.

Also in my efforts to motivate, I've grabbed the clay a few times and putzed, 

the outcome was these red peppers

(Although I'm not sure why anyone would be eating a plate of peppers while drinking coffee)

My attempt at garlic was NOT great! 

and although these peppers were from playing a few months ago, 

this was my 1st attempt at tomatoes 

Then I had an idea, I have a wire bin that was filled with some old kits that I purchased on ebay a few years back, I swear the auction said all the pieces were in each of the boxes, but that was no where near the truth, and I didn't realize it for a while, so I took the hit and just tossed all 10 kits in a bin.  So anyway, I spend 2 days this past week just putting together what I could of the kits, and then I spent a couple hours using some left over pieces to make wood crates and bins, cause they are always good to have on hand for stuff.

Here is some more of the misc stuff I made.  I figure it can stay like this now until I need it, then it can get finished (and trimmed out more) for whatever project its needed for.

This piano is looking kinda cool, I'm modifying it from it's original kit, and although I'm not a music person, I may find a home for it someday in a project.

Now this little project gained inspiration from a CAMP discussion on the Michael's hutches, which got me thinking, I have a bunch of those and I am working on a few shop fronts, which will eventually need shelving, so I took 3 of the hutches shown above, made some modifications and so far this is what I have.

It still needs a lot of sanding, some trim and then to be painted, but I like where it's headed. 

Well there is roughly 6 weeks of "what should I work on?"....."what should I do today?"

I'm still not much closer to working on 1 project that has me sleepless with excitement, but I know it will come...until then, I putz.