Organising a small studio or home working space

My quest for re-organising my studio is complete (for now!).

Here's some pictures and tips, some of which can be applied across disciplines, as well as to mosaics. If you are just staring out, there some ideas for setting up a making area at home too ;)

 

1. Take-away tubs. I have reluctantly relinquished my love of glass jars for the more practical arrangement of plastic tubs. Please note,  I did not eat that many take-away's! I raided Poundland (dollar store) where you can get 10 for £1 (funny that...). The advantage of using these is to make use of every inch of space on the shelves and to make it much easier to see and reach all your stock.

 

To get over the fact that plastic is just not as nice or see-through as glass, I have stuck a sample tile on the front of each tub and this does the trick. Put the tiles in a colour order that is intuative for you as this helps a lot with searching and getting inspiration for combinations.

 

2. Storing stained glass - I would love to have enough studio space to construct shelves to store stained glass upright. But I haven't. That, coupled with the fact that I use a lot of cullet (offcuts), has got me storing the stuff in small and medium sized stacktable containers (of the more study kind - sourced from Ikea & pound shops).

Large sheets are stored upright in the larger tubs and I also use these to store broken china and stuff like that. It works and its safe (important if you are running classes or have little ones coming into your studio).

3. Making use of under table space - the two large tables I have in my studio are against walls and this gives me the chance to use the space underneath to store grout, tools and other equipment. Again, I use stackable plastic tubs (larger variety, these ones from IKEA). Students often ask for ideas on setting up a mosaic space at home and this is a good solution if you have no dedicated space yet. Keep all your materials in tubs under a table (in the kitchen / dining room) with a long table cloth to hide them when not in use.

4. Catching shards of glass - the other tip for those of you without a dedicated mosaic space  (from one of my lovely students, Silvia) is to mosaic standing up at the sink! Personally, I like working standing up. Doing so at the sink stops most of the shards flying onto the floor (though please don't send them down your plughole or you may need to call the drain man!). The other way of catching shards is to nip tiles into a clear ziplok bag or a large plastic tub turned on this side (there's a bit of a plastic tub theme going on here eh?!)

Talking of those small shards...I have a fantastic children's mosaic tutorial on using those bits that normally get thrown away coming in the next week...see you then ;)

Organising your mosaic studio - part 1

Its small, sweet and perfectly formed. 

Its at the bottom of my garden, so a short amble to work every day.

It comes complete with 3 cats who have made it their own (and plod over my work in the process!)

It fits 5 students plus me, quite happily (and cosily)...

...and my little ones do so love sitting in there with mummy to make things.

But my quest to make the most of small spaces continues. So yesterday I rolled up my sleeves, armed myself with the radio, some chocolate treats and a pot of herbal tea and began putting into action some ideas for 'small mosaic studio organisation'.

Here's hoping I get to finish soon (a bit of a challenge in my life). If you have a small studio or need to turn a small corner of your home into a mosaic area, come back soon for part 2!

Home organising and rhythm setting

There is something about my personality and life experience which means I need a sense of rhythm to my life. Since becoming  a parent, that need has become acute. I have tried to push it aside and live by 'going with the flow', but it hasn't worked for me, especially with the demands of a growing creative business.

So I declared 2011 to be my Year of Living Rhythmically. My year of finding a pace to life that feels more realistic and respectful of where I am at in my stage of life (with two young children to nurture,  a family home to maintain and 'art' calling me). A way of running my life so that it feels more balanced rather than being so deep in one area of life that I  neglect the rest. A way of living that decreases stress and increases calm. A pattern to life that respects my need to know where I am at and what I am to give my attention to at a given moment rather than feeling that I have to deal with / develop / achieve everything right now (recipe for overwhelm if there ever was one).

I have tons I want to say about what rhythmical living means and does not mean to me but for now, let me tell you how I have begun:

1. By clearing the physical space in my life
2. By developing a way to intuitively plan my use of time.

On the latter, I have invented a 'tool' to do this (its taken me 4 weeks to 'make'!) and I am going to start using it tomorrow. For those of you interested, I will report back and tell you all about it in a month (once I know if it works for me or not).

As for clearing the space...oh my! I have done my best over the last 5 years since having children to keep some sort of home organisation going. But, truth be told,  many, many corners of the home have been filled with things tidily shoved away. Seeing these hot spots of neglect have left me frequently hyperventilating (you know that feeling, when you can't find what you need or you open the cupboard door and things tumble out?)

So, in my quest to clear the metaphorical dance floor of my life so that I can dance my rhythm without tripping, I have spent the last 10 weeks sorting, de-cluttering and tidying. So far I have tackled:

• the kitchen cupboards (happily, in good preparation for this course on Vegan living that start tomorrow)
• the utensils draws in the kitchen (yay! The draw has not got stuck once since!)
• the understairs cuboard (including using the genius system from my friend Kate, for organising medicine into two boxes - 'internal' and 'external')
• all our paperwork and filing has been gone through and stuff chucked, organised or archived. I feel like I need an enourmous round of applause for this as its over 5 years worth - phew! I think that we may now be able to actually find a piece of paper when we need it!
• I have sorted my jewelry and made this display frame from a beautiful piece of lace  (hand-made and given to me by a dear lady in Finland) which I have mounted on a wooden frame.

I adapted this idea from Heather at Beauty that Moves who showed how she used a small bit of lace in an embroidery hoop for hanging earrings. It's so lovely seeing all the various sparkly bits (many with feelings attached) on display - it is like using all your jewelry to make a work of art!

• my artists studio has been thoroughly cleared out and I have nearly finished sorting all my tiles (will post pics of the inside when I do)
• kids toys have been thinned out, sorted and tidied including all the girly nick nacks (how many bracelets and necklaces can a little girl have? Mmm...about as many as her mummy maybe?)
• our hat gallery is back!

• my sewing area is finally cleared, sorted and set up and I will finish our family snuggle quilt for the living room by next winter...

Still many house projects to tackle but it feels sooo good to have made such headway, particularly as I have a busy time coming up with my art in the next few months (some exciting news to share soon!).

PS. The picture above my sewing desk is by Nikki McClure , an inspiring self-taught artist and children's author who makes the most beautiful paper-cut art. The picture was a 40th birthday present from friend, blogger and fellow Tooting creative Gillian. When she gave it to me, it literally choked me up - there is something in the picture that touches me deeply.

Carve out your bliss

We were at 'our' farm again on Saturday (yes, it now feels like our farm, owned by the community of people who are working the soil and loving this patch of land back into abundance).

There is a greengage tree, bowing with the heaviness of the most delicious, sweet fruits. There are blackberry bushes with enormous, lush berries on them. Then we have the seemingly never ending supply of rainbow chard (go back a few posts and you will see that when I say rainbow, I am not exaggerating!). Cucumber plants are dripping with their juicy fruit, which my children pick and walk around munching like candy. Beans...the beans which, when you open the pods, are  fluorescent pink, with dashes of purple! So much goodness which is all new, as the farm is only 7 months old, and none of it was there last year...just empty soil, apart from the old greengage tree, which I thank  as I pick its fruit. I feel genuine gratitude from my belly - for the soil, the air, the sun, the Spirit - and all that these combined energies have yielded.

As a London urbanite, I also feel a real privilege that I have this opportunity to be so connected to the food I eat. We harvested more potatoes this week. Potatoes which my husband and children helped plant a few months ago. Later that day, we cooked and ate them. You appreciate food - and work so much harder to  prevent waste - when you have been so closely involved in the process of it coming to being.

Every time I am at the farm, this thought runs round my head: carve out your bliss where you find yourself.  I love the open space of the countryside, yet I live in London, amongst the noise of double decker buses,  the traffic fumes, the terraced houses with small, handkerchief patch gardens. I love living in London. It has been my home for 21 years and whilst we have a constant trickle of good friends who are always leaving London (really hard to be the 'left behind' ones) we have no reason to leave and many many reasons to stay. So I carve out my bliss where I am, creating pockets of beauty, nature and inspiration that I can go to regularly. We have many spots in and around London that are part of our pockets of bliss - the Southbank, the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park, Merton Abbey Mills (with its working water mill where William Morris made his Liberty prints), Happy Valley, doing yoga at the Radiant Hand, which feels like its own little community of carved out bliss (that I have missed for over a week due to sore hips - need your healing vibes yoga friends...). Bliss in where we go...bliss in what we seek out, what we give ourselves to, the feel of our homes, the rhythm of our lives.

On Sunday (slightly stressed) we made jam and pie with all the fruits from the farm. Within a few minutes my stress had melted away.

Carve out your bliss, right where you are...

Children's Art Gallery

For over 3 years I have been adding the kids artwork to the dining room wall - from the first scribble and brushstrokes to handprints, the numerous collages and more recently, their gorgeous representations of people and animals. The trouble is that I was running out of wall space and it was looking messy, with corners peeling off the walls as the blue tack lost its stickiness.

The inspiration for the gallery came from a mixture of Ikea (those cheap frames again!), Mister Maker ("Lets frame it!") and Amanda Soule's book, the Creative Family (see sidebar) where she talks about doing an annual exhibition of her children's artwork. I want so much to honour my children's creativity. Framing their work was a way of conveying this and I think the resulting gallery is gorgeous.

I used a staple gun to connect a series of pictures with some rustic string. I like the flow that is created by hanging the columns of pictures at varying heights and the fact that you don't have to put lots of nails in the wall. There are more pictures waiting in the wings (I ran out of frames!) and it will be easy to add more to the bottom of each column of pictures.

My intention is to have an exhibition, as suggested in Amanda's book, and allow the children to give some of their artwork to friends and family. Sweet!