Studio Tour: Part One - Inspiration

I am FINALLY getting around to sharing the revamp of my studio. It’s been a long time in the making. We’ve had countless interruptions… and let’s face it.. in the big scheme of things the studio has been the last thing on my mind (but always on my mind) to finish, share, etc. I'm finally buckling down and editing a zillion pics and writing it up. I will share the Studio Tour in several pieces... we'll tackle this elephant one bite at a time. :) This is my humble space. It's a wonky space in the basement that wouldn't work for anything else.

Studio Tour: Part One -Inspiration

(Edited: This is probably a recap for some, but some background for newcomers...)

It all started out simply and innocently…. or so I thought. I found this fabulous piece of paper at an LSS here in town and immediately fell in love with the color scheme and whimsical theme.

But it grew into a monster..... because I started to really think about my space and what I wanted it to be for me. How it would work with everything. How I could make it pretty and functional. How could I do it on a budget?

My tastes have changed completely since the day I first put together my first “studio” in this space. For the longest time I thought that the decor had to “match” the rest of my house decor – Americana Country elegance style… (a term made up by me cuz I’ve never seen anything like my decor and I love it!) mostly because my office space is an open walk through area from the bottom of the stairs to the rest of the basement… I did decide that the colors where the walls meet had to at least go "ok" with each other... lol!

The rest, I decided, was free game and that I needed my creative place to be a well organized, colorful, and bright space in order for me to create. I finally decided that I was not afraid of color… or girlie, blingy things. :) Thankfully Brent is very flexible with what I do to the house as long as it's not too "out there".

So I started gathering ideas… I saw some cool multi fabric curtains in a CK magazine …




and started gathering fabrics and color swatches…

Then I remembered I had some old windows up in the rafters of my garage that a girlfriend gave me a couple of years ago. So off to the carwash with some anti microbial cleaner and a pocketful of quarters. After about 30 minutes of scrubbing and washing in the freezing cold outdoors I ended up with a sparkly clean “new” window. I did not paint it or touch up the paint. Once it was dry and cleaned I took an electric sander (thank you Stamper Storage workshop) to it to soften up the edges and clean up the ragged layers of paint.

A few projects later and I had the base for my studio… we painted two of the walls 2 coats of Asparagus (card 410-D4) by Behr (Brent chose the color... ) and the trim in bright white. I made the curtains and some matching chair covers (aka chair bling). Though I’d still like to incorporate a cool blingy chandelier someday, but maybe in the next house…

I also had other some fun things (a kitchen witch turned Scrap Hag, Matryoschka Dolls, Polish Crystal, Silk Flowers, etc) that I'd collected around the world and misc items that were given to me by friends and loved ones that I somehow had to include and all of these inspirations helped me to figure out what I wanted to do with this crazy odd space that I have. I included these items because of their funki/wonkiness, colors, girliness, and sentimental value...

Next time… organization…
How to decide what works for you and what works for ME!

Inky smiles & see you soon!