A Room of One's Own

The last few weeks have been another crazy rush of scribble, scribble, paint, Wacom, click, colour, magic wand, scan, scribble, flatten, FTP, invoice, scribble, rinse and repeat. My last deadline was this Monday just gone, which I was a few days ahead of schedule for (smug face), so, happily, this past week I've had a bit more room to breathe, although I have just sent in a quick rough for an apron design. AN APRON, people! How cool is that?! You know how I luvs me aprons. I LOVE my job; it really does seem crazy sometimes that I get paid to do it. (Lucky face).

So, I thought in the absence of any work I'm allowed to show, I'd put up a few pictures of my new (well, newish now, I suppose) studio space. And very nice it is, too, to actually have a space instead of a corner of another room. Technically, my studio is the "dining room", but why stick a table you're maybe going to use once a day in room that could be used all the time? So here we are:

 

My desk is up against the chimney breast with an alcove on either side. The alcove on the left houses my fave £3 junk shop table which itself holds my printer, amp, one speaker, milk jug collection, radio and totally awesome retro owl-shaped Avon face cream jar. Above are a few embroidery hoops with some of my fave blue and orange fabrics stretched over. In the alcove on the right is a tall, paper lamp, and you can just see that I have three of my "granny china" plates up on the wall beside it. The map above my desk is a patchwork of two old maps of Cornwall I got in the Oxfam bookshop last year for 50p each. They're from 1960, so it's fascinating to see all the old railways that are no longer there. If only they were *sigh*.



This side of the room has my green shelf unit holding boring-official-business-type-stuff and painting/printing materials, and my sewing table with red shelf and sewing gubbins above. I keep the top of the green shelf as clear as possible as that is the only access out to our little roof terrace. As you can see, on this particular day I had already shimmied out of the window to hang up some washing out there. This Sunday, I planted, and replanted, a few herbs and veggies out there; I must take photos of their progress.



The other side of the room houses our folding table which I can get out if I need a larger surface to splosh some paint about on, or cut some paper on, or whatever creative gubbins I might be up to at the time. At the moment we are still using this table to eat, but the plan is to get a small square, or maybe even circular, table to have in the living room. Until then, we eat dinner here, too. (Unless we're feeling lazy or watching Doctor Who, in which case it's on trays on our laps in the living room.) Behind that large piece of paper is a wall heater, but as it's FAR too warm to have that on at the moment, I didn't think having the paper there would do much harm.

The fourth wall, which I didn't photograph as it's really rather boring, is the stairs up to the bedroom and the Boy Room.

So there you are, that's my creative space. This is where the magic happens, as very sad people say. If you fancy checking out other creative work spaces, there's a fab blog called On My Desk. I'm not sure that it is updated very often any more, but taking a nose through the archives is a fun way to waste 10 minutes (*cough* an hour) or so.