Distinctive Touches: my studio

It's the post you have all been waiting for... MY STUDIO IS DONE!!!

It's taken a LOT longer than expected, but it was SO worth the wait. I have to send out a HUGE thank you to my father who did 99.5% of the work on it. When he agreed to build it for me, I don't think he had any idea what an undertaking it was going to be. So here's to you dad... still coming to my rescue after all these years. (MWAH)

And now for the pics... grab a cup-pa joe and settle in... let's take a tour!

A long time ago in a galaxy far away.... (Oh too dramatic? Then lets just go with this...)

Sometime in April down in the basement...

The work began with studding in walls and creating a ceiling tray for all of the HVAC stuff. (See all those boxes in the other room... those are the cabinets!)

After the walls were up, the electrical and insulation was added. (I think I was actually in Florida teaching when this step happened. LOL)

It all started to come together once the drywall was up and the mudding was done. (Ugh, I WAS home for this step and lucky enough to get to help sand...)

Wow! What a difference a few coats of paint makes... unfortunately it turned out "Doctor Scrub Green" instead of the bright, cheery celery green I had planned for.)

The next step... up go the cabinets! It was definitely a two person job. (Thanks awesome hubby!)

All of the wall cabinets are up... time to do the floor cabinets. (Sorry.. no photo!)

Then the LONG wait for the counter tops. It took a month longer than expected to get them made and then when they came to install... the sink was cut out in the wrong spot! Grrrr, so I waited some more. (tick-tock-tick-tock)

But as you can see... once they finally got in correctly, the space was AWESOME!!! The island in the middle is approximately 4 x 6 just to give you a scope of the size of the place!

And then the hard work began for me...

I packed up my temporary studio and hauled it from the second floor down to the basement. (Phew... good thing I've been working out!)

As I unpacked boxes, I just put things out on every horizontal space I could find... good thing I've got a lot of room.

And after two days (or was it three?) of unpacking and putting things away... my space is all cleaned up and ready to go!

It's all nice and bright and cheery... just don't look at the floor. It's a mess! We spent a ton of time (and hard work) etching and cleaning the concrete. We then stained it with this sort-of-terracotta wash... but it looks nothing like I planned... so someday in the future we will probably put down some Purgo or something.

Here's another view... those double doors go to the rest of the basement. There are doors right behind where I'm standing that go outside.

And here's the rest of the room. We were going to do built in bookshelves, but a trip to IKEA solved that space quite nicely. That is a 5 x 5 foot grouping of shelf squares with an additional single column of shelf squares on each side. I have all of my books and magazines housed here and it's also a great place to showcase some of my work. (I still want to add a cozy chair by the window for times I want to curl up and soak in some inspiration.)

The next few photos are some close ups of my actual "stations". This one is my white-board calendar and storage for my buttons, sequins and Stickles. It is housed above a 5 foot wide work station.

This is my "main" work station; this one's about 3 feet wide. I've got my most-often used inks and embellishments here. I've got my Copics handy-dandy and ready to use! (There is also under-cabinet lighting for each of these work stations - perfect for coloring late at night.)

For someone who claims not to sew.. I sure like to collect fabric! LOL This will apparently be my sewing station. It will be nice to actually have my machine set up and ready to use! (That stack of fabric on the very upper-left shelf is what I'm going to make my curtains from for my room... you know... when I have a few spare moments! LOL)

This is part of my painting station. I LOVE having the sink already!!! I've got a whole bunch more paint that I need to unpack yet... and my canvases are down below in some narrow cabinets. That center island will be PERFECT for my painting and mixed media work!

This is one of my favorite areas! I purged about 3 boxes of stamps and only kept what I really like and use. I've got a TON of stamps housed in the Gina K binders and I've got more stamps to add to them. I don't have many wood stamps anymore... but I kept some backgrounds and my favorite larger ones and placed them so I could see them. I can't WAIT to use this area. My inks and other stamping supplies are in the cabinets below. (I have a whole drawer full of adhesives... can you believe it???)

And last but not least... my paper and cutting station! Due to logistics, we had to face the drawers this way instead of toward the inside of my work area... but I'm good with that! I saved my old two-drawer file cabinet that I store my card stock in and spray painted it white and dad rigged up a way to get it to be the same height as the rest of the cabinets. I LOVE this area! I have all of my cutting dies in the drawers to the left, my card stock in the file cabinet and my extra paper (for classes) in the big cabinet. The only issue I have with this station is that it's too tall! Or wait... maybe it's that I'm too short! Seriously - I used to have my cutting tools on a card table and it was much shorter. I can't get enough leverage to actually USE the stuff at this station... so I'm going to have to rig up a step of some sort...

Either that or start crafting in platform shoes! LOL

Well... that's it. That's what I've been working on for the last 4 months! That's why I've gotten so little crafting done. It's been aggravating and exhausting, and exciting... and I can't wait to get it inked and painted up!!!

I've got LOTS of room to get crafty now.... so who wants to come over and play?

Thanks for stopping by - I'll be back with something crafty next week.