As many of you know, I am very new to this artist thing...now mind you, I am not new to the artsy craftsy thing...i've been crafting ever since I can remember...whether I was painting dressers, tables and bookshelves bought from garage sales and then stamping them or sewing pillows and table cloths while I was pregnant with my first born Aly and was totally in the nesting mode. (moms will know exactly what I mean) ....but I never dared call myself an artist! Hello I'm Indian (born in India, not American Indian) until the age of 12 which is when my family decided to migrate to the USA. But at the age of 40, after attending Liz Lameroux's Be Present Retreat (http://www.bepresentretreats.com), I came back re-evaluating everything about my life...this retreat was a game changer for me....and I slowly but surely started to shed my years of identities taken on by life to uncovering my true self which was....(clearing my throat)...an artist!
Even today after 9 months of launching my ETSY shop and selling a few of my art journals and plenty of my custom made jewelry pieces, I hesitate to call myself an artist. You see, in my head, an artist is someone who can draw, paint etc etc...and yes although I can art journal,...i can't really draw or paint like say a painting. .:)
None the less, I have taken over the front room of our home, which is designed to be the formal living room of the house as my studio space. It started about 2 years ago with just a large, oval, antique Ethan Allen off white dining table which I use as my desk and art table to then adding a long table by the window to work on my beads/ jewelry...but found that my Project Life / scrapbooking never got touched because I simply never had the table space for it...I'd have to clean up the paints or the sewing machine or whatever it was I was working on before I could work on something new....and it just wasn't happening.
But then a few weeks ago, one of my neighbors put out their used office furniture out on the curb for bulk pick up. The furniture was used but in excellent condition. What caught my eye was the handsome cherry with black inset desk top!!! It was just sitting there. The kids and I pulled over our suv on our way home one night and got out of the car to examine it. I realized that although most of the pieces were good pieces, I only really would find use for the tabletop but having no certain plans or space for using the table top, I walked or rather drove away from it.
Well, my sons being my sons, decided to go carry it home the next day so that my youngest could use it to skate on. When I saw it sitting in the garage, I was a little confused as to why it was there. Zayn told me that it was not the right size or height to skate on and this is when I decided to go ahead and see if I could incorporate it into my work area. So I did! I moved around these cubes and drawers that I had bought a few years ago from Michael's to organize my craft supplies. These became the perfect base for the table. And I lined up the tables perpendicular to each other at the corners so that it created a nice U shaped work area. But then I wanted to tie the place together and decided to sew simple table skirts made of off white duct / canvas fabric (only $6 a yard).
So off to Joanne's fabrics I went but once there I found myself drawn to the beautiful Waverly patterned fabrics which I have always loved!!!! So I had an idea. I bought a yard each of 8 different patterns (stripes, florals etc). I also bought 9 yards of off white belt trim which I used to finish off the skirt. I cut up 1/2 yard of each of the patterns including the off white duck/canvas material and sewed it all together. I made sure to iron the fabrics before and after sewing them and used hot glue to put the belt trim at the bottom of the skirts. I made two separate skirts (one for each table) and also used plain canvas panels to cover the area underneath the jewelry table.
Here area few pics!!!
Before...
After...
In a perfect world, I would have another work surface/area for my painting and art journaling and another for my writing / blogging etc. but this will have to do for now!!!
And I love how it all came together. Now anyone who is fortunate to have any kinda space for their crafting will tell you that organizing it is a constant process of moving things around, assigning items you don't normally use to the garage and incorporating new baskets, boxes and cups etc to store things in an asthetically pleasing manner. After all, an artist irooms inspired and nurtured by their environment.
I am proud to say that I have started working on my Project Life albums but alas find myself being way too busy with creating prayer beads, Nade Ali prayer jewelry and other pieces to spend any real time on my album. I
