We thought we would do our very own bears' 'studio' (bedroom) tour. Now, you've all seen the desk plenty of times, and in plenty of different places around the bungalow too, but we think we've finally found the perfect place for it in the bears bedroom, hidden in a corner behind the door.
But let's delve a little further in, and see where everything lives now that we 'think' the desk is in its permanent position... If you look closely to the right hand side of the desk, that's it, lean in a bit more, nooo, more than that. Ah, that's better. Now you can see our super cheapo pen storage - £2.99 for two slot together units, instead of around £30 for the 'official' version. Us bears are tight pawed you know!!! The top shelf has the Sharpie pens, white pens and any other journalling type pens, and all other shelves house the Spectrum Noir pens, all sorted by Wilbear into colour order. To the left of the plastic unit is our nifty recycling bin pen pot, which we use for paint brushes, a pokey tool, pencils, anything pen or brush like can find its way into this little pot! Next to that is a plastic index box, still waiting to be decorated ( one day- it took us years to decorate the MDF unit!) On top of this sits Namjo Fairy boy, yes, that really is his name. He was a gift from a dear friend of ours and he watches over all of our crafting.
But what's that odd clip on top of the pen unit? It's our most needed tool, a bendable lamp, the crafting corner is furthest away from the window and without this lamp crafting would be almost impossible.
Above the desk is a shelf, installed for us by Wilbear. We have a magazine rack with the latest Craft Stamper magazines in, a couple of Somerset Studio magazines bought second paw, and a Scrap 365 magazine. Most of these are full of post-it notes of projects we want to try. Also on this shelf are presents received from friends, and our canvas we made for the UKS Spring bloghop.
Just under the shelf is the MDF storage unit we recently decorated, now, what does this house? Let's see if we can reel it all off by memory.... Top drawers, l- r... L- Tools such as pliers, eyelet setters, drawing pins... Middle-stuffed full of foam pads for applying distress inks, right- Distress stains and alcohol inks (so far so good eh?)
Middle drawers L- dry glues, glue dots, 3d foam pads, R- washi tape
Bottom drawer - small background stamps and homemade foam stamps.
Phew, we remembered it all!
Moving back down to the desk, the Cricut now lives on the left. Permanently plugged in, as we found that it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.
Still with us? Shall we take a look under the desk? Here we have 3 shelving units, one of which was an old CD rack.
We utilised this for our clear stamps, which we took from the supplied acetate and housed in old CD cases. Also we have our favourite wooden stamps here, and a case of Darkroom Door stamps.
The middle shelving unit? Top shelf has our Cricut cartridges and some colouring pencils that haven't found a permanent home yet. The next shelf has our sizzix dies, and the bottom shelf has books ready to use on journal pages, plus our Art Doodle Love journal and a book full of verses for cards.
Moving over to the right hand shelving unit; this is our grab space. We have our current journal. Made by a dear friend of ours,the French/ English dictionary we're using for The Craft Barn challenge... Also our in use glues, Mod Podgy, Gesso, Golden Matte Medium, a tin which has spare tags and plain pages ready to decorate. The shelf under that has books full of pictures and text to be used in some way, a stash of A4 card, stencils, the Gelli plate...
Also on this shelf we have magazine cutouts and flyers or junk mail in sorted plastic wallets.
So, that's the actual desk area. Shall we move to the right a bit? What about those two drawers underneath the sizzix machine (also out due to the out of sight out of mind theory).
As you can see, these are the drawers nearest to our desk.
So the best use for them is for art stash! The top drawer is full of artist paint. Texture paste, grunge paste, cheap large acrylic paints for backgrounds, palettes, plastic cups for water, crackle glaze (as yet unused). Also lots of foam brushes, a few paint brushes, old credit cards for scraping texture pastes, material scissors (why are they in here????)
The drawer under this has brayers, the glue gun, usually the heat gun. But that's out cooling somewhere right now) Our pastels are in here, some old style plastic stencils, a Xyron sticker machine, cheaper acrylic paint for the Gelli plate, sponges and other painty tools.
Above these two drawers, way up, is a cupboard full of tools and other stash. Bearby wipes live in here, along with kitchen roll, both essential items. Also the craft mat and the Sizzix dies that won't fit on the shelf under the bed. Oh, and a random double plug!!
Are you bored of that side of the room? Shall we swivel round? Oh, you can see our furry reflections in the mirror now. This is the side opposite the desk and bed. The window is out of sight to the left of the TV, which we watch Create some Furry Crafts on.
Under the TV we have two units, each with 2 shelves. Shall we look a little closer?
Top shelf - these are all our punches, you can see our two most treasured Martha Stewart punches, we're slowly rebuilding our punches, as all but one were given away when the human under the bd (hereafter known as THUTB) first became unwell. On the right you can see our rather impressive collection of mists and sprays, every Dylusions mist except the black and chocolate, and many Glimmer mists too. We love our misty stash.
The next shelf holds our art towels, full of colourful grunginess. The thin box has our finished tags and other small projects, the Really Useful Box? How to describe what's in there? Hmm, embellishments? It has paper doilies, embellishments that have been included in kits, some stickers, journal spots, some jigsaw pieces, bits and pieces really, hard to describe but one of those boxes where only you would know where to go to find what you need.
The bottom cupboard? Well that has our replacement glues, our bottles of flowers and an empty tin, the stamps are borrowed from our cub and are sitting in here awaiting return to her.
Underneath that are an oddment of books, uni assignments (we hope to return to studying this year) a French language course that has been waiting to be started since the year dot, a folder full of details of our stamps, previously made mini books and journals waiting to be used. Oh, and our lovely birthday book, made by yet another talented friend.
Goodness, you're bored of that side of the room now?? Okay, we'll swing round once more. See all that lovely storage above our bed?
In one cupboard we have frames waiting to be filled with arty efforts, a folder full of made and received ATCS....
And in the cupboard to the left, the one nearer the desk, we have our two current ring bound scrapbooks. Two empty pizza boxes ready to spray into, a box of pawmade cards, an easel and a box of brads and buttons, oh, and some gel pens. What an odd place we put them in!
The box file you can see holds mostly patterned papers and A5 card.
Now what tour would be complete without the stash under the bed? A box choc full of arty oddments. Chicken wire, gutter guard, foam,bubble wrap....
Another box full of all our Dylusions and Paperartsy stamps, and our entire collection of inks.
Two 12 x12 boxes, one with patterned paper and kits, the other 12 x12 card.
On t'other side of t'bed we have the card making box, sadly depleted at the moment
On top of that sits the lap tray, for pawly days where we try to craft in bed
And the last box under the bed has an eclectic mix - Christmas presents, future blog candy and a few other bits that were homeless!
OMG, THUTB is attempting an escape, shove the boxes back!!!!!
Just to prove there really is a window in our room
You're probably wondering, with all that craft stash taking over the storage units, where do the bears keep their clothes? Why, in the drawer of course!
I hope you managed to stay with us and enjoyed our rather lengthy tour.
With love from the bears
