Sneak Peeks Behind the Scenes

Hello, my friends.
I didn't mean to leave you hanging so long, with me in the car traveling. I've been working at the little house that will be my studio all week.

In Saint Louis, the house we rented had a large basement, so the studio was under the same roof that we lived under.

Here in Louisiana, the house we bought doesn't have a basement, almost none do have basements.

Fortunately, my family here had a small house I can use as my studio. I thought I'd show you some pictures in process. I stopped yesterday morning long enough to take these, please excuse the mess.

Slowly but surely I'm working my way to the bottom of the boxes! My goal is to be set up to start creating in the studio by next Monday.

It's a little ambitious, but I think I can do it.

My hubby and I got the Elfa shelving put up. The ceilings in the studio are very high, over twelve feet. I just love that in old houses.

So I was able to hang the shelving up high and have room above for baskets and other containers to be stored. This room is one of the front bedrooms in the studio. I'll have my photography and computer set up in this room. Also my jewelry assembly. I'll use those shelves to store lots of containers of beads and findings.

I'll take more photos later as it gets closer to being finished. This will be one of the "clean" rooms that I keep away from the flux, chemicals and soldering stuff, so the electronics and sewing machines aren't affected by the messy stuff going on somewhere else.

This is a photo of the front room. That's a tall ladder so you get some idea how tall the ceilings are. The floors are old wood floors in many parts of the house for the studio. We put up the bookshelves so this is sort of the library and will be the shipping center. It has the cabinet for the stereo and TV in it, and I have a small loveseat I'll put in here also.

You can see through the open door the dining room and a glimpse of the kitchen. I don't know the history of this house, but I'll try to find out more.

One room I'm setting up as a "guest room" in case someone needs to stay over, there'll be a place to sleep. I scrubbed all the walls and windowsills, and I've been cleaning windows for what seems like days.

I cleaned all the carpets and just gave the studio a complete cleaning, so I couldn't really start unpacking until Wednesday.

We got some paint matched to the color of the old, shabby chic colors of the house and I'm touching up all the walls.

It's a lot of work, but very worth it. Once I'm done, I won't have to do it again for a very long time!

THANK GOODNESS!!

This is a view of the dining room. It will be the classroom, and the place where I work on polymer clay.

I'm scraping the glass on the built-in cabinet to remove layers and layers of old paint. When it's all ready to go and sealed with caulk, I'm going to paint over the yellow and turn it back to the original antique shabby chic white. Inside behind the doors I'll have a place to display special items I've created, gifts from creative friends and things like that.

Everything is still in process of becoming, right now, but at last I can start to see how all this will come together as a working studio for me.

This is the utility area off the kitchen. This is where the "messy" part of the studio will be. This will have the pewter, the finishing and the dusty work going on. It is a more recent addition to the house, and has better electrical outlets and lots of windows for my ventillation fans.

At the end of the day yesterday, I had gotten this far in finishing the front room, where the shipping will happen. I'm sore, I'm black and blue all over, but I'm happy and making progress.

I'll be able to stay more in touch now, and maybe (fingers crossed) next week I'll be creating in the studio again!