My Current Studio...

Everything in this room, I am currently in the process of moving out into my new studio space. I took pictures, I just haven't offload it from the camera. When that happens then you all could see the wonderful space I'll be moving into. In the mean time, just a couple of pictures to give you a feel of how much stuff will be moving...

This is the day bed area I have, it's tucked in a corner of the room with enclosed by my book rack and work bench. Everybody who goes into the studio ends up crashing on the day bed. I have people who come over and end up taking naps and even sleeps over, in the studio. I'm working away and they're curled up all cosy fast asleep.

The work bench on the left holds stacks of handmade papers and various other crafty stuff like my seeminglessly endless supply of miniture roses and flowers and ribbons.

The surface is where I do all my work, and my bench grinder. The background was a wallpaper that my parents had installed before I took over the room and turned it into the studio. They're probably be happy when I finally clear out so they can see it again. Before that the whole wall was covered up with postcards and magazine ads and various other stuff, one day I got tired of it and took down. I didn't realise people liked it so much until when I get visitors and they go, "What happened to the wall?! Where did it go?!"

The rack on the right contains all my art reference books. Origami, design, paper, graphic novels, pop ups, and above are a bunch things I collected throughout the years.

Oh, and the tiered basket wire rack contained chocolates on the top, rolls of ribbons in the middle, and masks at the bottom. I always have to fix back the ribbon ties on the masks after the kids been through them.

This is on the other side of the room. More racks. As you can see there is not enough racks to house all my boxes and other items that lived in the studio. Those green baskets top left, more flowers, white basket next to it, more rolls of paper, picture of me when I was 8. Painting I did when I was feeling happy. Behind it boxes of greeting cards to be repurposed. And my three helmets, which one I sold to a colleague at work.

The rest of the shelves, boxes with labels to tell me what's in them. The middle rack top shelf holds all my sketchbooks since 1990 til present. Envelopes, more bits and pieces in containers, magazines... Half of what's in the picture have been moved out already, most are still on the floor.

In the foreground, left hand side of the picture is my guillotine. You can just carry it with another person helping you. If you're wondering how I was able to get all my books all sliced up neat, it was thanks to this gizmo. It's a manual thing and it even has a safety that the blade is locked unless the safety cover is in place. I can cut up to an inch and a half stack of paper.

This is the purple flying elephant painting that was sitting on the shelf, when I did the painting it was art night and all of us were cracking jokes and laughing so hard stomachs were aching. Then I donated the painting to charity and it managed to raised quite a lot of money to feed at least ten children in India for a year. Right now it's hanging up on someone's wall which I hope will make them smile everytime they see it.

This swing is right outside my studio door. It's older than me and the planks of wood has been been changed and painted over and you can see just how old it is but it still works. So one day getting tired of seeing the blank worn out wood I spent an afternoon with my acrylics and did a quick and bright painting of my fat cats. If you see it in real life it got glitter all over it too. The swing is a two seater and there's my cat Chi plonked right in the middle, this was the best picture out of the whole lot with him in it. I wasn't sure what to paint on the seated part and I started painting in pink hearts, but I never finished it because it didn't look right...