My Studio: The Books

I figured I'd take a shot of my references... These are the books I refer to for most things made in the studio and also for work for the curriculum I'm writing up, isn't that great, they get to do double duty!
The big grey ones on the left are all my Keith Smith books, I managed to get them in with the help of a good friend. It took me a while to really appreciate them because they're very dry and technical, but once I got the hang of reading them, there are bookmarks all over the pages. The rest are my design books and other 'interesting' books I picked up.

My stack of origami books! There are more, but these are the big ones. I used the 'Angelfish to Zen' as my main reference book when I was writing my dissertation for my undergrad, I borrowed it from the college library and renewed it three times when I figured it'll be easier to get my own copy. Some of these books are half my age or older and I still refer to them. Others I picked up throughout the years. One of them is totally japanese, once you know how to read origami diagrams it doesn't matter what language the book is written in, but you miss out on the interesting snippets included in the book. I like the geometric side of origami hence you don't really see any 'how to make animals'.

These are just some of my paper and books books, handmade books with pretty images in them, pop up books and my paper engineering books, and more design and reference books.

And it's ever growing, there are some books from my last trip out of the country that I still have yet to read through and find space on the shelves. I'm out of shelf space...

Would You Like To See Where I Create?

Right, am biting the bullet, I look at all the other artsy craftsy blogs out there and when they feature their studios it looks like a dream. I'm like, no way I can compete with these lot! Lovely curtains, soft furnishings, beautiful arrangements here and there... But hey, each studio got their own personality right? Mine is still in the process of being shaped, right now it just needs to function.

These pictures, was the studio's current state few weeks back, now it looked like a hurricane went through it, need more shelves so I can organise the stuff more effectively. One day I'll have purpose built storage for all around the room... one day...

These are my two work table, the higher is actually a kitchen island that used to be in my mother-in-law's kitchen, she had hers replaced and so we took this one, I like the height as it allows me to work standing up, which I tend to for easier movement. The lower table was some generic six seater dining table which came with the house. That's Shazam! being her cat like self...

So we know this space used to be a verandah, check out the late 80s floor tiles, and glass sliding doors leading to it from the family room. So if I don't want the cats to make a nuisance while I'm trying to work (for some reason as soon as I'm busy with a project on the tables they decided to keep me company by being ON the table and knocking things and messing about) I'll just close the doors and you can see them waiting to be let in and still allows me to see what everybody is up to on the other side.

The shelves are all packed, the ones on the right are all my reference books and continually growing. On the left are the 'stuff'...

Ta da! The easel in the painting corner like I said it was going to be! Painting on the easel was done by my niece, it was one of her I'm-bored-give-me-something-to-do project. The painting behind the easel on the floor is mine, which I have yet to finish... I hung up my butterflies using magnets all along the metal pipe behind it that's holding up the roof. It looked real pretty against the nature background.

This is the whole 'bit' on the right side of the door when you enter, the 'stuff'. The table far left holds all the canvases waiting to be used. Next to it in the purple bins are my rolls of decorative papers. In front of it in the brown fisherman's basket contains my remnants of materials. The three tiered baskets are all my pretty patterned ribbons. The shelving racks are the rest of the tools, items, equipments, bits, supplies and more... Still have yet to make a dent in anything. Maybe I should just pack a box of random crafty stuff and do a give away eh, that might help with the overload, what do you think?

There you have it, an overall tour of the studio just to give you guys out there an idea of the space I work in. Hopefully it'll look different in a couple of months time, but with baby on the way, who knows...

Purple Bins

See this mess, remember a while back I had this to deal with. All my papers and anything that's rolled up. A mess I tell you, a mess!

Then one day, I saw these purple bins with lids. Ooooohhh, how cool is that I thought, because they normally come in black, red or blue. But this one is purple! Wondered whether it was tall enough for what I had in mind, I bought them anyway. Plus, it was a buy one get one free, and for two bins after currency conversion, each bin cost me about USD $5. That's a bargain right?

Turned out it wasn't tall enough as I hoped for but made it work anyway. And look, you can actually see the floor! The basket in front of the bins contained all the wrapping paper that our wedding presents came in, project waiting...

Studio: Stage One

This is how the studio is currently looking, still trying to figure out how to better arrange the stuff and what should go where. Let's go on a quickie tour shall we...

From the door looking left you see...

First rack holds all my art books, the pile at the top are my origami books and the black bag on the floor contains the custom orders that I must get around to doing.

The second rack the top two shelves are my sketch books and boxes from past to present. And the bottom two shelves are junk that I have to thin out again after the rest of the house is settled.

The basket and the two boxes on it, more junk to sort through that I haven't had time to think about what to do with them.

Thought of maybe this will be one of my work surfaces, but at the moment I can't remember what junk I piled on top there, on the shelves is a stack of handmade paper from Thailand and on the bottom in the coloured baskets contain old jeans and materials to repurpose. Box next to that contained small pieces of hardboards which I go through if I'm making small books and at the far end is one of my babies, my handy dandy guillotine! You know, the one that can chop up two inch stack of paper. Only limit is the size. But then I'm not making that huge a book am I. That's the neighbour's house, I can see into their kitchen.

The middle of the room, I don't know whether to keep or remove that table, that's my handmade lamp which works out to about 5USD to make and put together, it was a challenge that I did a while back. I plan on putting a kitchen island from my inlaws here because I like the height since I work standing up anyway, and being a kitchen island it got extra storage! It's currently in the living room until I can get people to help me move it upstairs. Behind the table is a mess on the floor because I'm trying to seaperate the content of my toolboxes into my art and craft toolbox and my hardware-handyperson-stuff toolbox. For some reason I have four sets of screwdrivers and missing my hammer. Bench on the right are the recycled papers to use for gluing and such.

Tall building across the road got my corner shop and various others.

My painting corner! This is by far my favourite spot. I can't wait to start painting here. Greeneries all around me! I wonder if I could put up a birdhouse or feeder somewhere, that would be nice to see them flying around. Next to the easle stores all the mounted canvas that I apparently have. Guess I won't need to get more for a while...

Right next to all the canvases I decided to be the rolled up paper spot. I didn't realise that I happen to have a lot of decorative paper. Rolled up in tubes, in baskets, in poster boxes. All paper! And hemming it all in is my fisherman's basket, which contains more material remnants with the intention to be used for sewing purposes when I get around to getting a machine.

Then the other two racks holds boxes and jars of equipments and stocks. Like the tiered green baskets on the top there, those are filled with asorted colours of paper flowers. Not to mention I have them in other boxes too. Fortunately most of the boxes are labled so it's easier to look for stuff, have to get around to checking out the rest of the boxes.

This is how it looks like from the door looking right. Oh look, my yellow dutch shoes, in my size too.

Well, at least everything is off the floor, more or less. Could be better. Trying to figure out how. But it can wait, at least I know where stuff are so I can get on with work as soon as we move in.

The plan is to make curtains for the racks so they look a lot more tidier when I have classes in here. I also need to reorganize to make space for when I get my sewing machine. And there must be a better way to store the decorative paper without looking like a mess.

The great part about the studio, I only need to turn on the lights when the sun sets. I get to work in natural daylight!

Happy :-D

Progress!!

I finally finished sorting out my new studio. And I don't think I'm able to do classes this month like I thought I would, because we hadn't moved in yet. Waiting for curtains. Also we haven't found the right dining table either. And I'm looking around for the right work table that I can fold up so we could use it for classes in the studio! I also have to make curtains to cover up the shelves so it'll look all neat and tidy.

Prior to the wedding I thought we would have plenty of time to sort out the house, but post wedding realistically we only have the sundays to do it. The rest of the days in the week was moving like nomads between staying at my parents and his parents place. Then there were some weekends where he had to go down to the other end of the country for work as they had just set up a new branch over there leaving me by myself. It took lots of sundays just to sort out my studio alone. So far the rooms we were able to cover are my studio, his studio, the kitchen and the bedroom.

I have said the house we're moving into was older than me, and it still have all it's original built in wardrobe. When I took out the built in drawers, it apparently was hording what looked like three decades worth of dust. And the drawers were the old school kind, where the runners were made out of wood, none of those fancy plastic rollers that they glide on. I thank the fandangled vacuum cleaner we got to remove most of the dust and I still had to wipe every surface down with a damp cloth to pick up the rest, and the stick of candle that I have in my toolbox and the knowledge that I read from somewhere when dealing with drawers that stick is to rub the candle all over the runners. I now have smooth gliding drawers!!

Post wedding I've been getting lots of orders. But, there was no way I could take them because they were too short notice and I don't really have access to my studio on a regular basis. I've been so tired and drained as you can see I haven't posted anything up on the blog for a while, let alone make books and customs.

I also have a new addiction, I'm probably late in discovering this but thanks to having to wait for an hour for the DH one day when picking him up from work, I discovered sudoku. I've been working at it ever since. While at my late uncle's wake, one of his brother found late uncle's sudoku book and we both poured over it solving a puzzle. It was that bad... I walk around with a sudoku book in my bag, because you never know when all of the sudden you have to wait. Something meditative about trying to figure out where all the numbers are suppose to go, I literally zone out. My DH learnt how to solve the puzzles too now, we take turns filling in the book.

My New Studio Space

Yay! I found my camera cable! Found it this morning as I was clearing the work surfaces of the studio as the movers are going to move the last bits of the furniture today, the work benches and sofa bed. Those stuff are all on the floor now, will sort it out next few days. Never realised there were so much stuff...

I said a couple of weeks ago I'd show you the new studio at the new house I'm moving into. It's on the first floor and got windows all around. It was originally a balcony with double sliding doors. Then during one of the renovation the living room downstairs got extended and the balcony got turned into a spacious varandah. Then, when this whole getting married business came up and I said I'll move in there, we had the windows put up. By then it was already decided that'll be my studio space hence all the windows. Also because old studio only had one window and it was blocked up by my racks and I yearn for daylight. Now I have it all around!


These pictures are taken with me standing at the doorway. That's the neghbour's house on the left.

The table can seat 6 people to give you an idea of how big the space is. That tall building in front got the convienent store, tailor, photocopy place and car tires workshop.

The right is my favourite view, the trees! Also if you look out the window you could see the main road. You can't really see the house from the main road unless you know what to look out for. So cool! I'm planning that to be my painting corner.

I wonder if this space is big enough... and how it will be like once I've moved in and settled down. All of our stuff are currently downstairs in one of the spare rooms and my canvases spread around the house. I'm still debating on whether to have built in cupboards with work surfaces or just use the dismantable racks. I asked a friend who's an interior designer working in Singapore to help me design the space, and her dad's a contractor here so that's quite handy, only she won't be back for a while. I have to live with the space first and we'll see how it goes...

Now that all my stuff are in boxes, I won't be making anything for a while because if I start opening them up they'll be all over the place. For now it is safe that they stay in the boxes until after the wedding and honeymoon is all done and we settled into our life in the house. Then I'll take everything out and set up the studio!

Right now, I'm studio-less...

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...

Moving The Studio...

I am on two weeks vacation! Well, no not really. I just took time out from work so I can move the studio from my old place to my new place. Maybe I should get a before and after picture yeah, must look for pictures of old studio, I know I have it somewhere... What I love about new studio, the windows. Lots and lots of windows! Old studio got one window, but it's totally blocked up by my shelving racks so that doesn't count. Ok, gimme a few days, I'll put up pictures next week, promise.

Irony...

Just a short post amonst the chaos of life, especially the past week being Hari Raya or Eid celebration, there's a post I wanted to do but that'll be another time. Anyway, I was just reading an article about organization and my mind wandered to the current state of the studio which is pretty much a mess 90% of the time, (hence the studio was closed during the celebration because it wasn't tidy-ed up, yet during the open house I still had people who insisted on seeing it with the response of "It's a studio, of course it'll be messy"). As I said, I was gonna sort out, organize, what have yous and I still haven't. Thought I was going to do it during the fasting month since I get to go home early but this year I was just drained and end up crashing out and my productivity level was zilch for the month... Oh wait, that can't be, I made those other stuff... Hmmmmm...



I was also suppose to do the inventory for the studio and that didn't happen. I asked a friend who just did the inventory for her shop if she'd do mine and I'll pay her to do it, it was a flat out no. It was worth a shot.



I remembered buying a book something to do with decluttering and feng shui, only I don't remember where the book is (lost somewhere in studio). Another reason why I need to sort out the studio was that I'm looking for a book a friend lent and she wanted it back, it's called 'The Power Of Now'.



I got a cynical smile on my face at the moment...