I began collecting items painted by Debi Coules on eBay. She has now moved on to having her own website (banner lower down in the post.) I just love her roses and have lots of items spread out through my home and will be sharing more of them in the future.

My kitchen bay window has a shelf and right now has a combination of enamelware and two stained glass lamps. Somewhere I’ve got more plates that I’ll probably put on the shelf – but I tend to like the way it looks now. I do have a lace trimmed runner that’s in my “to iron” stack that will go back on the shelf.

Thanks to Cindy at My Romantic Home for hosting Show and Tell Friday. Cindy’s blog is one of the two or three that inspired me to start my own blog.

The other day when my studio was in what might be called its most organized state I thought I’d take some pictures. Just ignore the bookcase. lol I never do seem to be able to keep my magazines and books in order.

After seeing pictures of Bev’s gorgeous office/studio over at How Sweet The Sound – look for the link to it along the right column – I’m going to see about doing something similar to my studio with stock cabinets. My son had a desk built into one of the closets in his condo using two stock cabinets and a stock counter top. And I would really like to build shelves into the closet. So many plans.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like now:

The above pictures show one corner of the studio. The door is on the wall opposite the window. On the table on the right I have my main working area where I do jewelry design, work on my original dolls, and eventually I plan to get into doing more polymer clay work. On the table on the left is one of my pretty Tiffany-like lamps, a radio/CD player, and a table top oven for the polymer clay. I think it’s important not to use your kitchen oven when working with polymer clays. Eventually that oven will most likely be moved to a small nightstand so I don’t cover up so much of my window with it. The curtains come from Country Curtains and are called Kitchen Garden Tiers.

It took forever to come up with the right color for the walls. I wanted a very nice and sunny yellow since this is a north facing window and never gets any sun at all. So I thought I’d provide my own. Course, the true color doesn’t show up in any of the pictures. But you get the idea.

The lamp on the table on the right side is an Ott light. I’ve now got three of them in that room that I got from Joann’s. I got them all for 50% off by watching their sales and also getting their weekly flyer. I have an Ott floor lamp in my “Day Room.” I love the light they produce.

As you can see I’ve got a tv and a DVD player. I wanted this so I could watch my craft CD collections while at a place where I can work. This way I can watch the video, pause it when I need to, and then start it up to continue. I’ve also got a way to hook up my laptop in the studio so I can watch You Tube video tutorials.

The above pictures are of the area where I do my machine embroidery. It’s directly accross from the area where I do my main work as shown in one of the first pictures.

Eventually shelves will go up over the table – unless I do put in stock cabinets which would be nice so all the thread, stabilizer, etc. would have a nice place to live. Though it is nice to have everything I need right there on the table. My embroidery machine is a Deco 600 that I purchased about 10 or so years ago. Now that I’ve finally figured out how to do simple things I’m going to start working on sections to be placed into a quilt. Will keep track of my progress on the blog once I start.

This is the area next to the door and opposite the window. The table is a harvest table, unlike the others that are folding tables. I’ve had this table for over 30 years and just love it for sewing since it’s very deep. My sewing machine is also about 30 years old, but it’s a Viking and still sews pretty darn well. I may think about getting a new machine, but for now this one works just great after getting a good cleaning and tune up.

I got all the baskets (on sale) at Michaels. They hold patterns, fabric, CDs, and misc. The boxes on the shelves are photo boxes that contain paint, embroidery thread, etc.

I really love this room. It’s only 10′ x 10′ so is a pretty tiny room but has lots crammed into it. I still have what used to be the Master bedroom to finish up as my “Day room” and may move my jewelry making into there since it seems to want to take over all the studio with box after box to keep the parts seperate. Then the area over by the tv can be completely devoted to dollmaking and clay work.

Oh, and one last picture. The rocker sits in the corner with a Vermont Teddy Bear I got from son a few years ago for Mother’s Day. Quite fitting since this was the rocker I bought to go in his nursery when he was born over 30 years ago. The little basket on the rocker really belongs on the embroidery machine table. Guess it wanted to get in the picture since it would have been covered up by the embroidery machine in the other pictures.

Thank you for visiting!

Thanks to Kelli for offering the Friday Show and Tell – click on the image above to see the other blogs who are participating.

I started making dolls in the mid-seventies. I made cloth dolls to sell at a few places around town. Then, one Saturday morning, I was out looking for ceramics and wondered into what could only be described as a truck garage behind this rather dilapidated house – and a whole new world was opened to me – porcelain dollmaking. I’ll save the whole story for another post, but I eventually got to the point where I produced my own line of original dolls. These are a few of them.

This is Allison. She’s about 24″ tall and most everyone who knows me and has seen her says she’s “me.” Well, most artists work tends to look like them, but I have always appreciated it that a friend said Allison was my “soul.”

This is Kayla. When I was creating these three dolls I wanted them all to have a different look – so she became the redhead in the group. Perhaps I somehow tapped into the Irish heritage on my father’s side when I created her.

And the last of these three is Tessa. She is such a “pretty” doll and has such a peaceful air about her. I always think that she’s daydreaming about being out by a babbling brook and maybe reading a book.

It’s been awhile since I did any dollmaking, but my goal for 2009 is to get back into it. I no long have my kiln so won’t be doing porcelain dolls, besides, there’s just so much heavy lifting and such with having to make molds, pour the dolls, etc. So, I’ll be working on getting back into doing dolls made of polymer clay and I would also like to learn how to make felt dolls.

I’ve got my studio almost finished. My son will come over this weekend and help me put up the shelves I need. Then all I’ve got to get is a comfortable chair for one corner and decide if I’m going to put a dresser I have in there or go out and get a new one. Or maybe I should go out to the resale stores around here and see what I can find.

Thank you for stopping by – and I’d appreciate a comment if you have a moment.

Sandra