Saturday, November 12, 2011

I follow Art Journal Every Day by Julie Fei Fan Balzer.  Yesterday, I think, she posted an interview that she had done with Tricia from Altered Schoolmarm.  Tricia did a mini tutorial on how she creates a journal page.  The link to her blog is http://www.alteredschoolmarm.blogspot.com/ .  I would encourage you to swing by and check out her blog.  Her journal pages, IMHO, are to die for!

I love floating around and looking at all the blogs belonging to the wonderful artists in our midst.  The styles are so varied and diverse - everything from whimsical to dark.  So much talent and so generous for these people to share their art with us.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Organization ? Chaos!

I'm one of those people who can never keep her studio clean and tidy.  No doubt about it - I'm a messy crafter.  It isn't that I don't try, I have 2 long banquet tables that form a corner workstation in my studio as well as several rows of shelving on the wall above the work table. There should be ample room for storage, however my work table is always covered with stuff!  I just always seem to be working in a space that is only 6 inches square.  I move stuff from one pile to another and then stack the piles, and then rearrange the piles and then shuffle through the piles, and then sort the piles and then add to the piles and then knock the piles over onto the floor....well, you get the picture.

Some of the things I've done over the years have worked and I always seem to come back to them.  Just recently, I thought I had finally found my organizational style.  I spent hours re-arranging, re-packaging and re-labelling all my supplies.  I moved things around and repurposed storage elements that I already had.  At first it seemed to be working, but now?  Not so much!

Part of the problem is that I have way toooo much "stuff".  I have big stuff, little stuff, leftover stuff, coloured stuff, paper stuff, metal stuff.   I really do love my "stuff" but it's taking over my life!   I know I have some really great stuff, but I can't use it because I can't FIND my stuff!

I do have some stuff organized by drawers and that does seem to work well.  I have loads of my rubber stamps organized by category in clear plastic shoeboxes.  I have my punches stored in large plastic tray/baskets, granted not the best because it takes up a lot of flat storage room, but it works.  My paper is held both some in sterilite drawers and in my cabinet. That works but again, paper in more than one place! That causes problems because my paper is then split in different locations and I don't know what I have. 

This organizing and being organized is a quest for peace in a sea of chaos.  I'm not sure I'm going to make it without capsizing!

Caio!