the joys of moving, creating a workspace and why I love a patio

Now that I have a final move date (the 23rd, yayayayya!!!) for transitioning into my new place I have been figuring out what I need (since I sold pretty much everything I owned when I left Ohio and moved back to Oregon).

While I think I have it mostly figured out, I have been trying to find the perfect workspace/table/desk that I can use for a variety of mediums (leather, paper, paint, and I am hoping to get back to silver as well, so it must be quite strong and able to take a good beating) , and that will allow me to store my rather large collection of paper and book cloth that needs to be kept pretty much entirely flat (this mostly means I need a large shelf underneath the work surface).

So I have been looking at work spaces.

If anyone has any fantastic ideas for me, please oh please let me know! :)

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I will also have a very tiny outdoor patio.

BUT its size will not keep me from thoroughly enjoying it. I will have a tomato plant, small herb garden, a very small grill and hopefully 2 chairs out there.

Here are a few outdoor ideas I came across in my browsing.

Though I cannot paint the door to my rental bright orange, I still dearly love this particular orange door and wanted to show you.

I am off to the Oregon coast this weekend. Hope you are all doing something wonderful :)

xo, ~s

All images found via Apartment Therapy.

painting spaces: use what you have

What I think I love the most about these particular spaces is how the artist uses whatever they have, no matter how small or humble or seemingly ordinary their space is, and turns it into something that can inspire them.

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Lokelani Forrest's entire apartment is 450 square feet, so her studio space encompasses the dining room/living room/family room. But the artist says the size is just right for her.

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This artist enlarged the counter area in a basement nook to create her studio space.

*** Agnes Preszler uses her living room in a historic home in Italy as studio space, and when its nice she moves her easel onto her balcony. ***

This artists set up a studio in the small amount of available space in his basement.

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AJ Murosky uses a 10 x 10 shed for his studio space. He says lighting can be an issue, but otherwise it does the trick.

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This artist used what he had to make a very inexpensive, well organized, and easy to use paint tube organizer.

In his own words:

I took scrap pieces of wood, screwed them together in a step fashion so the pieces end up a little higher than the one in front and so on. Then I got two pieces of pvc pipe 3" and 2 1/4". I cut them so that when the tubes are standing inside them the label shows with the color name. Then I glued them to the wood with Liquid Nails. I cut some bigger ones also for the paint brushes. All the materials cost $11.00 and I still have plenty over. Not fancy but organized!

All images and artist statements found HERE.

creative spaces: the writing hut

There are very few things as marvelous as a quiet place of your own.

Especially when you are a writer or otherwise creative type and need to be left alone to create whatever it is that you create.

Here is a look inside the writing space of a handful of amazing writers.

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The inside of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond.

This is where he stayed when he went to the woods to live a deliberate and simple life. The land he built it on was borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson and the entire cabin was 10'x15'.

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Virgina Woolf's writing shed.

Where she went to write because she was "always being distracted" by the rest of the world.

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Michael Pollan's writing hut.

His own words about his hut in his book A Place Of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams.

"Is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words over until they'd assumed a habitable shape? What they propose, to anyone who admits them into the space of a daydream, is a place of solitude a few steps off the beaten track of everyday life."

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Dylan Thomas' writing hut.

He liked to keep his walls covered with "photos, reproductions and magazine cuttings of Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Louis MacNeice, W. H. Auden, William Blake, a painting by Modigliani, picaresque nudes, serial specials from Picture Post and similar magazines, rhyming lists and word lists of alliterations."

From The Dylan Thomas Boathouse at Laugharne

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Roald Dahl's writing hut, The Gipsy House.

Where he seldom had to move from his chair because he arranged everything to be within reach and he wrote on yellow legal pads.

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George Bernard Shaw's writing hut, dubbed "London" so his staff wouldn't be lying when they said he had "gone to London".

The inside of "London." Shaw built his hut on a turntable, which enabled him to push it to follow the sun.

All info found HERE

via yes and yes.