Where Bloggers Create Party II: My Room 2010 (with lots of pictures)

I'm excited to be joining the Where Bloggers Create Party for the first time. I discovered it last year, ages after it happened and I literally spent the day looking through them all! I hope you enjoy my space.

The sign on my door. I made it as a make-and-take a couple of years ago.

Here's an overall view of my room. You can't tell because of the lighting but the walls are not pink. They're pale lavender.


The bookcase I bought from Target a year or two ago. It's "Shabby Chic". The bottom drawer holds my German scrap and the "transparent" stuff.


The bookcase from Target that used to be under the window is now vertical. The addition to the top of pink chest of drawers is a library card file that was gonna be tossed from church until I rescued it. It holds rolls of seam binding and millinery. I might paint it next year....

Next to it is a tiered holder of mostly lace, but some feathers and flowers.

The chest of drawers holds glue, large photos, fabric, ink, glitter, pastels, and other stuff...

Now under the window is the IKEA book case. It's topped with a ivory and gold sari cloth and displays as well as keeping foam brushes handily located.

The tissue paper is hiding the summer book swap in progress.

The jewelry cabinet (with plastic bag holder and trash bins (one for paper, one for, um, trash)) holds pens, charms, brads, etc etc etc. Canvases are stacked next to the bookcase.

My Silver Bella prize ribbons from Teresa's class at last year's Silver Bella. Underneath is a clip-it-up ribbon holder. There are more ribbons stashed elsewhere. On the table I've used an expandable spice rack to hold wet glues, glazes, paints, Glimmer Mists.


The closet. The doors actually close. This is something of an accomplishment. Next year -- I'm gonna tackle this closet once and for all. But for now, I'm gonna celebrate that I can actually close the doors! The cloth bag is from last year's Silver Bella and holds unfinished projects from then.


Details:

On the bookshelves: art I have made and a Shabby Chic clock that I never remember to wind up. A tea cup from Goodwill holding feathers and small millinery bits.

A messy shelf! Yeah, that stack on the left is my Young Victoria book not yet put together. I still need to make my signature page. I hope to finish it very soon. The various boxes hold buttons, bling, buttons, plastic doves, beads, watches and watch pieces, and the hanky box my mother-in-law gave me.


Close up of the tiered wire holder.


I tea-dyed the crysanthemum -- and yes, I have plans for it. To the left is a silk peony.


Close up of my library file. I think I'll paint it next year ... and add some more cute magnets to it. The lace cloth is the shattered piece I picked up during the antique shopping last month.


Now that I've made a curtain, I can leave the shutters opened. The previous owners painted the shutters without taking into account that someone might want to change the direction of the louvers. So I've turned them into my inspiration board. This is just the very beginning. So lots of space to fill.


A shelf holding mini scrapbooks, journals, photo album, and I'm displaying the old photo in its gilt frame here, out of the nasty direct Southern California sunlight...


There's my 25 Days of Birthday calendar. My hubby doesn't yet know that the crystal salt and pepper shakers are filled with glitter instead of salt-and-pepper. I have more glitter that needs to find similar shakers. And the gold Mary statue is to make it a set of "three". I picked it up at an antique store in Santa Barbara.


I still need to figure out how to clean the salt and pepper shaker set on the right. It's handpainted, made in Japan and I'm a bit terrified of cleaning off the paint.

I bought peonies. I've never really known or thought about them until they started appearing on blogs (particularly Mockingbird Hill Cottage) and I found them at my local grocery store! Not cheap, however, but oh my, they smell heavenly. Like roses but sweeter (and kind of not). So my room smells yummy now, especially right after opening the door. (I keep it closed since the dog ate a spool of thread incident.)


I tucked little pink roses underneath....

The sari cloth does a little bit of concealing. Baskets, MOO cards, paper flowers, binders that hold online class information. I need to make pretty labels for the binders. The purple pails hold my Ranger Inks. I don't use them as much as I used to, so I moved them off my table.

The bottom shelves have magazines, books, "flower fluff", Lumiere paints. The shelf on the right holds all the books that get pulled apart.

Top left, cigar boxes to be altered and more books to tear apart or alter are hidden behind another small purple pail of paint, my tool-kit and a white wicker basket that holds my Pitt pens and a few other things. The white basket is in reach of my desk and with a few small additions (scissors, double-sided tape) I can pick it up along with the journal and go somewhere else.

Top right is my sewing box and a basket that holds my new obsession (washi tape) and some ruffled crepe paper.

My Somerset Studio magazines. With room for a little more.

Here's my big project for this party: Making a curtain to cut that nasty Southern California sunshine that bleaches everything. These hankies are all mine, except I think two that belonged to my grandmother or great-grandmother. Every year on my birthday and at Christmas my Nana would give me a nice linen hankie with embroidery in a corner. I never used them, so now I am! I'm gonna post more details of this on Monday.


I have to be honest. It's not quite finished. I have to stitch down the vertical seams. The loops and the top part came out of a fabric remnant stash. Someone had cut up a sheet set and left the hems behind. So I used the pillow case to create loops already sewn together, and used the sheet hem to hang everything off of.

Detail of the top of the jewelry cabinet that doesn't hold jewelry. The silver plate thingy is a Goodwill find. The hydrangea box holds more millinery... Someone lost that blue shoe. It's destined for an assemblage...


Here's the other project. I learned from my 25 Days of Birthday that I like assigning myself projects: it helps me get stuff done. You'll note on this calendar that its not filled out. I'm waiting to find out whether or not I serve on a jury. This was a chrome lined calendar. A bit of lace and some chipboard pieces later.....


A close up of my glittered ART header... The letters are from Basic Grey, I think. And I glittered them in fine glitter and then silver German glass glitter. The chipboard are from Glimmer Mist and so of course I Glimmer Misted them.


Just a detail of a wicker basket in my shelves....

One of my friends from church gave me a May Day basket. The flowers have since died (except the purple ones which became dried flowers) and so I replaced them and am hanging it off the shutter knob.



One last purchase. Piles tend to occur when I work. This tray that I purchased off Etsy keeps a journal project and the various pieces corralled.


Remember the ugly light fixture from two days ago? This is what I used to replace it. Picked it up from Home Depot, as I recall.


And that's it! I hope you enjoyed my little tour. I'm really looking forward to what everyone else's space look like!

Edited to add: My "artist statement" if you will is in a separate post -- which you probably have come across already if you made it to here!