The State of the Studio: a Snapshot

Who likes alliteration? … Uh, I need more coffee. I got nuthin’ so far this morning. Just… a powerful need for more coffee.

I thought I’d give you a peek into the studio today. I love behind-the-scenes photos but get easily irked how so many of them – especially on Instagram – look so… perfect. Everything neat and tidy on desks, floor spotless, no piles of things that “I’ll go through later I swear, I won’t just keep moving this pile around”, no started-but-never-finished projects. I don’t know about y’all but my life is just not that perfect.

So on the table closest to me are some soap and lip balm projects. Soap needs to be wrapped, and I was just teaching Shop Elf the ways of the heat gun with those lip balms. Lip balms make a great little “thank you” gift to put in packages, but I’ve been having a problem with them lately (you may have noticed with the Cherry Bomb HaldeCrate) – the labels have been popping off. It’s really frustrating. I don’t know if I got a bad batch of labels, or what, but… it’s been driving me nuts. I just found these little shrink-wrap things to go over them, though, so I wanted to test them and see how well they work. I was almost out of bonus lip balms so I made some more specifically to try out the shrink-wrap, and they seem to work fine. So! Awesome! I can’t wait to use them in the next HaldeCrate!

The table behind has some forms for slab-roll work sitting out to be used, but you can’t really see them through the pile of ceramics that need decals. And the pile of yarn bowls and a skull luminary that need to be detail painted. And a few other things that are just there because, hey, flat space. My wedging table, off to the side from this table, also has a pile of slab-roll forms on it. I have a lot of slab work I want to do soon, and I’m excited to get started on it! Er, as soon as I get that table cleaned off, anyway.

The table behind that, which you can barely see, is loaded up with bisque to be glazed and fired. I would have taken the photo from that end, but… spoilers!

And then there’s my studio office. I have some boxes that need to be stamped and then I can put them under the desk to the left, there. The cats are keeping my paperwork done on their new furniture on the right. Nice of them to allow me to keep some papers in there… I’m only kidding. Between taking that photo and writing this, that cat has shoved all the papers out of that shelf (after nicely scooting them all around and laying on some of them. Sigh.).

Anyway, that’s my studio, workspace and office. Just a snapshot to show you what it looks like today, this week… a peek behind the curtain!