My Studio/Office Redo....Where I Create

My studio/office is done... I had many inspirations for my office. I love Country French and Toile. The first was Celestina Marie at La Rea Rose. Her inspiration and another one of mine was Fifi at Chez Fifi, who is the editor of Romantic Country Magazine. If you click those links it will take you to their studio/office posts. Both of these wonderfully creative women used black toile in their offices. I love red toile AND I was creating my "office" portion of my studio in my closet.....so another inspiration was from http://www.bhg.com/ . Below see the red toile office set up in a closet....from BHG.com (Click on any picture to enlarge - I don't know if the first pic will, but the rest will for sure).


Here are a couple of "BEFORE" pictures of my office/studio. First the computer area.

And below the before closet. It was filled with two shelves that stored some of my china.

Here is the after pictures....first the closet now. It holds my computer and my office stuff. Magazines, files, stapler etc...

Now, we are walking around the perimeter of the office/studio. Below you see the entrance door.


If you were standing in my doorway this is the direction you would be facing. The white shabby table we bought at a flea market in Tennessee about 4 years ago. It is where I do most of my mosaic work...the cutting and placing of china. But not the grouting. The grouting is done in my garage.

This picture shows the two shelves I decided to leave in my studio. It holds my favorite china and stained glass. The rest of the shelves of china (5 more to be exact) are in the garage. See the drop leave table? That was the red table in my kitchen nook, that you now see in my header. I waxed the top with Briwax and everything I placed on top left a mark. So I sanded it all off and now I am going to mosaic the top. I will show you the finished table in the future.

Here you see the blackboard I showed in an earlier post and two of the prints I purchased from Teresa at French Poppy. The third print from Teresa is over my desk, by the lamp I just remade the shade for.



Now you are looking at the closet/office. You can see a lot of the items I posted about this past week. One of the things I hinted about is......the curtains. I had planned on putting the bi-fold doors back on the closet to keep out the dust, but I would not have been able to open my file cabinet door if I did that. So my solution was to sew a couple of curtains from my favorite red toile and hang them from a rod at the closet opening. Now I can pull them closed when I am not using the computer.

The white magazine files and black storage boxes on the shelf are from The Container Store. More shots at the closet follow.


This is the wall I use as my photography studio. I am able to place plates or pictures on the wall for background and used the dresser and small table as props. All of my pictures for my website are created here.



This is a picture of a shelf in my studio. This mosaic piece is one of the FIRST ones I ever did. I keep it to remind me of how much I have learned in the past 8 years....You can see the sweet painting that Cathie of Catherine Holman Folk Art painted for me. And the two ladies came from my sister....

I purchased the memory board on ebay....

The mouse pad came from http://www.casualcottage.com/. The wire ETC basket came from an ebayer buyer named The Polka Dot Bear. The letter "P" came from Michaels and I spray painted it black.

The now newly painted red drawers (and file cabinet) were painted with Valspar spray paint in Wine. Purchased at Lowe's. Then I added some crystal knobs that I have had for a while. The cup with the Initial P came from Anthropolgie.

The chair cushion and the valance above the windows were made by Shelley at Judd Home Decor. I highly recommend her. She also made my dining chair and kitchen nook cushions (seen in my new header).

This little bundle below is a black board eraser. Simply cut out a circle of fabric, filled with cotton balls and tie at the top with ribbon. A black board eraser that coordinates with your room!!

If there is anything here you see, that I have not mentioned, please feel free to email me and ask...

The obstacles I had with my office/studio is that it is just that...and office and a studio. I do most of my mosaic work in my studio. So, there is a lot of dust and broken china flying. I needed a place to mosaic, take photos of the finished product for my website, storage (though most of the china is now in the garage and all of the shipping boxes, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, furniture waiting to be finished etc is in the yellow barn). So for now, this will work. It it not the most beautiful office...not the most convenient studio. But, it is what it is. For now...it works just fine :-).

NOW, on to other things! I will be having a 300 post giveaway in three more posts! So stay tuned!!

p.s. if you want to see where more Bloggers Create visit Brenda at The Brenda Blog