Around Here Lately

It seems I start every summer out with a little "project". Little. Right. Why I feel the need to reinvent the wheel every year is beyond me! I finally get time to breath but really can't because my creative space was literally suffocating. I totally forgot to take before photos. And should have. Because unless you've been down here you really can't grasp the magnitude of this adventure.

So this summer I'm hosting all my summer workshops down here. As much as I liked hosting the classes in my personal space, I quickly found it didn't work well for transitioning and making art for me. Plus it became a huge dumping ground after Kirkwood. I really can not create until the space is a happy space anyways. Someone recently couldn't believe that as a creative person I crave order. Like being creative automatically means you are messy? I have actually found that most artsy people I know have the same sense of urgency to clean and purge before they are able to really be creative. We may like our stuff, but my stuff is in order!

This was a ladder view of the "tool room". It's a room the entire length of the house but narrow. Prior to this clean out it had on one end my show displays and a bunch of junk(seriously). All the walls but one are sheet rocked already. Here's what I did:
1. painted the 2 ft concrete wall...put some "Great Stuff" in the cracks and still need to trim out(they were outta the wood I wanted for trim)
2. trimmed out the doorway and windows. painted that. hung a piece of vintage trim over window. hung cute curtains.
3. painted all the walls except the one without sheetrock. I need to hire someone to hang it on that wall because I just can't stand the unfinishedness of it. plus I want to hang a white board for teaching.
4. strung twinkle lights
5. vacuumed spiders gallor
6.  hung rainbow tissue paper flowers up
7. cleaned out and took to the dump an entire van full of crap

 This is just half the room. Sorry all the photos are kind of blurry. I think my eyes are going because I thought they were clear until uploaded here! HA

Once this part was in order and ready for my kiddos, I turned to and put my original desk and chair back into the studio in the middle of the basement. I've already been painting too! It feels amazing to have the space back in order. And I can't wait to teach in the other space next week. It gave me plenty of time for the swimming pool with the kids with giant Project #1 checked off the list!

Yeah for order. And clean studios painted sunshine yellow. Actually the color is Pale Honey at Home Depot. It is my favorite yellow ever. And since I bought like 6 gallons of it to paint something somewhere in this house I just keep painting with it. And it's still not gone. One day I want to paint the outside of the house this color. It'd be so pretty yellow!

See ya later in the week with what I've been painting.  Happy Tuesday!