A visit to my friend's studio

Late last week I drove to a town about 50 miles from where I live and visited my friend Kathy, who you have seen on my blog. She's the one who likes to shop at the craft stores! You can tell she's a crafter when you walk into her home and her studio. I'm always blown away by her creative storage solutions, as well as all the art she has on her walls.


She also has louvered doors around two walls of the room. The storage inside those areas is vast. Much of her fabric, lace, and ribbons are kept in those cabinets, along with supplies and many tools.


And then there is the storage you can see. Of course, you might just be overwhelmed by the dress form she got as an early birthday gift.


Or you might be taken in by the book cover she is making (hanging on the side of her paper storage unit).


I was blown away by the ribbon holder she made. She admits she has to get on a step stool to return the ribbon to the holder. She found instructions for this on Pinterest, a place I have refused to visit because I've been told it's a real time killer.


Another project she saw on Pinterest was this faux chandelier. She makes things she has instructions for.


Much of the art she has on this wall, she has made or purchased.


Now her latest "thing" is bird cages. She can't get enough of them. I fear the ones in my back yard are not safe (grin).


A few fat quarters are mixed in with fancy fibers and yarn. I spied her gesso, which is the same as mine was before I got rid of that horrible bucket for more user friendly containers.


On this wall are gifts she has received from friends like Dana and me. And this is where she keeps her die cutting machine and her dies. Of course, she has dies housed in towers under her table and dies in the floral container, too.


Did I mention, she has also become obsessed with zebras after she saw the ones Dana collects? Well, this collection is less than a year old, and it is already starting to consume her craft room.


AHH! Another bird cage,


this time with a bird in it.


More black and white, this time on the knobs she now has


on her doors. I had now reached the end of my tour of the craft room. I somehow felt overwhelmed. After catching my breath for a few minutes, it was now time to play!


The first thing we did was make die cuts. Kathy wanted to set all the dies on the table and I had to slow her down because I didn't want to have to put everything away that we would really not use. However, in this shot, taken right before we broke for lunch, we have already cut and put many of the dies away. You can see some of my hand painted paper, as well as colored printer papers and card stock. All the paper on the table came from my house. Now why do I have so much paper when I don't scrap or make cards?


You can see there are still plenty of dies, plates, embossing plates, and those stackable metal dies I can't remember what they are called on the table. I just know they cut, emboss, and are very expensive!

After a lengthy lunch, we went back to cutting and embossing. It was fun, but I would only want to do it perhaps once a month or so. After we got all the dies returned to their proper places, we took out our Paintstiks and tried to use the embossing plates (the purple plates partly hidden in the photo above) like collographic plates. Of course, I brought my homemade collographic plates and used them on my fabric when I had trouble getting the Sizzex embossing plates to work with the Paintstiks. Since these have to be ironed, I'll show the finished Paintstik project next week.

By this time, it was nearly midnight and the lightening was lighting up the area I had to drive into. I later learned there was hard rain and golf ball sized hail with that lightening, too. I am just glad Bleubeard was safe, had been asleep, and was glad to see me when I got home. What better way to spend a day? Hope yours are all just as memorable.