My Work Space III

It's time for the third installment in the post series on my new craft room. Today, I'm going to show you the two places where I spend most of my work time.

If you stand near the window in my craft room and look back toward the door heading out to the hallway, you will see two desks. Right now there's a lot of open wall space in this part of the room. I plan on putting up at least one bulletin board for posting ideas, reference pictures, and things like that. I also plan on putting up some art and decorations--like the really awesome panda bamboo wall scroll that my Mom got me for my birthday last week. =)

Let's start with the smaller one on the left. This is my sewing table. It is a place where I can leave my sewing machine out (permanently). On the left part of the desk, I have my thread rack. I would like to eventually have this actually hanging on the wall instead of just propped up next to it. Then, of course, is my sewing machine. Maybe one of these days I'll get a really nice machine that can do embroidery or something cool like that, but in the mean time, I'll take my el-cheapo machine from Walmart. It's lasted about 4 years now, so I can't complain too much. Just for reference, this is my third sewing machine since I started sewing--well saying all 3 were "mine" is stretching it a little. Technically the first machine belonged to my Mom. I broke that one making my oldest son's Artemis (Sailor Moon) costume. It didn't really like the faux fur. XD Anyways... next to the sewing machine is my Sailor Venus plushie that my best friend brought me back from the Japan area in San Fransisco. Sailor Venus is one of my favorite scouts--surprisingly it's because I have a thing for orange (not that you could tell or anything, but really orange doesn't sound like it'd go so well with Gothic Panda, so that's why there's purple all over everything, which is fine because I like purple too--yay for run-on ramblings). The drawers on the right end of the desk hold sewing supplies like cloth measuring tapes, extra needles for the sewing machine, various presser feet, scissors, and extra bobbins. Right now, I have references for the Soul Eater costume set taped up on the wall since I don't have the bulletin board to put up there yet.

The desk to the right of the door is my art space. Starting on the left, the drawer unit holds some paint, all my markers and colored pencils, as well as basic supplies like pencils, inking pens and erasers. My old flatbed scanner currently sits on top of those drawers. Moving on is a lamp that I don't think is even plugged in yet. Theoretically it's there for extra light in case I want to be up late at night drawing. It's entirely likely that I will put it to use at some point since most of my free time for art does come late at night--right now my schedule is a little wonky because of having a one-month old, but that will change (that's the thing with kids... they grow... fast). The area on the table in front of the lamp is supposed to be clear so that I have a clean flat surface to draw on since I still do all of my art with a pencil, at least initially. I still haven't gotten the hang of drawing on the computer from scratch. Maybe one of these days... In the mean time... I have a space to draw. In any case, I am planning to actually branch out and do a little bit more traditional art--mostly marker and colored pencil, but I'd like to play with some of my watercolors some more. =) Next to the lamp are the two chocobos my husband got me for my birthday last year. <3 Then, there's my laptop, which I currently have a love-hate relationship with. It's almost brand new, and it was supposed to replace my old laptop since the old one was having processor issues and was prone to crash, and even when it worked it would take a while to do anything (imagine having to wait 10+ minutes for an art file to simply open). The problem is that it has Windows 7 operating system, which is not compatible with most of the software I use. Fail. >_< We have a temporary fix for Photoshop that sort of works--my husband rigged the program to pretend I had Windows XP when I open that program. The tablet behaves with it now, and it doesn't crash quite as often as it was before. Still... it's annoying. I guess half the real problem is that I never update with the times. I'm content to stick with what I've been using, especially if it works; my version of Photoshop is about 8 years old, and it's done what I've wanted to up until now. Anyways... moving on. In front of my laptop is my Wacom tablet--probably the most awesome piece of technology I've invested in... well maybe 2nd most awesome. The most awesome would be the Wacom tablet I had before this one, but the wires in the cable for that one became frayed, which posed a problem since I work at a laptop and I tend to move it around the house based on where munchkins are--I could get the tablet to work, but it took a lot of delicate playing with the wire to do so. I ended up giving it to a friend who uses a desktop; she was able to finagle the cord to a position where it worked, and then she taped it down to her desk. =P (She does awesome stuff btw; you should check out her DeviantArt.) You know, I should probably not be writing right now; I'm sleepy, which means my writing is going to be incoherent and rambling. Ah well, at least this post will come out on the day it's supposed to this way, even if it would be a little more concise if I'd waited until tomorrow morning. =P Anyways, finally, on the right end of the desk, next to my laptop, is my new printer. Originally my flatbed scanner lived there. In theory, this particular printer can scan as well, although I haven't tried it yet. This was a purchase I'd been wanting to make for a little while now; being that I live in the middle of nowhere, it's about a 30 minute drive to get to the nearest office supply store where I can get my art printed at. That's a lot of time, gas, and wear and tear on my car every time I need to print something. Now I can print from home. This also I haven't actually made much use of beyond testing yet. XD I blame life circumstances that have prevented me from doing much of anything art related over the last month or so. =P I'd kind of like to put another bulletin board up above this desk as well to pin ideas and sketches for new art so I don't lose them. Also, underneath the printer are some drawers. Here I store paper, old sketchbooks, and other odd art-related, mostly paper-sized things.

Like the storage units I wrote about last week both of these desks came from Ikea. I think it was awesome how they were just the right sizes to fit one on each side of the door. So far, they've made great work spaces. These two spaces were two things I really wanted for this craft room since sewing and drawing are the two things I spend the most time doing. This way I have places where I can leave my sewing machine and computer, tablet and scanner/printer set up and still have space to work on other odd projects. I still have my big work table in the middle of the room, which I can use to cut out fabric for costumes (since I don't have to keep the sewing machine and stuff spread out there) or scrapbook or lay out quilts or whatever I want. I think the only thing that would make all this  more awesome (I am really excited to have this space) would be if I had more geeky crafty girl friends who lived near enough to me so we could have craft parties and share this space with--it's always more fun working with other people. I did have a mini-craft-party during our last D&D game. Three of us came upstairs with a laptop, which we connected via Skype (or some other similar program) to another laptop downstairs at the kitchen table where the rest of the group was playing, so we still participated in the game while working on cosplays and plushies. XD