HEADSPACE + HEARTSPACE Page 20 of 21

At home: Welcome to my studio!

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“Pick one room and make it yours.

Go slowly through the house.

Be polite, introduce yourself,

so it can introduce itself to you.”

(borrowing the words quoted by the lovely Louise Gale as a comment in response to this blog post)

So that’s what I am going to do. Introduce myself, then introduce you, room by room, bit by bit. As we start to make friends with our new home. 

Here is a peek of the first one – my studio. Won’t you come in? 

fireplace

At one end it has this sweet fireplace, which will be great when winter sets in. I have just put up this picture for now while I work out what to do with the space above the mantelpiece. Any ideas?

painting table

Here’s my painting/making stuff table. There is an easel in the corner but I like making a horizontal mess! The glass table is actually more practical than it looks – it provides a brilliantly smooth surface for painting and is easy to cover, but also makes the most of the space in the room when it is uncovered. 

The wooden floorboards were reclaimed from an old school gymnasium. They are full of marks and stories – you can almost see generations of children jumping over benches and off climbing bars (and maybe even sneaking a first kiss behind the pommel horse). 


studio window chair

There are three big windows like this so they let in lots of light

drawers

Handy storage for my art supplies, and just enough space to squeeze blank canvasses underneath

books

No such thing as too many art books…

These old picnic hampers make great storage for my sewing stuff – fabric, ribbons, thread for the things I am slowly learning to make!

picnic hampers

And above them is the lovely painting from Judit at Pilgrim of the Moon (I talked about it in this post)

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One of my inspiration boards. This one includes prints by Juliette Crane and DJ Pettitt, and my Soul Collage cards that I made in California back in February.

lovely paper

I think the paper obsession, stationery obsession and book obsession may be linked…

craft supplies

Finally I have somewhere to put all my bits and bobs – paper ribbon, buttons, lovely shiny things

bonsai

My little bonsai friend (in need of a haircut)

Reading corner

My reading corner, and all important stereo –  a girl’s gotta have tunes to paint to!

So there it is, my new studio.

Would love to have you all come over to create and make mess. What’s your creative space like? What’s on your inspiration board?

Exploring

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When you move somewhere new, you start each journey from a different place.  We only moved 10 minutes from where we lived before, but I have started to see things I never noticed before.  Like this gorgeous stretch of river.

river
What have you discovered near your home recently?

***

This month I am joining in Susannah Conway’s August Break, sharing daily photos of my life this August. Why not check out who else is joining in, or have a go yourself?

Time out

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Spent the day on the water today. 

Taking a break from it all,

getting caught up in the excitement of a yacht race,

seeing the beauty of the land from the water,

hearing the call of the gulls

and clearing out the cobwebs

as the sea breeze rushed through my hair. 

sea cinema

I spent my childhood on the coast

and it feels good to reconnect with the salty air and open skies.

***

Pottering about

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Thinking about our new garden today, and realising how little I know about how to care for it. My gardening history to date has revolved around pots of basil and the odd tomato plant on many an apartment windowsill. Our house was empty for a few months before we moved in as the previous owners had emigrated to Australia. As a result the garden has gone a bit wild.  It has lots of tropical plants in it and I kind of like it that way, all a bit crazy, but it seems a shame not to be able to even see the sunken table, never mind eat dinner at it! Time to get green fingers…

feet and pot
Photo from recent island travels in Greece – photos of our new garden coming soon!

Unpacking

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vase colour cross15%

How come the things which make us happiest often stress us most along the way?  

I am exhausted from the move,

from all the unpacking,

from the decorating, 

from trying to make it all perfect

from day one.   

But today,

we just stopped,

dropped the boxes,

and shut the door. 

We left the paintings unhung,

the books unshelved,

the shoes un-put-away. 

And flopped.  

Given the small inconvenience of not having a sofa until September,

that actually meant we flopped onto the floor.  

Still, the icecream tasted just as good sat leaning against the wall.

And as we sat laughing,

surveying our new home,

the aches started to fade, the excitement returned

and we remembered what it was all about.

I think we’re going to like it here

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This month I am going to aim for more photos, less words, so keep a look out for a peek into my August (including some shots of our new house, once we have unpacked a little more!)

We got our dreamy little new home!

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homesign
Sign on the wall in our ‘old’ kitchen

We’re in! 

All the wishing worked! 

Our dream has come true…

Thank you to all of you who wished for us. 

This is such a special day.

We LOVE the house,

and are so excited about turning it into a home.

 

You are all welcome for tea and home baked cakes anytime.

Over the next few weeks

I look forward to sharing a window on our little place

as we unpack

settle in and snuggle up

Joining in some creative summer fun!

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Just wanted to share a couple of cool things I am joining in with this summer, in case you fancy having a go yourself.

The lovely Louise over at Dream, Inspire, Create has launched a ‘Creative Color Challenge’.  It’s a great idea, and gives you a bit of a steer for creating but also gives you a lot of freedom to play with juicy colours. I will be sharing what I make over the next month right here.

creative color
Image: from Louise Gale

And Susannah Conway has just launched the ‘August Break’, a photo blogging challenge for the summer – so I will try to share a photo (nearly) every day in August. 

Joining in some creative summer fun! august+break
Image: from Susannah Conway

And I am also trying to keep up with learning some new techniques from the very talented Claudine Hellmuth.  Her class ‘@ Home with Claudine Hellmuth’ is very cool.  I will share some of the things I make over there in the coming weeks too.

Joining in some creative summer fun! %40home
Image: from Claudine Hellmuth

What creative challenge are you setting yourself this summer?

seduced by Japanese ink painting

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Cherry blossom (Japanese ink on rice paper 12" x 6")Cherry blossom (Japanese ink on rice paper 12″ x 6″)

When I started learning Japanese 15 years ago I used to stay up until the early hours of the morning in the college library copying characters from an old dictionary, dipping my brush in juicy ink, sweeping it across the rice paper and marvelling at the words that spilt out. Such a beautiful script, each word a picture in itself. The therapeutic quiet rhythm of shaping the text belied the speed at which each piece was created.

Although sometimes it is good to work on a creation for days, weeks, months even, there is something fundamentally satisfying about finishing a piece in under a minute. I took out my old brushes again yesterday and tried this with sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) with a little help from Takumasa Ono.  As the ink flowed through the bristles the memories flooded back.

Heron (Japanese ink on rice paper 9"x9")
Heron (Japanese ink on rice paper 9″x9″)

Girl (Japanese ink on rice paper 12"x9")Girl (Japanese ink on rice paper 12″x9″)

A Homemade Life

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Just wanted to introduce you to this delicious foodie/love-of-things-homemade book ‘A Homemade Life’, as author Molly Wizenberg has just announced a new book tour of the US. As I am not planning to be in the US in April I sadly can’t go to any of them, so I thought I’d tell you about it instead, so maybe you could pop along and indulge for me! The dates are on her award-winning blog Orangette, along with lots of tasty recipes and ponderings about food and life.

A Homemade life by Molly Wizenberg

Following the death of her father, Molly took herself away to Paris, a city that ‘held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat’. There she discovered that her heart was in the kitchen, and she goes on to tell a tale of cooking, eating, reading and love (with recipes!).

It’s funny, reflective, inspiring, and you can almost taste the vanilla bean buttermilk cake. Yum.

Books of the week

ART: Manolo Blahnik Drawings by Anna Wintour  – a collection of sketches of some of the world’s most gorgeous shoes.
ADVENTURE: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – ‘one woman’s search for everything’.
STORY: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave – on the back cover it says ‘We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It’s a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it’. I won’t spoil it either; let’s just say that it is stunning and shocking, sad and uplifting in equal measure.