STUDIO SPACE - OR LACK OF IT!

One of my major bugbears is lack of studio space - we live in a tiny flat, and the "studio" is one end of the living room - one alcove beside the fireplace is the computer station. As I know everyone is always fascinated by everyone else's space organisation, I thought I'd post what I've been up to this last week.

The desk is situated by a window, opposite the door coming into the living room, and has two metal drawers (Ikea) underneath and another one on the window side. I took everything off the walls, and repositioned the CD shelves (Argos).

Here's another view. Wow, it looks so nice and spacious when empty! Wish it was like this all the time... The lower pair of shelves are separated by an inch or so, so I could get my storage tubs inside and still have room for my hand to get in to pull them out.

Here's most of my stuff piled back on.








I have way too many art supplies, which are on the floor beside the sofa, behind the chair (you can see the arm - dark brown) and the door - now you see how little space I have! All the rest is under the sofa. I also have boxes under the TV unit!

Rather than have a complete gap, I stuck in some little glass "ice cubes" from a floristry shop (using No More Nails) which give the effect of little glass bricks - and some support, in case I overload the shelf above (which is the top of the upside-down CD shelf). This holds a lot of UM rubber stamps, all stored in CD cases.
At the other end of the room (think "shoe box shape") is a fireplace with an alcove on either side - the left one has built-in shelves for books (thanks to my husband who got a load of MDF offcuts, which I painted) and on the right is my computer gear.

It's usually tidier than this, but all the stuff got piled in here trying to sort out the other end of the room. C'est la vie.

The shelves are more MDF offcuts. Yes, there are 2 printers, one on top of the other (one is an all-in-one with cheap inkjet printing ink so that I can do transfers, and the other is Epson's pigment ink for archival quality stuff). Behind the computer chair, and next to the sofa arm (dark brown, with terracotta cushion just showing) is a little shelf, holding my scanner and file folders). This area is pretty organised, just doesn't look tidy.

So when I get round to it, I will sort it and post up another photo just to show you don't need scads of space (although it helps!). I DREAM of winning the lottery, then getting a sprawling house with tons of bedrooms, outbuildings, a conservatory...