Sunday, August 16, 2015

Finally working!

When I last posted, I had tried out my new studio using a temporary table.  It didn't work so well. Getting a chair up to the table was a challenge and I really needed some way to close it up and not have to worry about work in progress.  Well, I've got it!

After realizing that I needed to be able to close it without moving my work, I revised my plan and decided I would put a drop-down "table" in that fastened to the side wall instead of coming out through the door as I had originally planned. We had gone looking for a board and ended up buying one of those pre-fab shelves that you put on brackets, but our attempts to install it so that it could be moved out of the way weren't working.  We've had lots going on this summer, including getting our things out of storage, so it was hit or miss as we attempted to find time to work on it.

Mark finally came up with the idea of putting legs on the shelf to make a table that could be put up on end when I need to get to the end of the closet that isn't quite as accessible as the rest of it.  We went and got some legs and he put them on last night.  It's still a little wobbly, so we will have to fix that, but, with a temporary solution in place, it works!  And I love it! Yay!

I do still need to paint the legs.  And do some organizing!  That brown thing in the middle is the center support leg.  The table is just deep enough (12") for my marble tile that I work on and my clay conditioning, aka pasta, machine.  The built-in shelves are adjustable, so I have the second one from the bottom (first adjustable one) set at approximately the same height as my table.  That way, my clay and tools can all be within arm's reach!  It's fabulous!

And when I'm done for the day, it looks like this!  YES!!!


I subscribe to the Polymer Clay Workshop newsletter by Meg Newburg who does some wonderful cane work.  When the current issue came out with canes that look like paper quilling, I knew I had to try it.  I played with paper quilling many, many years ago.  It is an interesting technique and, in polymer clay, it is even more beautiful!  I put my pasta machine on the corner of Mark's desk which is right behind my chair at my computer and put my tile on my desk and went to work creating the blends to make some of these gorgeous items.  Now that I have my table set up, I've been busy this afternoon making canes and learning the right way to do it! I've barely gotten started, but here are couple of flowers in the works.  The purple/teal one is much better, but I like the magenta/purple one, too!

Watch for the finished pieces as well as more fun quilled items! Meg has suggestions for butterflies and mandalas in addition to the flowers.  These are so much fun, I'm wondering what else I might come up with!

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