Studio tour, continued

More studio pictures -- here's a view from the stairs at the doorway. The studio is three steps down from our dining room. The blond cabinet on the wall in the foreground holds some of my vintage packaging collection. The crockery holds yardsticks, art papers and anaglyptic wallpapers for book making. The chippy yellow chair is mostly for standing on to reach things (I'm short.) The area to the right, in front of my countertop island, is pretty messy. I need to work harder there!

Studio view from doorway

To the left of the stairs is a poster from an antique toy exhibit my husband and I saw in Paris almost 30 years ago. I brought the poster back in a tube that barely fit lying diagonally in my luggage.  The poster hung in my son's room until he moved out, and I have enjoyed it in my studio since.

Studio entrance from dining room

Shallow drawers hold rubber stamps by theme in acrylic photo frames. This tray holds face stamps. Another holds travel stamps, etc.

Shallow drawers hold rubber stamps by theme

The wonderful typography and colorful graphics on old commercial packaging is very inspiring to me. I've always admired vintage packaging and have collected examples for a long time. Among other things, these shelves hold a corset box (with a PINK corset inside!), and a men's underwear box (empty). Many of the other containers -- Sloan's Linament and Theatrical Blending Power, for example -- still have at least part of their original contents.

Vintage packaging 

More vintage packaging

Vintage inks, pens and stampers

Vintage cameras and a book I made from an animal crackers tin

Okay, you've seen the neater parts of my studio... Here's how messy the work area usually (always) looks! in this photo, it's full of ephemera items and pictures cut from magazines and junk mail for use in Remains of the Day journals and other book projects. I like to run a lot of items through my Xyron machine at once, to use the adhesive efficiently.

Work area with journal parts 

I couldn't get on a ladder high enough to show you the huge mess I made when painting patterns for Mary Ann Moss's Sewn class!  (It was -- and still is -- a FUN mess!)

Playing with patterns for Sewn class

Hope you've enjoyed the two-part studio tour. Soon we'll be back to our regular routine of sharing ephemera scans. Have a wonderful, creative day!