Wish List: Wallpaper

I love the soft chintzy look of Catherine Hammerton's collages, and now she's produced a wallpaper collage! I would love to put a roll of this up in my craft room. I think it's adorable.

{via oh, hello friend. image pulled from Catherine Hammerton's website.}

Dreams Really Do Come True

I'm so excited to show you my new workspace set-up today! It's been such a long time in being completed, that it's almost hard to believe it's real every time I walk into our office/workroom and see my tidy little desk with all of my crafty materials waiting there in their proper places for me to sit down and have some fun.

But without futher ado, photos!

First, the beautiful little sewing table my mom found for me on an antiquing excursion, and bought while we were in Dallas over Christmas break. I gave it a new coat of creamy paint and re-installed the original hardware.

My sweet husband helped me put together this inexpensive IKEA shelving unit, and very kindly let me buy as many of those adorable Liberty of London for Target storage bins as I could fit out the door. I really like the natural knotty pine with the fun florals. The oilcloth bag hanging on the end is a Cath Kidston bag I picked up in London.

Two Liberty boxes storing papers sit beside a cream-colored vintage locker basket I found years ago at an antiques store.

 

My IKEA chair is surprisingly comfortable. The trestle legs on my desk allow for adjustment of the height of the destop, which is the absolute perfect one for me, as the space between the top glass surface and the bottom allow me to store four trays inside: one for jewelry, one for papers, one for tapes and stamping supplies, and one for my headband materials. I just take out the tray for whatever it is I need to work on, then put it back when I'm finished, and I still have a perfectly clean and tidy desktop!

  

Above my desk are the rail storage system and wall shelves I'd bought previously from IKEA. The rail and shelf brackets had been black, however, until just two weeks ago when I painted them a soft aqua to match things a little more nicely. The hanging magazine rack on the far right holds bubble wrap and packaging materials.

The adorable faux bois and doily patterned metal trays came from SweetJessie on Etsy, and I plan to make or order some cute magnets to hang inspiration photos on them. I intended to use the Liberty melamine tray for serving when I bought it, but couldn't resist hanging it up over my desk after seeing how perfect the size and colors were.

I strung up a length of aqua cotton twine for a temporary (or permanent?) place to hang up some of the pretty paper goods and tags I've collected recently.

Lots of bright natural light comes in from the three windows in this room, making it a great place to work on crafty goodness.

So, that about does it. What do you think?

 I, for one, love this little space in our room. And even better, on the adjacent wall, we've squeezed in a desk for my husband, so that when school starts again this fall, we can work together in the same room! (His side of the room's a little less .... floral.)

This Is What They Call A Teaser

Why, you may ask, am I posting photos today of Ez's lovely workspace (featured this month in Elle Decoration magazine)? Well, the answer is that it's about time. After long months of sitting, waiting, wishing, and hoping, and roughly 14 hours of toil, paint, organization and IKEA allen wrenches, my workspace is finally complete. It is all that I hoped it would be, and I am so happy each time I get to sit down at my tidy new desk and begin a new crafty endeavor. And you, my friends, shall see the results of this grueling process bright and early on Monday morning!

Also coming next week, photos of our trip!

Favorite Things Friday

I've been kind of sad for the past couple of days over some potentially worrisome and depressing news, and have been trying to cheer myself up with pretty things. In case you need cheering up too, I thought I'd share them with you.

spring line: emma cassi

lace lightshade: nice

lace bowls: dottie angel

studio: dottie angel's flickr

button necklace: simple tess' flickr

danni's studio: oh, hello friend

tamar's flickr favorites: nest, pretty things

Happy Friday, and happy weekend, friends. What I want for my weekend: the sun to come out, my mood to lighten, to get some new items photographed and listed in my jewelry and destash shops, and to spend some time with my sweet husband in between his lengthy sessions of militant research.

Etsy Treasure Tuesday: Polly Danger Notions

Today's Etsy feature post requires a bit of background, I think. I've mentioned here, here, and here before that it is my goal for this month to overhaul the back bedroom in our house, which currently contains my old bedroom suit, and make it into a beautiful little office space that Nathan and I can share. Finally, he'll have a place to do his schoolwork and work on research other than the dining room table, and I'll have a dedicated, organized space in which to sew and put all of the wonderful jewelry workspace furniture I got at Ikea in December!

My lovely mother very graciously came over on Saturday to get me motivated, and the two of us working together for three hours successfully completed Step One of the project: to empty and get ready to move out all of the old furniture, which had been holding more than 25 years of accumulated "keepsake" ridiculousness. The bed is taken apart, all of the linens have been packed up for storage at my parents' house, and I even reorganized the closet! Even better, we took the hardware off of a beautiful antique sewing table that mom picked up for me on a recent antiquing excursion (so that I can repaint it a crisp, clean white), and we discovered, to my very great happiness, that my own sewing maching will fit perfectly into the space where the original old school black Singer had been! This means that not only will my sewing machine not have to share space any longer on my jewelry desk, but it can be folded up inside my pretty little sewing table when not in use!

All this preparation for finally being able to sit down at my sewing machine quickly and easily whenever I like has fueled my current obsession with thinking of various items I want to make, and prompted today's Etsy feature, a charming shop called Polly Danger Notions. Polly offers gorgeous handmade bias tapes, fabric covered buttons in several sizes, fun little sewing tutorials, and more. If you're as excited about beginning some fun sewing projects as I am, hop over and take a look through the shop. Here's a pretty preview:

Before much longer I'll be able to present some real progress to you here on my lovely new workroom! Much unpleasantness has to be got through first, like repainting just about everything, some new task lighting in the room, and approximately 47.3 hours of assembling my new Ikea desk and shelving unit. It'll all be worth it in the end!

Favorite Things Friday: Beautiful Workspace

I love this workspace, posted on Tea for Joy several weeks ago, so much. Remember this post? Well, that's what I'm asking for this Christmas. And I believe that my dreams could become reality: I've found this, and this, and this, and these, and these and this too, here. If I can actually pull this off, I will be a very happy girl. And, I'll post photos and show all of you the clean, white, organized loveliness -- in a couple of months, that is, after I've had the time to perfect it and make it just as I want it to be. Any other ideas, friends?