Happy Thursday to everyone. I’m especially excited today because my brother is visiting from the States! It’s nice when folks travel to Europe for work because it’s just a short hop to visit us here in Tuscany. I’ve been rushing around wrapping up work assignments and the plan was to finish a few things ahead of time, but that didn’t go as planned. I wanted to post about my creative space though, even though it’s messy enough that I can’t really focus to take a picture of anything properly. My efforts in Spring cleaning are still going, albeit without direction or planning. I’m starting to think it’s not an organizational issue – no matter how much color sorting I do, ultimately I’m just lacking the space to put things. I have boxes under our bed now, but they are huge dust trappers and I hate dust! 
Usually organizational professionals say the problem is organizing, not that you don’t have space or the right containers…but I seriously just don’t have a place to put all my stuff. Wahhh!!!
Sorry for the little rant…whew! As I calm down and really reflect, I must admit part of the problem might be my pack-rattish nature. I like to keep things for possible future use and I swear they do get used…one day. For example, the jar you see above is a big glass Nutella jar. We go through at least 2-3 jars a month, so I’ve got a collection of them to hold pens, markers, pencils…and my corks. I started carving more little cork stamps because I like the texture and inconsistency of the image. Also, I happen to have a lot of corks handy! I guess you can say I’m really into reuse, especially all these Italian home items we go through…Nutella…wine. I shouldn’t complain, right? Another thing I’ve been collecting are toilet paper rolls. There have been so many crafts done with them, I figure they’ll be put to good use, one day…
On the digital front of my creative projects, I am working on a new blog justgraphic.com where I will post all my surface pattern designs. I wanted to keep them all in one place and be able to post more often with random musings, so that’s the reason for the separate blog. Not to mention I already had the domain name. Please let me know what you think and add it to your RSS readers. I just put in the first post, but will be adding a lot of patterns, waiting to be digitized.
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8 Comments
Linda!
I love your cork stamps. I have hundreds of corks, I’ve tried carving them but they didn’t work for me. Just looking at yours I can see what I did wrong, and I’ll try again. Thanks for the inspiration!
Thanks! I have to show how I incorporated the stamping in my work definitely… hehe… it’s hard to do anything detailed for sure, because it’s such a small stamp area. Those champagne corks are the best, as they are bigger! Thanks for stopping by!
Can’t wait to check out your designs on your other blog.
ahhhh – to live in Tuscany…lucky girl!
Ahh, thanks so much!
Ah, I’ve never seen cork stamps in action, but it sounds like a great idea. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter how many organizational tools you have, you just got too much stuff. I run into that time and again. But if you didn’t have the stuff, you couldn’t make stuff, right?
I’ll have to show the how the cork stamps look, definitely will post! Yeah, I totally feel like I just have too much stuff for the space…eek! However, you are right that the chaos sort of brews cool ideas too!
I’ve spent a lot of time lately just shaking my head at the mess in my studio. No matter how much “cleaning” I do it’s still messy – because I have too much stuff! I’m feeling more and more of a need lately for minimalism, especially in my studio, but I don’t want to have to go to the basement for supplies every time I need them. So I’m trying to work that one out.
I don’t know how I missed your previous post on the cork stamps, but I’m so excited about this! I’ve been saving corks and thinking there must be a way to make stamps from them, but haven’t tried it yet. Good to know it works!
I know the feeling! I also don’t like to hide away supplies, because it makes me less likely to use them… I’m definitely working on it. I find it more manageable to focus on one area at a time…so it’s not overwhelming. Yes, cork stamps work…you just have to go with the texture and it can’t be too big!