Pink and Red Explosion Antidote

It's raining here in Northern California, so I am drawn to anything brightly colored to offset the pull of "mopitude". I was skimming blogs this past week and came across a nifty idea for organizing fabric pieces. You take a group of cards, punch holes in the top right hand corner, and string them on an o-ring. Then you take your fabric (or ribbons like I am doing) and cut pieces from them and glue, staple, or tape them on the cards.
If you are super-organized and inspired you can write on the card where you purchased the ribbon or fabric and how much per square foot. I am organizing mine by the rainbow of colors I've collected. Once finished I'll hang them on the wall and have a ready reference for ribbons I want add to my oriels. In the meantime, just taking a picture of my pink/red swatch in front of this wonderful shrine ("de noche amada amana tu corazon al mio"), which I bought in Sayulita, Mexico last year, got my pulses moving and I said goodbye to the Kingdom of Mopitude.

Exercise, Coffee...and Chocolate!

AFTER...

BEFORE...

Well, I shook off my stupor and burned through another 2 areas of my studio: my soldering station and the "embellishing" station (charms, crystals, beads way station and general catch all for supplies that I pull out -- see "before" photo!). How did I manage to reverse the lethargy?

1. Did 20 minutes of stretching exercises (Egoscue-yoga-sports stretches pioneered by my friend Jen Fuller, see link)
2. Chocolate.
3. A Walk/Run (even impressed myself with this) around Deer Island
4. More chocolate.
5. A Peet's coffee.
6. And still more chocolate!

Whatever works -- it was good mix and once I started with one area the other just fell into place. I still have to put in another 3 or 4 hours before it's ready for Linadria's visit.

Better get off the internet. Ciao!

Making Headway!

Cleaned Up "Assembly Station"!!! (See pic in previous post for "Before")

Whoopee! I am making headway, although it still feels like I'm shuffling a lot of items around in my studio. I would like to throw out way more -- but I just can't make that happen right now. Maybe that's OK.

Here's what I did after 4 hours of studio time:

1. There was a sea of ribbons on the floor. Color grouped ribbons and placed them in quart baggies and placed in top 2 drawers of plastic container (moved the tissue paper collection to the closet Elfa bins since I don't use them that often). I don't like that the ribbons are hidden, but I know where they are. I also kept out a woven basket filled with ribbons that I use all the time in my oriel collages.
2. Cleaned off the surface of my assembly and display table. I really need more surface space, but I'll have to work that out later*.
3. Pulled out all of the glass shapes to reorganize and place on the entry table. These really should be somewhere on the assembly table, but I'll work that out later*.
4. Restacked the themed collage images bins, and made a big woven basket the resting place for miscellaneous images that haven't found there home yet.
   
5. Vacuumed the floor that was cleared today.
6. Made labels with my label maker for the various drawers in the studio.

Next to Do:

1. Clear off and clean and rearrange the soldering and metal assembly station.
2. Clear off and clean the remaining table that seems to be a landing place for everything.
3. Reorganize the "outhouse" (my mother's term for a wooden TV/multimedia station that has retired to the art studio; this of course was made my a master craftsman, which didn't impress my mother -- she said all it needed was a crescent moon cut in the door).
4. Go through closet and pick out books that I want to get rid of/donate/etc.

Well, that's it so far. My mane doesn't feel much like it's blowing in the wind. That's OK too -- there's always tomorrow!