My FREE studio makeover!

I have spent a very busy weekend re-vamping my art-room, all for free! How, you may ask? Its bit of a long story, but here goes:

We moved into our new house just over a year ago, and I managed to convince my husband to let me have the "shop" area of the house for my art-room (a dirty, dusty workbench with some wall shelving in one corner of the utility room), and he could use the "garage" (a room with a garage door to the front yard, but too narrow to actually park a car in it). I was excited to have my space, and to have a nice long workbench- I envisioned myself working on multiple projects at once and finally being a productive artist. We have a small budget for house renovations and updates, but since the house is very outdated throughout, i had to make do with my space as it was, despite the gouged out work surface meaning i cant use it to draw, and despite the decrepit indoor/outdoor carpet full of muck and dust on the floor. What little budget we had was used to make the "garage" into a workable shop so my husband could start on the big renovations upstairs.

As time progressed in my little art-room, I realised it WASN'T an inspiring space, and it wasn't a place i really wanted to be, or worse, create. I brainstormed as to why this might be, and figured that it must be my lack of organisation, that all my stuff was everywhere, and ungrouped and basically hard to find. In a little "AHA!" moment I started collecting all the empty baby food jars (my youngest was learning to eat at this point), and I used them to group all my "stuff" together. Each type of pencil, each type of tool, even each type of embellishment got its own jar. The end result was a neat, organised room, where every little object was easily seen. This should have been the end of my problem...right?

Wrong! Unfortunately the carpet was still mucky, the room was still dusty, and because of my allergies, every time I went to create, I found myself itching and sneezing. I talked to my husband about replacing the carpet (preferable with something that could be wiped to remove messes) but it just wasn't possible at this time. Darn!

Fast forward to last Saturday morning; I was flipping through a copy of Cloth Paper Scissors:Studio's, daydreaming and wishing we had the means to have a nice studio like the ones in the magazine, when i noticed that what was catching my eye about most of the studios was not all the fancy furniture, and specially functioning storage solutions, but the colour that people had in their rooms. Staring at a purple studio, i suddenly thought "Wouldn't it be nice to have a colourful art studio instead of a dirty, used to be primer-white studio?" Sure, i didn't want a purple room, not really my thing, but it got my brain ticking...When we bought our house we also inherited a large number of old paint cans, which i gathered up and stored under our stairs, but amongst those cans was a half can of a gorgeous red (currently on our bedroom wall-nice colour not great for sleeping)...What if I used that paint to make a feature wall of colour, brightening my room up might make it a friendlier space!

So a wall went red, and while i was under the stairs digging around i found some other nice colours that i knew we weren't going to be needing elsewhere in the house, so I ripped up the carpet, and painted my floor a lovely chocolate colour! So 1 wall red, chocolate floor, and dirty everywhere else...the freshly painted wall and floor inspired me to go all out (or maybe it was the paint fumes), so i ended up painting every other surface in my room(except the roof) using left over coffee colours and a light beige and a glossy off-white for my shelves and desk!

I am so excited! The room looks 10 times bigger, is thoroughly clean and bright and is very ME! Spending most of my waking hours in there over the weekend has also given me an attachment to the room and I am actually excited about being in there, and working!

I think the best thing is all the changes in my room have been FREE! Free storage that works just as well as any of those expensive art-specific storage solutions. Free decor that stirs up my creativity and excitement. Just waiting for the last coat of paint on the floor to dry, and ill move all my stuff back in there and get to work! YAY!