A little snap of my studio

I have taken this photo in my studio. It's not really a studio: more like a tiny little room that is full of stuff, all really important stuff of course lol. While doing the Supplies Me course with Jane Davenport she suggested getting your art supplies out of the cupboard and putting them on display. I found these acrylic glasses to hold my pencils. I put quilt batting on the bottom topped with a little craft foam so when the pencils go in they don't hit the hard bottom and break the leads. When I was doing food shopping the other day I saw the bright coloured acrylic milkshake glasses  for only $2 and just had to buy some. As they are so narrow at the base they are a great holder for my paint brushes that are also narrow at the end. Since I did this with my pencils a couple of months ago I use them all the time for sketching, shading and experimenting. Great idea Jane!

I am currently doing the Lifebook course at Willowing where we are making one or two loose journal pages a month for a year. Tam, the organiser, suggested we decorate a box to hold all the pages until the end of the year when we will bind them into a book.

I decided to use some of the foam core I had sitting around to make a box. I cut out the base, then cut the sides and lid to fit.  I glued and taped the box together with fabric tape. I used fabric tape instead of masking tape so it would take paint better. I glued a little frame on the top with the two rectangles, all cut out of the foam core. I then glued on tissue paper to make the whole thing a little sturdier.

 
Next I painted the box with Lumiere pearlescent blue paint. It was a little brighter than I wanted so I sprayed it Moonshadow's Starburst sprays, blue, green and red. On the sides of the box I let the sprays drip down.  I liked the way it came out.

 

 I thought the sprayed blue background looked like water so I got out some photos of waterlilies that I took a couple of months ago and used them to sketch on the lid. I used metallic paints for the flowers with some alcohol markers on top for shading. The leaves were lightly painted with flat acrylics and then detail was added with coloured pencils.

 

 

 I was going to decorate the sides of the box too but after I had finished the lid I decided to keep the sides plain. I put the box on display in my living room so it gives me more space in my little studio.