My Creative Space

Is under construction.....

Not quite as I'd planned....

This is the office. I'd carefully measured the Ikea desks and - working from the official floorplans of the room - planned the layout carefully. What I didn't count on was the skirting boards and minor inaccuracies in the floorplan making the room 2cm too small to fit the desks, no matter which way I arranged them.

There was much deconstruction and reconstruction (wound around a very long but ultimately fruitless call to the Optus helpline, trying to get the internet to talk to my computer...), a ditching of one major desktop and finally something that resembles a work space.

I'll be moving the office equipment and all the stock in as soon as I can. Hopefully we'll be ready to rock on Monday.

For more creative creative spaces, see the linky list over at Kirsty's.....

It's a family affair... or at least a family project.

It all began with a grubby old 2-seater couch, which the man of the house decided to cut down and use to construct a comfy reading chair.... He thought at first that perhaps if he turned the old covers inside-out that it might have some sort of "recycled" charm...

I thought "NOT".

The wee girl and I made a Thursday evening trip to the Ikea fabric department. It took so long for me to choose and cut fabrics that the poor out-past-bedtime child requested the trolley to sit in as she played the touch-screen computer games (Spotlight could learn a thing or two there, I think...). I just kept stacking up the fabric cushion she was sitting on.

Last weekend we did a trial run on the wee one's mini armchair (which was beyond embarrassing with its toddler grub and god-only-knows-what stains....and it was mauve - not really our girl at all!). I sewed, he stapled. Team-work.

It fits right in with her colourful corner of the studio.... and all the other Ikea furniture, tents and toy-boxes...

Lessons were learned on this project........particularly about taking care with directional prints.

And a start was made on the big chair.

While the man of the house watched the big football game on Saturday, the girl and I went to the studio and made the covers. Today we stapled (the man of house is usually chief staple-gunner but did something to his back which meant that I had to take over).

So it's a little bit wonky in parts... a bit puckered in others. I won't be asking any opinions from furniture-making friends. But it's cheerful.

And it does the job perfectly.

Now I want to paint the walls.

Wrapped... and rapt.

I'm SO HAPPY!

As the mother of a sewing studio kid, I've been LIVING for this stage of development...

It gave me the half-hour I needed to finish this large Wrap bag...

...with that o-ring variation I did on the Small Wrap. I used two XL o-rings on each side of the strap (and Ikea fabric).

So now I can show you the (Empress Woo by Robyn Pandolf) wrap I made on Saturday. ( I think I saw some of this beautiful fabric still at GJ's last week. I bought mine a while ago).

...with it's super-wide weight-distributing grown-on shoulder strap.

... And I HAVE to share a story - told to me by a grown-up only-child-of-a-seamstress. When she was a small child, the only child of a seamstress was kept busy with colour-sorting buttons ..and seed beads (!) while her mother worked.

Nothing to do with craft...

...and a lot to do with branding.

My NOT QUITE THREE YEAR OLD WROTE THIS!!! And it was no accident. She was playing on her (read: my ancient old Windows 98) computer, doing "important work", and asked "How do you spell IKEA?".

I said "I-K..." and she said, ""They're already there". I spelled "E"and "A" and she typed them in.

She was SOOOOO pleased with herself. Leah was creased in fits of laughter (she knows my IKEA habit). I didn't know whether to be proud (of my poppit's early literacy), sad (that she's so affected my rampant consumerism/the consumerist world) or inspired (by IKEA's effective branding).

So I just laughed, too.

...Oh, and took a photo.