NEW Art Studio Tour!

Warning: Today's post is going to have a LOT of photos and I hope I don't crash your computer, tablet, or phone!

My family has moved not once but twice in the past seven months. First, we moved cross-country from Northern Virginia to Central Oregon at the end of October. Then, we moved across town to our forever home, built by my husband (and next door to my own parents!) last month in May. Now, we are putting down roots and settling in for the long haul. It feels good to know we will be here for a good, long while.

There are many things I love about our new home, my husband and I worked very hard to figure out what we really wanted in our home and made sure it fit our lifestyle and needs. One of my very favorite rooms in our new home is the art studio. If you follow me on Instagram, you got a sneak peek of it a few days ago. I'm going to share our new space with you today because some of you have asked and because I always like seeing how other people organize their stuff!
In our Virginia house, we transformed our formal living room into the art studio, it was a wonderful space filled with natural light and beautiful hardwood floors but it was also a room that needed to stay nice for the future re-sale of our home, I couldn't just trash the floors. It was the first room you saw as you walked into our house which made me feel like it always needed to be picked up and tidy, and there was a big fireplace in the middle of one wall that made it hard to arrange furniture. You can see the old art studio in this post and it was featured here on Craftaholics Anonymous.
Our new space also gets a lot of natural light, especially in the afternoon and evening. We have a bathroom and walk-in closet off of the room which is wonderful for storage, sink access, and because we use the studio as our impromptu guest room with a big blow up bed for our occasional guests!

I picked up this wooden kitchen table and chair set at a neighbor's garage sale for $20! It's a nice sturdy surface to work on and I don't care if it gets messy, that's the point. I was going to paint it with chalk paint but I kind of like the natural warm wood in the studio so I'm leaving it alone (for now.) The old art table has been repurposed as a desk for the girls in our loft area.
The "barn wood" floor is actually linoleum, it is very kid and dog-friendly, splinter free, easy to clean, warm to stand on barefoot, and fantastic for mess-making! The linoleum floor is made by Mannington, the color is "Havana Tobacco." The wall pale blue color in the room is Sherwin Williams, Topsail (SW6217.)

This is the Raskog rolling kitchen cart from Ikea! We keep it stocked with crayons, colored pencils, colored masking tape, "fancy" scissors, markers, crayon rocks, washable glue, and scissors. I love the way we can roll it right up to the table or easel while the girls are working, then roll it out of the way again if we need more room to work. If you don't have room for a whole cabinet of kid art supplies or a room in your house as a studio, this cart makes a fantastic portable art center. It rolls up wonderfully to the kitchen table, dining room, playroom, back porch, you name it!

This is our self-serve, kid's art corner. I set up this corner of our new art studio for the girls and their friends, they can use any of the materials on these open shelves as they see fit. I don't have anything on here I don't want them to have access to. I have several "kid-friendly" self-serve art supplies and materials for them to use whenever they want as well as an Ikea easel that has a magnetic dry-erase board on one side and a chalkboard on the other.
Don't set out self-serve art materials or supplies that make you crazy. For me, this would be acrylic paint, oil pastels, chalk pastels, and glitter. I like to have a little more control when those materials are used so I don't leave them out for the girls to get by themselves. They need to ask me first and I'd like to be in the room or nearby when they use them.
I do have their shelves stocked with supplies that don't stress me out. I have no problem with self-serve access to: washi tape, construction paper, graph paper, tracing paper, contact paper, fun scissors, markers, craft foam, permanent markers, stencils, duct tape, perler beads (but they need mom for the Iron part!), crayons, colored pencils, watercolors, pom-poms, googly eyes, ribbon scraps, felt, yarn, and popsicle sticks.
NOTE: Please keep in mind that my girls are 11 and 7 years old and have been using these materials for years. I did not allow them to have access to all of those supplies (e.g. permanent markers) when they were toddlers! We've added to the supplies gradually over the years.

I started storing our Washi Tape on this paper roll dispenser from Ikea a few years ago. It's a convenient way for the girls and I to see what kind of tape we have available. It is the MALA paper dispenser and can be found in the kid's art supply area at Ikea.

I put up this rack to hang up smocks and aprons. I got it 8 years ago for C's nursery off of Amazon. Easy to access and easy to clean up.

The kitchen islands from Ikea are still being put to good use at this house. We bought them 9 years ago. This one holds my art supplies, paper, and printmaking supplies. It's the VARDE base cabinet from Ikea. It's twin lives in our garage as Geoff's workbench. The long power strip came from Harbor Freight - it's mounted to the wall and makes plug access easy for glue guns, electric pencil sharpeners, ipad docking station, the phone, etc. That is an x-acto brand pencil sharpener mounted on the wall, just like I used to have in my art classroom - works WAY better than the electric sharpener!

I have my "nice" watercolor brushes, sewing thread, copic markers, masking fluid and other random art supplies out of kid reach on my hubby-installed, ACE hardware shelves above the island.

I've had my eye on this cute wall cabinet for the past month at Target, I picked it up last week to store our craft paint and I love it. I think fat quarters of fabric would be super cute in it too! The paint cabinet from Target is sitting on top of an antique jelly cupboard from my parents. I'm planning to store scrapbooking supplies inside it. My sewing table (below) is a small oak kitchen table from Ikea that I bought in 1995 for my college dorm room, it was my computer desk all through college and has been my sewing table in the past 5 houses.

This is my drawing table I got as a high school senior. My parents knew I was planning to major in art and here I am still using it, 20 years later! My daughter "E" is working on a beautiful watercolor landscape on it right now.
The tall storage cabinet holds fabric, felt, and various art supplies as well as part of my vintage head vase collection. Ikea no longer makes this cabinet. The frosted boxes on the shelves are meant to store CDs. I got them at the Container Store, 8-10 years ago. Now I store art supplies in them, I like being able to see what is inside them but not completely so it cuts down on visual clutter in the art studio.

The tall basket came from Target last year and holds my tall stuff: yard sticks, fold up easel, rolls of craft paper, contact paper, etc. It sits next to an antique printers cabinet my parents gave me.

These flat files were in my childhood home, when my parents downsized and moved cross country, they brought them along to give me a place to store all of my printmaking and watercolor paper. I dedicated a drawer to each of the girls to store their own masterpieces!

The African baskets on top hold my yarn collection. I ordered them from My Bolga Baskets, a wonderful Fair Trade company run by a family in Florida.

This set of wall cabinets came from Ikea 12 years ago, I can't find them online or in their store anymore. They have moved around to 4 different houses with us and I love being able to hide my art supplies behind closed doors. Any sort of wall cabinets or a hutch could accomplish the same thing. I believe you can add doors to some of the Billy bookcases from Ikea for a similar effect.

Our three year old greyhound, Pippi, keeps me company in the studio. She is a professional napper and takes her retirement from racing very seriously. She's our studio mascot and one of my favorite co-workers!
I hope you enjoyed your tour of our new art studio space. Come over and join me for a cup of tea, coffee, or wine and we'll make some art together! Apparently, I need Ikea and Target to sponsor my art studio since most of the stuff in here came from those two stores over the years! We are planning to make all kinds of fun messes in here and I'm looking forward to spending time working on my own art again. I'm planning to start showing my paintings again here in Oregon this fall.
Happy Art Making!
Warmly, Pink and Green Mama, MaryLea
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