Second Saturday – Printers Cabinet Progress

Second Saturday State Of Your Studio

Printers Cabinet Progress Update

Beads of Clay Blog hosts Second Saturday State Of Your Studio.  Participating bloggers give a glimpse into our studios and current projects we have underway.  I missed the Second Saturday State Of Your Studio post for February, but I’m working on Spring cleaning in March!

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to de-cutter my studio and my life.  It’s a year-long project.  The Hamilton printers cabinet that I received for Christmas has been a big help.  I had many un-housed beads that were cluttering every surface of my studio. I’ve taken all my faceted and special shaped gemstones and pearls and placed them in  drawers in the printers cabinet.  The rest still reside in drawer units I bought at IKEA a number of years ago.

Now here is here is the organizational work I am most proud of.  There are about 7 drawers with very small compartments.  Before we bought the printers cabinet, I checked to see if tic-tac style boxes would fit in the compartments.  Perfect!  So I have purchased a couple hundred of these babies and filled them with my seed beads, fire polish and crystals.

This was a very time-consuming task.  Every time I thought I was all done, more seed beads would show their ugly little faces, buried in some remote place in my studio.  Then I’d have to buy more tic-tac boxes and continue organizing.  This was further complicated by the fact that I couldn’t find any tic-tac boxes locally and had to go to a town about 30 miles north of us.  Worse than that, three times,  when I got home and opened the packaging I found that all the boxes had cracks in them.  So I had to go north again and exchange them.  But its done now and I love it.

The colors in the drawers are arranged by the color wheel.  Here is a close up of some of the blues.  There are compartments for seed beads, fire polish and crystals here.

My bead room companion, Chochi, joined me while I was taking these pictures.

By getting my studio better organized and making many runs to Goodwill, I have been able to eliminate 4 of these white plastic drawer units, the purple rolling cart and a large  wooden bookcase!

Be sure to visit the other blogs in the Second Saturday State of Your Studio group.  Its fun to see what everyone is up to.

Printers Cabinet Update

On Wednesday I gave you a peek at my work table.  So now that I’ve still got you all in my studio, I’m going to keep you here one more day and today I’ll share some of my reorganizing efforts that have been a spin-off of receiving an antique Hamilton Printers Cabinet for Christmas.

Printers Cabinet

The printers cabinet gives me loads of space for organizing my beads.  Let me pull open a couple of drawers for you.  I put my art glass in the top drawer, with  all my lampwork glass from Beads and Botanicals on the left side of that first drawer.

Lampwork glass beads by Beads & Botanicals

Lampwork from other artists fills out the rest of that drawer.

The next drawer contains my ceramic bead collection.

In the back row, the two bird beads and the bead tied with raffia are from Nan Emmett of Spirited Earth.  The blue flower pendant and the green circle are from Nancy Schindler of Round Rabbit Extra.  The curved bracelet focals in the front right compartment are by  Shattera of Shattera Clay Studio.

Yesterday I hung a favorite watercolor, by Susan England, above my printers cabinet. Susan and her husband, Andrew, run a small, remotely located, vacation spot in Costa Rica, called Cabinas Los Cocos .  My husband and I have stayed there several times.  Susan is an artist and painted this scene from the mangroves behind their place.  This picture fills me with so many happy memories, that I knew it would fill my studio with joy.

BOC Second Saturday State of Your Studio

This post is part of the monthly Beads Of Clay Second Saturday State of Your Studio blog hop, where you can share the state of your studio (your creative space) with other clay bead makers and jewelry designers.

What?  It’s not the second Saturday???  That’s right, it’s almost the third Saturday of the month.  Ah well, better late than never!

The Ultimate Bead Organizer!

A Gift That Didn’t Fit Under The Tree

In What is Santa Bringing? I wrote that I was clearing a space for a BIG gift from Santa.  Well, here it is!  Santa, (aka my wonderful husband and my father) gave me an amazing antique printers cabinet!  This solid oak Hamilton printers cabinet  is approximately 100 years old. Its 18 drawers are divided into many small sections which were originally used to hold letterpress type.  The many sections are a beader’s dream come true!  I can organize so many beads here.  Oh my, I am in heaven!   Well, I’d better get to work!  My bead stash has been growing faster than my storage capacities and now everything will have its own little space!  *Jumping up & down with joy!*

Just look at all those wonderful sections for my beads!

I LOVE you, Santa!