The tour that never ends...

...and on your left you will find our food and drink station. Today we have some lovely hazelnut coffee and some delicious pumpkin chocolate chunk bread. Help yourself to some coffee or tea, and take a look around.

During our evening events we offer wine and dessert. In addition to the wine glasses on this shelf, we have placed various art pieces that we have each made, as well as some folk art and scrabble tile messages. Click the photo to take a closer look

As you make your way around our studio you will find a plethora of beautiful materials. We have worked hard to sort, categorize and organize the many items we use for our various projects. As much as we have boxed and labeled, it is hard to keep everything at hands reach and aesthetically pleasing. Many our our supplies are kept on this shelf.

We came up with a solution to hide all the mess. We call it the magic curtain. Now you see it... now you don't! We close the curtain when we have guests so the chaos isn't too distracting.

Our big supply table has been a challenge. Our solution has been a dozen or so of the media storage boxes you can find at Michael's Craft Stores. They are perfect for sorting and storing all sorts of items. We have one for rubber stamps, on for ink pads, one for chip board letters, one for costume jewelry pieces, one for children's game pieces, and the list goes on and on and on....

If you read this blog or this one or this one or have seen all the things we have in our studio, you would never guess that our space is really pretty small, only 15 x 20. No, really, it is. We use every inch of it!

One of the best parts of the studio is the wonderful, warm feeling you get when you walk in the door. We hope you feel it too. If you haven't stopped by, you really should sometime. We'd love to show you around!

Collections

Actually this relates to the studio tour...Kerry and I are collectors. We collect all sorts of supplies for collage and other art projects. (I won't even mention the fabric we have collected for our sewing endeavours. There are enough bolts for a separate blog!)

We collect yarn. Our most exciting time collecting yarn, was when the local Big Lots sold yarn for $1 a skein. No kidding! The same yarn was being sold at the next door Hobby Lobby for $6 a skein and more!

We also collect paper. Obviously paper is the prime ingredient in decoupage, which is a favorite of ours. We have found paper at lots of sources. Our favorite for unique and interesting papers, but perhaps the most expensive, is Two Hands Paperie in Boulder. But our best deals have been found at Oriental Trading Company. Who knew-- they carry paper!

We also have a fascination with letters. (Or maybe that's just me. No, I actually think Kerry has caught my fascination--no make that addiction or maybe obsession--

with letters. It wasn't hard to convince her, since we both studied English in college.) We collect all types of letters. Letter stickers (note the upper right hand corner of the paper photo), letter paper, letter tiles, chip board letters, and letter stamps.

Our most recent, exciting find came from the Target dollar section. You would never believe what you can find there. And being the thrifty gals that we are, we jumped on the opportunity! We found packages of cardboard letters--they came in colors, patterns and even sparkly green. They were just $1 per package! And if you have done any scrapbooking or letter-related projects, you know what a deal that was.

What collections do you have for your art projects? How do you keep them organized? Sometimes that's the biggest challenge of all!

note: I re-read this, so nice, I can make us sound like collectors, instead of the hoarders we probably really are. ;)