Conquering My Home Office

IMGP6945 — My desk! Complete with creepy Bradley dolls and pastel planters. 🙂

A big portion of my time is spent working from home for Gloomth. When I am not commuting to collect finished items or running errands I am usually inside my home office answering emails/calls or working on the other 20 projects going at any time. When I relocated back to downtown Toronto I went from a sprawling rented studio outside of the city to the smaller of the bedrooms in my 2 bedroom apartment. Our sewing/production facility remains outside of the city, so my home office is where I do web things, design new pieces, pack orders, craft things for shoots, and do my illustration work. 🙂

(If you want to see larger versions of any of these photos just click them. Sorry for their lack of quality.)

stickers on desktop — I am determined to keep using these terrible speakers from 1997 until they die. They are made less ugly with stickers. 😛

The last 3 years my home office has been a tangled, piled, rat’s nest. I’ve been honestly embarrassed by it as the rest of my apartment is fairly attractive and personalized (and tidy). I ignored my work room as there was just too much stuff and not enough space. It became easier to close the door than to consider what to do with everything.

IMGP6952 — My crafting/design desk (mess).

I got fed up and attacked! Dumped out every drawer, sorted every corner, and shredded an appalling amount of out-dated paperwork. I repainted my ugly laminate desk hutch (not the desk half as it needs replacing, thanks jerk movers for breaking it, btw) and mailing table a bright, saturated mint green! Plastered the walls near my computer and work table with street fashion snaps, vintage 1960s Valentines, and Halloween stickers (as I also work on the Tarot Deck there and other illustration projects, it’ll be helpful to have the inspiration). Hung up our Candy Prom Party backdrop to hide the fuse panel and put my creepy vintage Bradley dolls above my computer. And generally turned it into my ideal little work space! 😀

IMGP6973 — No home office is complete without adequate cat storage. Goblin has her own shelf, from which to paw at my head or roll around in her sleep.

IMGP6955 — Messy storage area. Including bins of scrap fabric (totally unorganized, those).

Inspiring, colorful, and a little unsettling. Perfect for the kind of art and design I like to do! And it feels wonderful to have claimed this space as *mine*, just mine. Transformed it into an organized, neat and creative space where I now feel inspired and excited to get making and working.