Yesterday I had one of my crazy work days – starting at 8am and still madly working at 11.30pm.

Of course, there were a few breaks in the middle for meals, a visit to the gym, and some social media chatter, but it was pretty high-paced the rest of the day. But I still paused to do a few sketches.

These sketches are good processing time for me—a time to think. And then, at the end of the day, I tried to weave it together into a page.

And yes – the yellow teacup strikes again!  This was a demo/step by step of an idea I am thinking about sharing at my upcoming workshop on Thursday/Friday… but it didn’t quite work the way I wanted. I will be an annoying tease and not explain what I was doing!

Also… since I am in the process of getting to know a new camera (oh! I lost a lot of my photography skills—depth of field/aperture settings, etc. have just disappeared in the back of my brain somewhere), I thought I would take a photo of what my long bench looks like at the start of a new day after a crazy workday—exactly as it is.

You can see…

• all my workshop prep work—class book, examples of my sketches, and diagrammatic sheets I use to explain concepts. This is how I teach (and will be doing so in my upcoming online classes that I am planning as well at the moment – see here.)
• my display ledge for recent prints and originals that I have received… need to get around to framing some one day
• my ikea shelving unit placed on top of the table (I got the idea from the catalogue but I think they photoshopped out the screw holes). Anyway it works great for storing all kinds of random stuff  See image below for ikea unit (from the 2014 catalogue AU)
• my pens and pencils – I have been using an A4 paper file drawer unit to store my pens for ages, so imagine my delight to discover that they fit exactly within the Ikea unit! BTW the far end of the table is the sewing zone…not all those drawers contain art supplies. They are just file drawers from Officeworks – they are a little longer than the depth of the unit but they hit the wall and provide the gap for cable management. I LOVE storing my pens and pencils in them- away from the dust. They are also great for my sewing stuff as well. 4 thread spools fit exactly across the width (but that is another story)

From the Ikea 2014 catalogue showing my inspiration… and they haven’t photoshopped out the screw holes… I just didn’t see them!