WeWork: "Show Us Your Workspace!"

I received an email from WeWork asking if I'd be willing to show my workspace on my blog - and I thought, why not?  It's not very pretty, it's not my ideal space, but it's what I have and it's improving all the time!  This is where my jewelry and artwork pieces are thought up, designed, sketched, made, remade, and sometimes perfected!

Going from a university with huge, well-equipped facilities to an apartment, then a rental home, and finally my first home, means that my workspace has continued to change over the years - usually for the better!  Currently, I have two separate spaces - one in my garage for my metalwork, and one in the basement for my beadwork.  Neither is finished, but both are better than what I started out with post-college!

My beading space changed dramatically after I won the bead board with all the organizational gadgets a few years ago from Tidy Crafts (here's my post about it).  Once our basement is finished (and we are making slow progress!), this area will be as close to ideal as I'm going to see it.  I'll have paint on the walls and my favorite artwork displayed - along with some jewelry-as-art displays showcasing some of my favorite pieces!


My metalworking space was non-existent until last fall when my husband gifted me a custom workbench!  I LOVE my workbench!  And then we added a beadboard here, too, and I've begun collecting tools again.  This bench makes it so much easier to work with metals, and keeps the mess outside.  I do need my space heater come winter though....

Ideally, my metalworking space would be in a building of its own, with heat and A/C, running water, and adequate ventilation (as long as I'm dreaming, I'd also have a wall of windows that had an amazing view of the mountains!).  I'd have a bench or counter for each step of the process - a place to saw, file, and sand; a place to anneal and solder; and a place for all the other "things" I do, such as stamping, roller printing, and tumbling metal.  My next big purchase will be a kiln for PMC and enameling, so of course I'd like a permanent setup for that as well! 

I make what I have work and I'm happy I have these two spaces at all! Being "not ideal" simply means that part of my creativity process is ordering my steps in a way that allows me to clean up one mess before I move on to make another.  And that I have all my tools in the correct space (basement vs. garage) so I'm not trooping through the house to get them....

Happy Creating or Space Updating!
PZ