beetlegrass

Wanna See My Drawers?

I'll admit it.
I'm not ashamed of it.
I like being organized.
It helps me know what I have, to be able to find things more quickly, & therefore: BE MORE CREATIVE. I don't want a muse to pass cuz I'm spending too much time looking for stuff I know is here... somewhere...

Recently this meant a re-organization of a bookshelf that's near my drawing table. I think that one's workspace should reflect what one is currently "into". So, because I'm currently into making puppets and photographing them, a change was required.

Above: Red crate holds scrapbooking papers & other scene backdrops.
When I photograph, I remove the dartboard from the wall, put up a backdrop, and open the shutters. Whoa. Way to get a glimpse behind the Wizard's curtain, eh?
I'm sure as I get better at photographing, another set-up will be created. But for now, this is whasgoin'on.

Above: the BEFORE & AFTER pix.

I didn't make the bookshelf more messy for the BEFORE picture. That's what an "Uck!" situation it was. I hate when stuff looks like this. It makes my brain not function properly or something.

As you can see, this middle bookshelf previously held a bunch of children's books. Moving them from this area required going through them, and weeding out what I still want (first editions; autographed by authors/illustrators), what is still needed for reference, and what could go to the library as a donation.

The 3-drawered plastic containers I got are from Bed Bath & Beyond-O, and cost like $13 a pop. I had a coupon -- Oo-wee!

Below are the break-downs of how the drawers are organized (with 2 drawers being empty now for "room to grow" later). You can click on them for a larger view.

• Food
• Household Items
• Vehicles
• Occupations & Pasttimes

• Misc. Props
• Animals
• Things That Come From Bodies
• Seaside Items

• Cowboy Items
• Rodeo Stuff

This cupboard (just to the right of the red crate you see in the first photograph) used to house phone books, kids' magazines, illustration directories, and office paper.

Recycled the directories (never look at 'em, so what's the point?); consolidated the phone books, recycling most of them, & putting the rest in another cupboard; the kids' mags went upstairs; the office paper went where the other office paper is in the studio. Makes sense. Like things with like.

So now my bigger props have a place where they don't have to be out all the time, collecting dust.Yay!
And now you can see the tops of my bookshelves!

These images are © Megan E. Jeffery.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

As Promised...

Remember back when I was talking about the stuff that Santa gave me? And I told you about the "Inanimate" stickers (by Fred) that can turn household items into 'friends'?
Well, as promised, here are a few office-y type things with their new mouths and eyeballs.
Enjoy!

Now I just want to poke the phone in her nose.

Angry lamp: "You take one step closer and this lightbulb's gonna get it!"

CD stuff: one is not happy; the other is goofy.

Let sleeping staplers lie.

And here they are in a communal setting.

Red & White Things

Today at the Seekonk (MA) Speedway Flea Market: things were purchased, coffee was swallered.

Metal numbers, a dollar each! There were bigger #s available, but I had to think rationally: where will these things fit? Shown here in my studio, they won't stay where they are in this photo.
Other junk (kid's riding toy, wall clock) resides there currently.

You know what they say:
"A piece of junk for every space, and a space for every piece of junk."

These numbers are now sitting in front of my heater cover, which is one foot to the right of that little red chair. Figure they'll conduct heat, won't they? And if they don't, they'll get moved. It's Just. That. Simple.

Porcelain lobster claw, 50 cents. The guy wanted a dollar. I talked him down because I am a Mighty Negotiator. Or: I didn't feel like breaking my 20. You decide.
All I could think of when I saw this claw was, "I wonder what my lobsters will make of THIS?!?"
So, here above is what they thought.
Their smiles are brave fronts; masks for what's truly going on deep within them: fear & trembling.

Today's total: $4.50.
Coffee: $1.50.
Warding off a Migraine Through the Use of Caffeine: Priceless.

The design of these puppets and their images are the property of Megan E. Jeffery.
These images are copyrighted and may not be used without obtaining written consent FIRST.

Right Outside My Studio Window...

... someone is sitting on eggs.

Things For Holding Stuff

I'm not the first person to use a muffin tin to hold office-y stuff... but I WILL be the last! 
(Ubiquitous Evil Cackle.)

Here's the rubber stamp that I use on the backs of checks in a Passive/Aggressive attempt to send a message to Chronic Late Payers. It solves nothing, but it makes me happy.

Daily Acquisition

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, lookit all the cool stuff I found today at the Seekonk Speedway Flea Market!" (My Stuart Smalley impersonation-- like it?)

Below: A dartboard for $1 becomes a bulletin board with lotza graphic POW! (Photo of me as a baby, sportin' a tsunami 'do.) A dartboard would also work great as a drinks tray for summer, with all those sweating glasses...

Below: A tin sign ($3) that's particularly fitting to be in my studio.  If you have the punchline for this age-old riddle, let me know...

Below: Two more worlds collided collected, the first one ($4), and the third one ($3), both made of tin.  Little card on the last globe is from a Mexican tic-tac-toe/Bingo game.

Close-ups of the first globe-- the seller told me, "This globe is unusual because IT TURNS..." Oh, realllllly? 

    

Below: Two of a total of four plates ($5). Feminine & Flowery, just like me. Haw-haw! Will probably go in the Living Room or the Dining Room, after I wash the grime offa them.

Sixteen bucks for everything-- not bad, eh?

Why is it that everybody knows the "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!" line from the movie Dirty Dancing, but no one, and I mean no one, quotes the old woman (of the wallet-stealing couple) who says, "Such junk, such junk!" ???

This is what I always feel like saying when I cart this junk these treasures home.

Click on images to see them larger.

Mrs. Brown, You've Got An Ugly Daughter

For those of you tuning in for the first time, I'm not really this tall... I'm actually standing on a ladder...
Been painting over the icky brown walls perpetrated upon my studio by the former homeowners, Mr. & Mrs. Pottery Barn. (Kilz water-based interior primer, plus 2 coats of Behr's "Warm Glow", flat finish.)

A couple more angles -- care to poke for a pop-up? (Why, yes, I do believe I will!)

 

Window ledge "toppers":
Left: PlanToys, best toys in the world, in my humble opinion...
Right: Fisher-Price Little People from my "yute"...

 

My bulletin board, which probably goes without saying...

Stuff in & on my bookshelves:
Left: One of the first tag sale purchases I ever made (college, senior year)
Middle: Finger Puppets & Pop-Up books
Right: Calendar with an incorrigible rabbit

And remember when I was showing you this? Well, here are two shots of Mr. Rusty on top of my chalkboard armoir as promised.  (Yeah, there's some Pottery Barn stuff in here, I know, I know... I make fun of them, but I'm guilty too...)

The shutters that you see in these  pictures either:

A: Won't Stay or:
B: Won't Stay Brown.

I'm not Brown's #1 Fan, as perhaps you've already guessed...

Ideally, I'd like roman shades, kept to the inside of the window frames, to show off those nice clean lines. I'll show you some fabrics I've been looking at for possible curtains/shades sometime this week. 

Also want bead board (or wainscoting) below the chair rail... Still have to tackle the painting near THE COMPUTER, eek...

More Than One Way to Skin a Cat...

... but who wants a skinned cat???

I circumvented the whole software situation with the camera that I was blubbering about in the last post, and just stuck the memory card in the scanner.

SO, here are some photos AS PROMISED (you can CLICK on them to see the ginormous version):


This is my Living room.  Pardon the mess: I seem to be in the clutches of something creative right now, so this means PILING.  The walls in here were formerly a dark maroon, which may be chic, but were depressing for me.  The room you see beyond the arch is my studio, and that room has not been painted nor has it been given window treatments (by me) as yet.  Again, I'm sure BROWN WALLS are de rigeur and all, but ain't my taste.   See those pink lamps?  I drew one of them in an earlier post.  Can you find the post?

The Studio, the end where my drawing table is.   The globe was my sister's, she off-loaded it to me when she moved to California.  She used it, I KID YOU NOT, to stretch turtlenecks that were too tight.

And, WHOOSH, just like that, we're back in the Living Room again.  Poster is a signed Chris Van Allsburg  print.  He was one of my teachers at RISD , and his new movie Zathura just opened last week.  The Providence premiere was here in Seekonk and there was a big benefit to fund four Rhode Island performing and visual art programs.  He and his wife are very philanthropic, and that is so cool.

I was inspired by the October 27th post on Angry Chicken's  blog where she was painting wooden matreshka dolls. (Some great links in that post!)  I've had a kit of these for several years now, given to me by Santa, and was feeling way too precious about them. ("What if I ruin them?" kind of baloney).  So I broke 'em out and started painting them.  Here's one done.

Here's the smallest of my three bedrooms.  Those are felt "pennies"  (three sizes of circles blanket- stitched) on that polar fleece blankie hanging on the wall.  It took a long time to make all those little buggers, but it was a sort of an addictive/therapeutic project.  My sister-in-law made that Bunny doll in the corner, the boy Bunny is on the other side.

This is the back entrance to the house.  It's a little covered portico? I'd guess you'd call it.  The faux quilt is two cd holders with squares of fabric that were spray-mounted to cardboard and then rotary cut with pinking cutter.  I got this tin dollhouse at a tag sale and it's gotten a lot more rusty sitting out in the weather.  Go figure. Tin & Water = Rust. Hunh. Who knew?

Well, that's all for now, hope you've enjoyed my first foray into digital cameradom.

YOUR Deck: Brown & Yucky...

...MY deck: FRESH & YUMMY!   OK, most of you won't get that... but there used to be a commercial where two twins in like Gunne Sack dresses were both eating peaches.  One had used Fruit Fresh, the product that kept your fruit from looking acky-pooky.  The one twin says, "My peach: Fresh & Yummy!  YOUR peach: BROWN & YUCKY!"  This is what counts as BIG TIME HUMOR with my sister and me.  But I digress..

Finally got some pictures developed from a disposable camera.  I'm still researching digital cameras, and the purchasing of one will happen soon.  (Not because I've found "The One", but because I'm tired of doing research!)

So, here's the Before picture of my deck, taken at the time that the Home Inspection was going on.  I took its most UNflattering side, the one where they tried to hide the missing boards with the grill.  Hopefully you can see the not-too-attractive dark brown stain on the deck floor.

NOW here it is in all its Behr-deck-painted GLORY!  Hold onto your hats!  Cuz here it comes:



The little house in the back?  That's where my Helper Monkeys reside.  Which reminds me, they've not been earnin' their bananas of late!

Here are some random photos of the house, that I took madly in an attempt to finish up the roll.



This here's my front hall, and those little pictures are cross-stitched by moi.  The lampshade used to be an underused pillow, so it got cannibalized.  That sounds gross.  Those are little wooden apples on top of each frame.  This is a decorating style that I am known for.  And that style is: Putting Little Pieces of Stuff on Every Surface.



Here's my upstairs bathroom cabinet, shot as though Alfred Hitchcock himself was taking photos of his upstairs bathroom cabinet.  Those're milk glass vases on top, usually gotten for a song (lala!) at tag & estate sales.  The little cabinets inside the bigger cabinet are from Michael's craft store for like 99 cents, blasted 'em with spray paint.  Shelf edging is ripped off of a chunk of dust ruffle that someone gave me.  I painted the back of the cabinet in a spurt of energy with some of the prior owner's leftover paint from the hallway.  It hadn't yet turned into a paintstone.



This is the desk that my computer sits on.  I am now sitting just to the right of this picture!  Don't you feel wonderfully close to me right now? Admit it.  This desk is made from one of the doors from upstairs.  The room was so tiny that I couldn't fit a twin-size bed in there AND have the door close, so I took it off its hinges, dragged it down here, and put it on two filing cabinets.  I got two pieces of quarter-inch thick plexiglass, and there ya go: a desk.  Since the door has inset panels, it creates a nice shadow-boxy type deal, so, got all my flatsy stuff out.  Here's a closer picture and the Goofus example of why you don't use a flash this close to glass:



Well, there you have it: some of my environs. Who needs webcams???

** You can click on any of these photos to see 'em mas grande.**