margaret-cooter: Another dustcloth day in the studio

The clearout project continues. Yesterday the bottom shelf of the paper storage got "the treatment" -

Not only has at least half the paper gone (via freecycle) but there is some clear floor - wrought out of this sort of chaos -

It's much the same for any studio clearout, isn't it?

Today's first task is the top shelf of the paper storage, which doesn't contain paper - it contains tools and ... surprises ... and rather a lot of dust, because it hasn't been disturbed for a few years!

I knew the stamps were lurking in the back, but had misremembered how many -

Various charities ask you to cut around the stamps and send them along (they get £20 a kilo for them). That little task would take me forever - I remember how long it took to tear the corners off the envelopes. They come from manuscript submissions at BMJ in the days before digital submission, when everything came double-spaced in several copies, in envelopes, hundreds of them every week. I'd seen Tom Phillips' use of stamps to frame some of his Curriculum Vitae series and realised that it was time to revive my stamp-collector activities...

Postage stamps are, after all, a craft material - some good ideas here - I'm sooooo tempted to put them back on the shelf and relegate them to the semifinals of the Studio Clearout game.

Another surprise on the top shelf was several boxes of postcards -

and there are bound to be more in another part of the room. Again, these hark back to the pre-internet days, and to the days when I was discovering all sorts of art and craft and "needing" all sorts of "inspiration".

(Looking back on your younger self, there are things you wish you'd known - "focus on one thing at a time" is what I'd tell myself. But maybe the scattered-enthusiasm phase is something everyone goes through ... and some get to the focus-and-develop phase more quickly?)

The stamps, the postcards, and the tools had sat ignored on that deep shelf for at least 15 years. The tools did get used - I had a little trug from Ikea with the necessities, hammer, screwdriver, pliers, etc, and they all fit nicely ... but once Tom started using the room as a carpentry shop, it was a case of The Invasion of the Space-Snatchers. I shall empty that trug and put back what I need, and let Tom look through the rest -

The unwanted items can go out on the wall for someone to take home. (A very handy recycling method!)

Even with the stamps and postcards temporarily replaced, there's room for the ceramics materials, and a place to put more once they're found and sorted -