#Old wooden window collage frame full#

When I paint with encaustics, I bring out my encaustic station to my work-table. And an old white pitcher filled with carnations and baby’s breath.

#Old wooden window collage frame full#

I am the story.”Īs I am writing right now, I have a dish full of paper clips that I rusted myself, a straight edge for tearing paper, old lids for palettes, scruffy paintbrushes, pencils and a water dish.

“What is it I have to tell myself again and again? That there is always a new beginning, a different end. I keep a table lamp at one side and plants on an old rusty shelf right under the window. I can paint on one side of the table, create collages in the middle, and work on stitching projects and artist books at the other end.

They inspire me to always find beauty in the details and to be thankful for the gifts of nature.īecause my worktable is quite large, I have room on it for different projects. I love to have fresh flowers and plants in my studio, too - either from my gardens or from a local market in the winter. On my worktable, I find the projects I am working on, my art supplies, piles of papers and fabric for collaging, little altars I set up for inspiration, little bowls of stones and shells, and gatherings from nature. The glass doors add an airy, light-filled feel to my studio. The cabinets are light and simple and have textured-glass doors that have a vintage feel that I love.

My worktable is made of white-washed chunky wood, and I designed it with the help of my cabinetmaker, who did all built-in cabinets in this room two years ago. It sits under a big picture window that looks out on our back garden. We didn’t putty the glass since we weren’t sealing in this window from the elements.My worktable is the first thing that I see when I enter my studio, and it is the place I go to first thing in the morning. They’re a subtle solution that you don’t see from the good side. These little guys are hard to find but Home Depot carried them. But eventually we got them all put in smoothly and secured with Glazier’s steel push points. This was the most expensive and trickiest part of the process, especially when two panels break on you as you’re trying to put them in. We brought the frame into a glass shop and got six panes cut perfectly to fit. Then I used a clear satin finish on it to seal the stain. You can definitely tell that it’s not an even colour in different places, but that’s part of the charm. It was interesting to work with a stain rather than paint because stain only sticks to the parts of the wood that are sanded well. So I applied two coats back at our apartment. I liked how it looked as is, but I was curious to try a natural wood stain and see how that would look.

Then I used this electric sander to smooth it out, which is so much more fun than rubbing by hand: But the walls in our apartment are white, so I wanted to strip it down to let the natural wood colour come through. I didn’t want to take all the white paint off because the point is that it’s supposed to look old and vintage. The heat from the gun caused the paint to bubble, making it slide right off. I used my dad’s heating gun to get all the old paint off, or as much as I could. I knew I wanted to put new glass in it anyway, but it turned out it was helpful to remove it so that it was easier to peel, sand, and stain the wood.