When I moved out of the shop at the start of the month, it left me with an awful lot of things to find room for in my tiny, already crowded, cottage. Luckily I was able to store the furniture & larger items, but there was still a heap of suitcases, birdcages, photo frames, stock, stationery & other bits to find homes for.

My bedroom & living room had become submerged in boxes during the business of Christmas, so with the new influx of shop paraphernalia, a huge tidy up & reorganisation of my space was required. I needed to create somewhere I could work & easily reach the things I would be using regularly; sketchbooks, pens, string, chain etc…

As I didn’t have much space to work with, I used ‘height’ to create more storage space. I added shelves & rows of hooks, that I could hang baskets of paints and other usual things from. I put up my chalk & pin boards, and some of my own paintings of cats, that I did a couple of years ago. I’ve always been quite fond of the one that looks like Henry VIII. Changing the old beige curtain for a blue floral one (I quickly made it from an old table cloth!) really brought the space together.

I got the birdcage lamp from B&Q last year, & picked up the super cute teapot hook from Debenhams. The baskets & frames are all charity shop or vintage fair finds that I painted pastel blue myself. I can’t remember where I got the actual furniture from as I’ve had it for so many years now, but you can find something very similar (if not identical) here!

I’m definitely finding a clearer, tidier space easier & more inspiring to work in. & it was quite fun really, fitting it all together, once the boring part of cleaning & throwing bits out was done!