Lets face it, most of our clay tables more closely resemble a 3 ring circus of ideas, balls of clay, and teetering stacks of stuff. I am NO different but I did find the ultimate weapon to help stem the chaos - a label maker. Yes, once you begin to label areas, drawers, even boxes you save time. Why? Because you don't waste that precious claying time looking for things and you aren't reinventing the circus rings after each performance - "Now where did I put that box of jump rings?" Does this look familiar? Let me show you some of my solutions.
Yes, that photo above looks like my typical clay table when I'm really going full blast. Enter the label maker and the chaos gets a little more tame...here are some of my ways to contain myself and my clay.
Clay storage- find what works for you and your workroom and organize by color and label those drawers. My neighbor had put this cool wall cabinet out at the curb and I grabbed it! Yes, a friend secured it to the wall for me since I live in Earthquake land.
I live near the beach and work in my unfinished garage, so I can't have any metal but these plastic drawers work great. They are stackable, see through AND they are labeled.
My paints are also contained in these 2 great storage cabinets designed just for paint storage (Amazon). I try to keep the paints by color range. Larger bottles or tubes live along the top.
My findings are even labeled by size so that I can ensure accuracy in my tutorials AND I can tell easily what size needs to be reordered.
I also keep a variety of small bowls to temporarily hold small items on my assembly desk. The larger bowls contain my earrings waiting to be assembled.
I also label my sample boxes for classes I teach and I have labels on the front side of the boxes as well since I stack these over near my oven.
YES, there are many (too many) times that I can barely see my work area because I have so many clays, tools and ideas bouncing around, but I do know my most precious tools are in the clay table drawer, my cutters are to my left, my pasta machine is to my right and my dog is lounging on his above ground bed just below my work table! Just the way things *should* be...and I will eventually find that stray silkscreen I misplaced in 2001....
I should note that this is not a fancy studio - this is my unfinished garage - so its chilly in the Winter and HOT in the Summer... but it was also my dad's workshop and I wouldn't have it any other way!
syndee holt
Sculpey Design Squad Crewmember
