Stored in My Studio & Stencil Storage Idea by Cheetarah

Hi everyone, it's Cheetarah here and this month the StencilGirl® Creative Team shows how we store things in our studio. I'm fortunate enough to have an apartment where we both have our separate offices / creative space and I just love spending time in my little home studio.

This is my art desk where all the art stuff happens :) I have a LOT of stuff stored here that I need in reach, like brushes, markers, glue, my art journals, ink, watercolors etc. but I am good at keeping my work surface clean after a project, thankfully. That is the traveler's notebook I currently am working in. Let me give you a little tour of the room. 

This is what it looks like when you come in, on the left side my art desk with boxes of papers and trays of markers & cups of brushes and yes I store stuff on my windowsill as well, things I want near but have no room for on my desk. 

On the other side is my writing desk. You can see the stack of planners I use for my writings and my Lamy fountain pen collection display box on the window sill. Here I do stuff that is writing related but as you can see, there is a lack of computer here which I like because I don't want to get distracted by the internet in this room! I also try to leave my phone out but it's difficult as it's also my camera, haha!

When you turn to face the wall on the right side you'll see my rubber stamp storage - wood mounted stamps that is. The cling & clear stamps are in ring binders. Sprays are stored in open boxes next to the "spray work surface" on the smaller cabinets that created an impromptu work surface. 

In the cabinet drawers (which were donated to me by very good friends who moved away) I have paints, mediums, masking tapes, pigment powders, pastels, etc... all drawers are labeled and the cabinet closest to my desk has all the ink pads and markers (yes more...) and watercolor paints.

And one last thing I wanted to show you in my studio is the shelf where I store my little collection of figurines/vinyl toys of Cheetara's of the Thundercats :) The one from the far right is an original one from the 1980's. I also collect prints of her and have quite a few.

And this concludes the tour of my home art studio :)

"Stored in my studio" is of course also about how you store your stencils. So this got me thinking on how to effectively store my stencils because I want a fast visual reference. The storage solution I had was not sufficient for this and I kept forgetting which stencils I have. I stored them in see-through file folder & have an excel file with the stencils I own.

This is fine in itself but the visual reference, locally in my studio, was lacking. As I told you earlier, I rather do not want to look up stuff on the internet while I am working. So I set out to make a visual storage with the help of a vintage postcard storage idea.

I have bought these vintage postcard binders at a thrift store on vacation in Sweden and just LOVE how these albums look. 

They have paper sheets inside them and I figured I could store the stencils in them instead of the postcards that were currently still there. 

I stenciled on the paper sheets (and also made reverse prints of them in some cases) with black acrylic paint to create my visual reference album and stored the coordinating stencil on the sheet.

Of some, I kept the packaging of so it would not tangle with the stencil on the opposite page. All the small and mini stencils I currently own are now stored in the binder. The large stencils I did stencil out & printed in the visual reference book, but kept them in the large file folder still. 

I've filmed the process of how I made this stencil storage and there is a flip through of all the stencils I currently own. So if you're curious about that, definitely have a look :) A full list of them is under the video:

List of stencils used in the video: 

Stencil Club Sets:
Mary Beth Shaw's Private Collection, October 2016
Borderlines by Seth Apter, December 2017

9"x12" Large Stencils:

L578: Spirit Wind Mask by Valerie Sjodin

L606: Soulful Scribbles by Traci Bautista 

L543: ATC Mix Up 1 by Mary Beth Shaw

L258: Uplifting Words by Carolyn Dube

L200: Map by Mary Nasser

L215: Celestial Cove by Kae Pea

L598: Sacred Feminine by Carol Wiebe

L346: Pen and Ink by Lesley Riley

6"x6" Small Stencils:

S576: Art Deco Peacock Feather by Gwen LaFleur

S498: Moon Phases by Cat Kerr

S323: Sunburst by Daniela Woolf

S288: Pretty as a Peacock (face) by Andrea Matus DeMeng

S242: Diamond Dance by Terri Stegmiller

S203: Thanks a Lotus by Andres Matus de Meng 

S264: Doodle it Tornado Flowers by Maria McGuire 

S224: Succulents by Daniel Woolf 

S027: Peacock Feather by Kae Pea

S080: Marbled 6 by Cecelia Swatton

S260: Encouraging Scribbles by Carolyn Dube

S233: Cornish Petals by Lizzie Mayne

S278: Starlight by Lesley Riley 

S295: Deconstructed Chrysanthemum by Traci Bautista

Hope you enjoyed having a stroll in my studio and that the video inspired you to create your own stencil reference & storage book.  Thanks so much for stopping by! Have an awesome day & see you next time :) 

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