If you don't have a studio...

...then what? At home, I have my little craft room/office, where I scrapbook, work, paint, pay my bills, and surf the internet. Nowadays, I seem to have to share it an awful lot with the kids - Albin playing Minecraft, Agnes playing games at different gaming sites, and with P, of course, who needs to check up on his pals at Facebook now and then. Still, I have it, and after the kids' bedtime, it's all mine. At the farm, however, there simply is no room for me to have a studio on my own. Not yet, at least.

We are planning to extend the farmhouse in a not too distant future, and put the kids in the extension, and that would leave upstairs available with no less than three rooms to use for crafting and gaming, and perhaps we could even sneek in a guest room up there. But for now, this is what I will have to make do with:

Just a plain cabinet, right? I bought it at a thrift store for next to nothing, and I imagine it has been sitting around in an old barn somewhere before it ended up there. It's got wormholes in it, it's a bit shabby, a bit wonky, and after I painted it, I couldn't put all of the handles and key plates back, because several of the tiny screws that were used for that before were so rusty that they couldn't get a grip in their old holes. However, I LOVE this old cabinet, and I've filled it up with all sorts of inspiring objects that I use when decorating and crafting. Just have a look:

I've got everything from eggs to fabric to antlers and lace in there, and most of the things are just waiting to get used in one half crazy project or another.

There is lots of driftwood, collected in the summer when we were at the beach, feathers, seashells, wooden spools, clothespins, twine, wine corks, pearls, you name it. I've put most of my collections in here - things I love to take out and look at, and things that can be used to make other things.

 Buttons, candles, vintage lace, pins...

 Cinnamon sticks, more driftwood, embroidery hoops, which will hang on the wall somewhere eventually.

 Dictionary pages, vintage button boxes, fabric from Albin's outgrown jeans and shirts, which might become a quilt some day, and a jar of sand from our favourite beach ad Haväng.

Monogrammed linen towels, coasters and flower frogs... Did I mention that I love flower frogs? I have plenty of them, but I'm always on the lookout for more when I'm on a fleamarket or in a thrift store. My favourite is a big green one, but that one isn't hidden away in the cabinet.

All in all, I'm pretty happy to have a place where I can store these items and to be inspired just by opening it up and looking at all of them. But of course, I look forward to the day when I can have an entire room of my own also at the farmhouse. Cuz I haven't got the faintest idea where I will put all of my scrapbook supplies the day we move out there permanently. I guess I have a lot more purging to do before that day comes...

Happy crafting, everyone!