The Jewellery Shed - My New Workplace!

After what felt like weeks of making phone calls to gardeners, electricians, shed people and cladding people my new jewellery shed is at last up and running! I moved in a couple of weeks ago and after a few rearrangements of various tools and other stuff it now feels "right" and I'm settling in and getting to work nicely.

I previously worked on the dining room table and in the kitchen which was ok but obviously meant I was limited in when I could do certain things like soldering and enamelling. I often wished I had a space of my own but it wasn't until another jewellery maker asked if I was interested in renting space in her studio that I thought seriously about having my own little workspace {I can't bring myself to call it a "studio"- it's a shed} The cost to rent a space in someone else's studio and the restricted access that would mean made me think that I could fit a shed in the backyard if the raised bed was removed...... and so the phone calls to various workmen began....

But at last it's done and as you can probably tell I'm so happy about it!! Despite the Swedish sauna pine cladding vibe. I used to imagine how it would feel when I would at last be able sit in my shed with a cup of tea and the radio on and now I can :D

I decided to sand and stain the bench but it didn't turned out how I imagined! I'd spent a day and a half sanding it and thought I'd got all the varnish off it but I hadn't so there's light and dark areas which really bugged me at first but now I don't notice it anymore.

After a long time spent getting stuff out of cupboards then putting it back again the joy of having a space to leave my soldering stuff is immense! I was in the middle of working on a silver hollow form pendant and finishing some copper hollow form earrings when I took this photo. The bench got slightly untidier when I started soldering!

A small fold away table I use for making findings as the height and space on the jewellery bench isn't right for stuff I need to do at normal table height. It took a while to get used to the height of the jewellery bench and I did get neck ache to begin with but now I've got in the swing of it and it is so much better working at that level.

 I made a simple curtain for the window mainly so I could close it at night to stop any opportunist undesirables having a nosy not because I was aiming for the wendy house look. As you can tell from the hand stitching on the hem I won't be sending my application form for the next series of The Great British Sewing Bee off anytime soon :D

I have shelves!

And I can put a few knick knacks on shelves which I like. The wooden boxes are mostly empty as I now have room to put a lot of stuff elsewhere but I do occasionally like to play a  game called "where did I put those .........?" then spend a few minutes opening and shutting every single little box looking for them {and there's another one of those box storage units underneath the table where the rolling mill is}.

 More wooden boxes with "things" in them and a shelf for some more knickknacks and a plant which I just had to have. How it will fare in there during the winter remains to be seen. I dragged my friend round most of the charity shops in town a while ago looking for interesting things and found the two Hornsea pottery striped mugs for £2.99. A bargain and they satisfied my stripe fetish too!

The silver hollow form pendant I've almost finished. The bench peg isn't attached and doesn't fit tightly in the slot on the bench which means I can remove it when necessary which is a good thing sometimes. When I need it to not move I wedge the nail file you can see in this photo down the side of it :D

And finally a very rare photo of me. I don't like having my photo taken and this one is without makeup and possibly a bit too close for comfort!

I'm still tweaking things in the shed as I find better places to keep things. As I work I can see where it would be better for something to live to make the flow of work smoother. I don't like having to scrabble around in a drawer to find a tool when I'm in the middle of something. If a tool has a hanging hole I'll hang it somewhere! 

I still haven't found a home for my pliers which currently hang on one of the drawer handles to the left of where I sit. I do have one of those plastic pliers holders but don't want to lose space on the bench by using it! I have a small metal drawer cabinet on order from Ikea {in red!} which has handles I think I can hang the pliers from. It's to replace the white plastic drawers on the right of the bench which are ok but make the most awful squeal when you open them if you put something too heavy in them. Plus they're plastic and don't go with the wood vibe I have going on :D

No doubt I'll rearrange things a few more times to get it completely right but for now I love it and am so happy when I'm in there ♥

I've really waffled way too much about all this but I hope you've enjoyed the little tour of my work space.

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