LOVE & MOXiE Design Studio Tour & Favorite Organization Solutions

A place for everything and everything stylishly in its place is our motto here at LOVE & MOXiE, because, let's face it, finding your stuff when you need it makes life just a bit easier and if it looks good too, well that's icing on the cake.  Working in a small space has taught us a few things about organization and being a small business has taught us how to do it on a budget.  Our office and design studio are located in a petite 10 x 20 foot space so we've learned to make the most of it.  We are super lucky to have very large storefront windows that allow natural light to flood in, in addition to high ceilings which make the space feel larger than it is.  We've kept the furniture (for the most part), walls, and window treatments white to open up the space visually which allowed us to bring in pops of color and pattern elsewhere without overwhelming the small space.

 

 

 We love a gallery wall  and have created this one from favorite pages of old calendars and books along with our own artwork like our paint-your-pet painting of our cat Arlington, AKA Bad Kitty, and our "Own It" gold thumb tack creation.  You can make almost anything gallery worthy with an inexpensive Ikea frame!  The inset photo is a year-at-a-glance calendar we created from a free printable calendar we found at livelaughrowe.com.  We chose this one for its inspirational quotes and old typewriter  font.  We added our own flare by gold foiling the pages with our Heidi Swapp Minc foiling machine (what can we say, we have a thing for gold shiny things so we had to get a foiling machine - heehee!), then cut them down so they would all line up in the, you guessed it, Ikea poster frame.  It helps if you print them out on heavier paper or card stock.  The nice thing about the larger frames from Ikea is they come with plastic fronts that look like glass but are a lot lighter and, best part, you can use dry erase markers on them so you can plan your year and change it as needed.

 

We continue the gallery wall with a pushpin board we created by wrapping a cork board in dark gray wool fabric and framing it with painted molding.  We love to pin up fun graphic knick-knacks we've collected on our travels and colorful magazine pages.  We've also framed, again in inexpensive Ikea frames, my raid jackets from my former days as a Special Agent.  The trick to framing clothing is to make sure you folded it around heavy cardboard and secure it with straight pins to keep the crisp shape while framing. 

 

We have a ton of office supplies and business related paperwork, so we turned an Ikea (do you see a theme going on here - heehee!) Kallax shelving unit on its side to use as a credenza.  We house our business records and such in the cubbyholes and we put our Silhouette Cameo cutting machine on  top.   Again we enlisted the help of Ikea Kallax shelving units, this time four of them are lined up side-by-side to form a wall of organization.  We like using several units as opposed to one large one so that we can move them around and break them up as our needs change.  We store everything here from our raw materials and supplies to small finished products to boxes and shipping supplies.  Their small shallow drawers are great for findings and other small supplies and the polka dot collapsible storage cubes (these ones are from Target) fit the cubbyholes perfectly and provide easy access but hidden storage.  These shelving units are just the right height to display larger finished products like our trays and house our foiling machine and roles of vinyl on top. Clip on adjustable arm lamps allow us to direct extra light where we need it.  We placed these units about two and a half feet from the wall creating a space to store our tent, displays, bins, and other market and pop-up shop essentials out of sight.

 

On the wall by our worktable we created two large pushpin boards.  This time we covered  a piece of MDF with a roll of cork and placed a double row of black ribbon around it to spice it up.  They are the perfect home for the patterns we create for our bags, inspirational images, fabric swatches, and templates.  On the floor we corral rolls of decorative paper and bolts of fabric in large metal and woven baskets.  HomeGoods is a great resource for finding inexpensive and interesting large baskets. 
 
The heart of our studio is our worktable which is comprised of two, you guessed it, Ikea finds placed back to back.  The first is the  Malm 6-drawer dresser, perfect for housing finished products and fabrics, which we painted teal and added long metal pulls.  The second is a credenza type piece with a long shallow drawer which is perfect for housing sewing needles, thread, bobbins, and the such.  We placed the two on a platform we built from 2x4s and plywood (and spray painted gold, of course!) to raise the height as I stand when I sew and work so it is just the right height so I don't get a sore neck from looking down (we also have a counter height swivel chair we found at Target for when we do sit).  Industrial wheels make the platform movable in case we need more floor space for a large project.  The extra height from the wheels allows us to store flat packed shipping boxes underneath the platform which is an extra bonus!  Lastly we put a piece of plywood (also spray painted gold) on top of the two Ikea pieces to have one continuous surface and placed a clear acrylic sheet on top to protect it and to create a smooth surface for our large cutting mat.  Sandwiched in between the plywood and acrylic are various images and magazine pages that add color and pattern to our space and make us smile.

 

That's a peak into our creative space and office, so now you know where the magic happens - heehee.  Thanks for stopping by and checking it out.  We hope our organization hacks sparked some ideas for your own space.  We would love to see your creative organization solutions and decorating hacks, share your pics on Instagram or Facebook and use #livingwithmoxie and don't forget to tag us @lovenmoxie to make sure we see them!