"Room to Bloom" with Michelle LaPoint Rydell!

Welcome to my blog series "Room to Bloom"! Some amazing women from around the world will be sharing their personal creative spaces with us. No matter if our space is desk in a corner of our kitchen or a spacious loft studio, we all need room to bloom, don't you think? I know you'll find these sanctuaries as inspiring as I do.

Today's guest is Michelle LaPoint Rydell - wait until you see her colorful space. It's dreamy!

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I've always tried to carve out a little space to create wherever I've lived - (a corner of the livingroom or a closet), but it wasn't until I got married in 2007, that my dream of having my own studio came to life. My new hubby Michael insisted that I claim a room for my very own, and I'm eternally grateful to him for that! I love to do art journaling, painting and scrapbooking; and now I have a place for everything! I'm so excited to share my little happy space with you today!

Keep in mind my room doesn't always look this neat! HA. I need to have my area cleaned up before I begin a new project or a traffic jam starts in my head! But when I get going, things are flying everywhere! It totally looks like a hurricane hit!!! Then I clean it up again and start all over. It's a never ending cycle!



This is my desk area and inspiration wall. It's where I do my day job, and my personal computing with my iMac at night (you can just barely see my white mouse on the bottom right of the photo). This area is filled with my own artwork as well as treasured gifts from artist friends. I also keep my beloved tape collection on this desk - one dispenser for colored masking tapes, and one for washi tape (can't get enough of that stuff!) In the middle of the wall is where I put my latest project to photograph it for my blog.



Moving to the right you can see my personal computer area on the left and my paint desk on the right. The big painting is part of my new "Fearless Painting" art journal, which I started as part of the 21 Secrets Workshops- it's the first time I've gone that big with a journal (18x24"), I'm having a lot of fun with it!



Here is another angle of the same area. You can see my little friend Johnny (also known as the Johnmeister) under the desk taking a snooze in his cat tube. He loves that thing. The wall of Ikea cubes is where I keep all of my art supplies. The boxes along the top row, each hold a Scrapbook kit from the various clubs I have belonged to. The rest of the cubes hold all of my other various supplies and tools. Everything needs to have a spot or I would never find it! My little red table is a new addition, and I just love it because it affords me a spot to spread out; and also because it's so mobile. I love to get down on the floor and create with Willie and Johnny by my side, and I can just roll the table out of the way to do that.



Here you can see the opposite wall from my paint desk area. My other buddy Willie is relaxing on the chair. I call him the carmelly-colored fluffball. He rarely leaves my side. The green crocheted throw was handmade by my mom, and my sister Renee made the polka-dot pillow. To the left of the entertainment center you can see a big roll of kraft paper, which is from my hubby's mill. I love having reminders of the people I love nearby. The red tin sitting on top of the paper roll is filled with catnip and cat toys - a must have for our artroom!!! The entertainment center holds my scrapbooks and completed art journals, and also bins with more supplies.



I love perusing thrift stores, not only for collage supplies, but for unique ways to store them! Here's an example of one of my favorite finds. It's an old wig box from the 60s, which I keep stuffed full of bubble wrap for painting with!



When it comes to art journaling, I believe in experimenting. I love to try new types of journals, new binding techniques, new themes and styles. This is a photo of some of my completed journals. They are all different but they still all feel like "me," and I love that.

Here are a few of my recent journal pages...







Bio:
I live in Minnesota with my hubby Michael and our two cats Willie and Johnny. I love to experiment and believe that the best art comes from letting go and just playing. Along with art journaling, I enjoy painting, mixed media collage and scrapbooking. Music is a huge source of inspiration for me, and being a teenager in the 1970's, I'm also partial to all things with a retro-groovy kind of vibe!



I hope you will come and visit me at my blog: Inspiration Everywhere. I also run a challenge blog called Scrapping the Music. Come on by and say hi! I'd love to see you!