The Journal of Jennifer Griffin: January 2017

I have always struggled with having my hand in too many pots, spinning too many plates if you will. I haven't really been able to decide what to choose.

Photography

Costume Design

Jewelry Design

Hair Accessories

Altered Art

Mixed Media

I have decided to rename my actual business because when it comes right down to it, I'd rather be doing photography than anything else. I still have my dream of one day having a brick and mortar storefront studio but for now, I believe doing this is the first step in getting there. Lily Mairi will be my product line name but my business name is Jennifer Griffin Studios.

I still have my Lily Mairi, Etsy shop to purchase my steampunk, fairy and custom accessories and jewelry. My art and costumes will be sold at my new Etsy shop J Griffin Studios. J Griffin because Etsy only allows so many characters to be used in s shop name.
I did this to help out my customers that only want one portion of what I do without wading through everything else. However my main focus is going to be on art photography, or art portraiture.

I have even changed my logo as well.

We will see how it goes. I have some new and fabulous people helping me along the way, encouraging me push forward and refine my processes. Here is to a new year! 2017!

This blog post has been a long time coming. Lots of things have changed since I last posted. Illness, death in the family, job changes, lost of life has happened.It's difficult to blog and work my new business ventures and be a mom, but I am still giving it a go!

So this is it. My studio reveal.

When we moved back to Georgia in the summer of 2015, we had a hard time finding a house that was big enough from my larger sized family, my mom (who was going to be living with us), my studio work space, some yard for the 4 legged child, in a good school district, that wasn't a crazy commute, that was also in our budget.

We wanted so bad to be back in Marietta, but none of the houses we looked at fit enough of that criteria. After talking it over with my husband and my mom we decided to essentially "buy" my mom's house. Thus began the process of renovating portions of the house and getting things up to code, and building her an apartment. While our belongings were in storage we did much of the base work in the upstairs portion of the house.

Though we aren't finished by any means, we are much closer than we were in December of 2015 when we started. I don't even have everything the exact way I want it in my studio, but it's close. Close enough that I can work and know where every thing is.

Here are some images of the formal dinning room that we converted into my art studio. The furniture belonged to my mom and she sold almost all of it get smaller pieces for her apartment we built in the basement. We just used her stuff while our items were in storage.

This is an image of the living room. To the left you can see the entry to the formal dinning room. I didn't get a good before shot of the entryway before my fabulous doors were up. But you can get the gist of the space.

Here, the floors in the process of being installed. We did the entire house all at the same time in hardwoods, except for the floors that we are going to be laying tile such as the kitchen, bathrooms and the laundry room.

Here it is!!!

I found the doors on a local Facebook yard sale page. They looked like the image below before I go a hold of them. We got our hardware here locally from You're Unique out of Gainesville, GA.

I refinished a buffet my mom had that she was just going to sell, you can kind of see the before image in the first photo above, and the after photo below here.

I still don't have the desk set up the way I want but I will get there eventually. I also want to do a treatment to the popcorn ceiling eventually.

I did all of the wall paper removal and painting. My husband did the lighting. I painted and refinished most of the pieces of furniture as I already had them and they didn't have the look I wanted for this space. You can see my refinish of my vintage arched bookcase here.

Here are a few details of my space. Pretty much everything is labeled. I have been told I have a labeling issue.

This piece is one of my faves. It was a local antique store find and I just fell in love with it and it had to come home with me. You can read about it's makeover here.