I'll show you mine...

Hello and welcome to the studio of Little White Dog. I'm Suzie and that ball of white fluff trying to charm the socks off you is my dog, Milo, who keeps me company while I work.

I'm still pretty excited about my studio because I've only moved in recently. I live in a tiny cottage where space is pretty tight, and I used to work at one end of a desk (The Messy End) while my husband, Gareth, worked on his computer at the other end (The Tidy End). All my crafty bits and pieces were in boxes on top of the wardrobe and I was spending a lot of time standing on a chair rummaging for ribbons and paper etc. I won't even go into the details of the War of the Cardboard which involved me squirreling away cardboard & packing boxes behind/under/in the wardrobe and Gareth subtly relocating it to the recycling bin when I wasn't looking!

So when my parents suggested I use their spare room as a studio I jumped at the chance, and before I knew it Gareth was enthusiastically helping me pack my boxes into the car. A trip to IKEA for some desks, shelves and boxes, and a day or two of assembly later my studio was ready to go. A throw and some nice cushions made a bed into a daybed - perfect for sitting and sewing, for visitors to sit and chat, or for Milo to snooze on (mostly for Milo to snooze on, in fact!).

I'm a bit of a magpie so I have lots of boxes filled with pieces of material, ribbons, different kinds of paper, cut outs from magazines and some things that defy classification that end up in a box with “bits & pieces” on the label. I can't resist pretty paper and at the moment I'm experimenting with lots of different types of vintage and scrapbook papers for making my 3D letters & boxes.

My ideas for the things I make often begin as gift ideas for my friends and family, and they usually occur to me at about 2am. They tend to start out really simple and snowball into something hideously complicated before ending up relatively simple and a little bit different. If I ever have an inspiration drought I'll have notebooks full of scribbles to fall back on! I think my training as an architect leads me to design things that are functional as well as looking attractive: my iPhone cases may be made of pretty ribbon but the ribbon is also a handstrap, and my 3D letters can also be used as little boxes. I like surprises, secret compartments and things that have to be figured out, so that tends to come out in my designs too.

I work at two desks and I tend to switch between them a lot during the day. One has all the computer equipment where I draw and print templates for a lot of my designs, and the other is for the more hands on work like cutting out and assembling.

My window looks out over the park behind the house, where Milo takes me for walks, and beyond that I have a pretty spectacular view over Dublin City. I feel unbelievably lucky to have such a great space to work in. If I'm dreaming please don't wake me up, I like it here! I think Milo would like to bring you out to the garden for a game of fetch now, but if you'd like to see more of my work you can visit my website www.littlewhitedog.ie Thanks for visiting!