Look at what arrived in the mail recently! I love how our T-shirts turned out this year.
Since 2012, I’ve ordered studio T-shirts each summer as a gift for my students. It’s a fun way to show appreciation for being a part of my studio and build camaraderie among my students. And it’s good marketing, too.
Just for fun, here’s a peek at the designs from past years. Continue reading “2016 Studio T-Shirt”
During the 2016 MTNA conference a few weeks ago, I stayed with my dear friend, Susan Hong. During my visit, I took a few photos of her beautiful studio and she has given me permission to share them with you today!
Here is the entry way.
During my two-week break from teaching last month, I finished a project I’ve been wanting to do for awhile now. I initially saw the idea on Pinterest and was thrilled to finally find the materials I needed!
It’s wall art created using old 45 records! At a thrift store back home in Michigan, I found 45’s for sale priced at 6 for $1. I selected the ones with the most colorful labels.
You could also use standard-sized vinyl records for this project, but you would need a much larger wall space.
I hung the records using small Command hooks. Have you used them before for your walls? They are wonderful! No need to pound holes into your walls. I bought a package of the smallest sized clips, which are only appropriate for hanging light-weight things. They were perfect for this project.
The clips allow the records to easily slip into place, and I can even rearrange the order of the records if I want to. Using pencil and a tape measure, I marked out the places where I wanted to the hooks to go. I measured and re-measured and RE-measured to make sure that the clips were evenly spaced. 🙂
I love how it turned out! It adds color to my wall that I can enjoy every day from my teaching chair.
It was an inexpensive, fun project — and perfect for a music-themed room!
Do you have a Meijer store near you? They are currently selling these cute wastebaskets…including the piano keyboard one! I have one for my studio and my students love it. 🙂
Since moving in June, I’ve been gradually getting my studio organized and arranged to my liking. It is a process!
I love having a tabletop surface nearby when I am teaching. I’ve been using a TV tray table for this purpose temporarily, with the hope that I would eventually find something that better suits the rest of the room:
I finally found that special “something”…!
It is an old typewriter stand. I found it at a furniture consignment shop for $60. Continue reading “Thrifty Find: Piano-side Table”
As promised, I have a few photos to share of my studio room with the piano moved in! (Previous post: Piano Studio Room Transformation)
But first, here are a few scary photos of my piano being moved. 🙂
Moving the piano out of the old house was a relatively simple process, but getting it into the new house was interesting. The piano movers decided the piano would not make it around the bend in the front entryway of the house, so we went around to the back of the house. The piano BARELY fit under the deck’s gutter system, but it made it!
I still need to shop for curtains, as well as a rug and chairs for the waiting room area (in front of the fireplace). I’m using the chairs you see below until I have the time to shop for something else.
I bought my rug from Menard’s and the desk and bookcases are from IKEA. I LOVE how everything looks so far! This room turned out far better than I expected. It is amazing what a little paint and elbow grease can do.
We still have plenty of boxes to unpack in the garage, but at least my studio looks put-together! 🙂
The last two weeks have been such a blur! My husband and I are fully moved into our new home and have begun the process of unpacking and getting settled. Last weekend, our priority was getting the piano studio room painted because my piano was scheduled to get professionally moved yesterday. Here are some photos of the room’s transformation!
In my last blog post, I shared a couple of photos of the room, but here are a few more BEFORE shots for comparison. When you enter the front door, you can take the stairway downstairs that leads straight to the piano studio room.
My husband and I have been happily renting this house for the past three years:
This Spring, we decided we were interested in buying our own house. We were pre-approved for a mortgage and started shopping.
Finding a house with a good space for my studio was a priority. We found a great house in Perrysburg, Ohio, which is 20 minutes north of where we currently live. It is not as charming on the outside as the rental house, but we hope to be able to increase the curb appeal.
Remember back in April when I visited Jody and her Piano Cottage? In her waiting room area, she had a blank notebook lying around for students to draw artwork.
After being inspired by Jody, I ordered a blank, hardcover notebook from Amazon for my own waiting room area. It has been a few months now, and I thought I would share a peek at some of the artwork students have created!
Yes, even my cat Coda made it into the notebook! 🙂
I’ve been intending to write this post in the “Studio Marketing” series (perhaps the last one) for awhile now, but I was stalling in hopes of being able to include more information about the new Google+ social networking site……I’ll get to that in a moment. Read on. 🙂
What can Social Networking do for YOU?
I’ve discussed before about how important it is today to have a website for your business. It’s important to have an online presence, period. Utilizing social networking helps built rapport between you and your current & potential customers. Marketing is promoting your business. It’s about reaching people where they are. And it’s about creating an image for your business that people want to identify themselves with.
The good news is that social networking is free. Yes, you will have to invest a little time to set things up and update things now and then, but I think you will find it a very rewarding activity if you aren’t doing it already! Continue reading “Studio Marketing: Social Networking & More”
It’s time to get another Forum Q&A going!! Let’s talk about business structure options for teaching studios. Despite having a music degree, I still know very, very little about setting up a business. I doesn’t seem right…I wish one of my college courses had covered this topic at some point. :/
Do you have a solo proprietorship, partnership, an LLC, or a corporation? What are the benefits of each option? Do you have a separate bank account set up to manage studio income and expenses? Do you hire an accountant or bookkeeping services to help with the accounts and taxes? What other business advice can you offer?
I hope you can help me out — and hopefully other readers will benefit too! Update: Here is my follow-up post.
I just discovered these manuscript copies of Bach’s 2-part inventions over at the IMSLP’s Petrucci Music Library. I always find free pdfs of music scores that I need on their site, but I never realized that they also have pdfs of some hand-written manuscript copies to download as well! Although this is not Bach’s handwriting, but it is still a remarkable part of history — and looks really cool. According to the site, this manuscript copy dates from around the 1790s. Can you imagine having to copy music by hand? What an art!
While I was so captivated by this manuscript copy, it occurred to me that printing some of these sheets off on acrylic print paper and then framing them would be a great way to decorate the walls of a piano studio! I think students would really enjoy admiring the hand-written manuscripts, especially if they were working on the same piece.
To download:
Click this link to visit the Bach inventions page. Scroll down until you see the download with the editor listed as “Peter Gronland” and says “Undated manuscript copy, 1790?”. As always, be sure to carefully follow the site’s copyright restrictions for your country (in the US, basically all works published before 1923 are in the public domain).
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