Share Your Space: Libby Zay & The Scout Project

I love look­ing at peo­ple’s work­spaces, don’t you? Today, let’s take a look at The Scout Project cre­ator Lib­by Zay’s cozy stu­dio. Her Bal­ti­more-based office is full of inter­est­ing objects that all have their own story!

Lib­by and I are work­ing on a series of stu­dio vis­its with dif­fer­ent Bal­ti­more artists and illus­tra­tors. We’re kick­ing this all off with shar­ing our respec­tive spaces. Here’s what Lib­by has to say about hers:

The Scout Project is a mer­it badge pro­gram for curi­ous peo­ple of all ages. Basi­cal­ly, I pro­vide badges that peo­ple can use as rewards when pur­su­ing a new hob­by or learn­ing a new skill. I also main­tain a blog that’s meant to inspire read­ers and encour­age them to dis­cov­er new things.

The office where I write is a fun­ny space. To get to it, you have to walk through our bed­room. It’s not an uncom­mon set­up in rowhomes, and it actu­al­ly makes the space feel a lit­tle more pri­vate and qui­et. There are two win­dows that over­look our tiny backyard.

My lap­top trav­els around quite a bit. I work a lot at the kitchen table or on the couch, and some­times escape to a near­by cof­fee shop. But most often, I work in here. This is also where I pack­age up badge orders and keep inven­to­ry. The man in the news­pa­per clip­ping is my dad, who invent­ed a coin counter in the 1980s called the “Ready to Roll.” We trav­eled to trade shows and fairs so he could sell it.

I love field guides and ref­er­ence books, espe­cial­ly vin­tage ones. They always have the best illus­tra­tions! I used to live near The Book Thing, a ware­house in Bal­ti­more full of donat­ed books that are absolute­ly free. It was dan­ger­ous. I think my boyfriend, Raul, was relieved when we moved out­side of walk­ing distance.

Con­fes­sion: these pen­nants are from eBay. I wish they had a cool­er sto­ry, but I still love them. I’m from Ohio and now live in Bal­ti­more. I have a lot of pride for both places.

The type­writer and most of this thread is my inher­i­tance form my grand­ma on my mother’s side, who was a gift­ed seam­stress. I have a few let­ters she typed on here stored away. One of them stern­ly tells me I should keep my room clean! The box with the stamps on it is a music box made by my pater­nal grand­fa­ther, who I called “Bop­py.” He had a wood­shop in his base­ment and he col­lect­ed stamps and coins.

Inside the music box is a pic­ture of Bop­py and my grand­ma, plus a bunch of oth­er ran­dom items (oh, there’s where all my chap­stick has been hid­ing). Grand­pa super­glued a dime with the suc­ces­sive year on it for each year I’ve been alive. It looks like i haven’t added a dime since 2005; time to hop on that!

All of the badges are kept in this library card cat­a­log that my dad gave me. I worked with an illus­tra­tor named Alyssa Nass­ner to cre­ate all of them, and am try­ing to work with top­ic experts to out­line guide­lines for each of them.