Getting Crafty

I’m slowly working on making the magnets that I promised to give away on my other blog. I have a tendency to get distracted so a job that should take 30-45 minutes has now taken many months as I agonize over the correct paper to use and such.

I held a contest for 451 Press bloggers only and the winner was announced back in April. I have yet to send her her gift but I will be mailing it off in about 12 hours:

The recipient indicated that she liked the colours pink and green so I tried to the best of my ability to use paper with those colours in them.

The fun part was figuring out how to wrap the gift. In the end, a little bit of tissue paper and some ribbon did the trick. An apologetic “sorry this took me a million years to complete” note was tucked under the ribbon and we’re ready to go…once I find an envelope, that is:

But why should my lucky winner have all the fun, right? I made a small set of magnets to give away to a lucky reader.

If you recall, they are made from the card I talked about here. Simply leave a comment indicating what you like best about the fall season and next Friday (September 7, 2007) I will make a draw from the readers who have left a comment.

Good luck to all!

If you’d like to make your own marble magnets, please check out my tutorial here!

Well Hilary Duff is at it again, this time she’s dipping her fingers into the craft industry.

You heard that right: Hilary Duff, singer, actress, the face of a perfume, and designer of the clothing line Stuff by Hilary Duff, has a new line with Michaels, one of the largest craft store chains in North America (and the chain that is currently carrying Martha Stewart’s exclusive line).

I haven’t yet stopped by my local Michaels to see Hilary’s collection, but the images on the Michaels site are sure to please your favourite tween. The idea behind this new line is to provide girls with charms and iron on patches among other things to add to fitted t-shirts, cell phone cases bags, jewelry, and more, which are all also part of the collection. Black and silver seem to be the dominant colours, with some jewel tones (purple and turquoise) to them.

If you’d like a bit more convincing before heading to your nearest Michaels, check out the following:

See the official introduction to her new line by Michaess here
Watch Hilary’s introduction video here
Tune in here for craft ideas using items from her line

Hilary Duff, Stuff by Duff, celebrities

I found the best little organizer at the dollar store. Look how nicely they hold my brads:

I thought two would be enough but with all those little things I’ve got to organize (eyelets, metal tags…) more of these organizers will be needed!

Did you know that it is possible to have spent hundreds of dollars on crafting material and still manage to not have what you want when you need it?

Well, I’m a walking example of this phenomenon. The main reason why this is the case is because I don’t follow a rule that applies to clothes shopping too: When you buy, think of what you already have that it can go with. If your eyes light up at the sight of a 75% sale and you find yourself shovelling bargains into your shopping basket without even pausing to examine what you’re buying, it’s time for a change. Here’s how to be a savvy crafty shopper.

Take inventory of what you have
You may want to tackle this by type of craft material: paper, yarn, and stamping materials, for example. Make a note, mental or otherwise (recommended) of the colours/textures/sizes you have and what colours you’d like to have. For things like yarn, it will be important to also note how many balls or skeins of each colour you have. This means the next time you’re out shopping and you see a ball of pink yarn drastically reduced in price, you’ll be able to pass it by because you know you already have 13 balls of the exact same stuff at home.

Group things in families
If you are not sure what colours go together, check out a colour wheel and read up on complementary colours and colour triads. Practice putting different patterns together, get used to seeing how things go together and what things go together. This is important because it’ll help ensure that you don’t come home with something that doesn’t match anything you have and will therefore never get used.

Shop with a list
Your shopping list can include anything you are missing from the gaps you noticed after taking inventory. This can be a list that is created on the computer and updated regularly after each shopping trip. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to pick up every item on the list but by taking the list with you and watching for sales, you’ll be sure to get what you actually need on sale. And the list prevents you from picking up things that either don’t match or you don’t need.

How do you make the most of sales and ensure you keep your craft supplies well stocked?

savvy shopper, save money, sales, crafts, paper, yarn

Remember the house warming card I was working on? I still have the last card that I began working on, but I decided to go with one of the iterations that I had rejected. I’m so glad that I didn’t toss it into the recycling box as I usually would:

(The colourful background is the wrapping paper for the gift)

It’s simple, it’s clearly handmade, but the recipient thought it was cute and (luckily) happens to be a fan of my handmade cards.

For my next attempt, I wanted to focus on black and beige, with metal accents. So far I have:

What a start, right? I have entirely too many metal embellishments to work with–brads, eyelets, and tags galore. And of course, none of them seem quite right.

I’m not quite a Martha Stewart, and getting ideas to flow is very slow.

Remember my last entry? Try as I might, my scant collection of materials didn’t yield anything that I liked:

I was trying to go for a quaint, old fashioned farm house look (why I don’t know–the new homeowners are in their late 20s) and this card just struck me as too old fashioned and rather plain. It is also not neat enough and looks extremely amateurish.

My next attempt was something more modern.

All my life I have dreamed of being creative, of being an ideas person. I have always wanted to be the person who’s given an empty room, 100 yards of fabric, a sewing machine, a bag of goose down and ribbon, and who manages to transform the room into something wonderful.

However, the creative process is continually stalled by one of my biggest sins: overthinking. And this tendency towards overthinking is related to my affliction of procrastination. While taking the time to think things through might seem like a good quality, when it leads to the halting of all possible and potential creative processes, it is not a good thing.

I was given some good advice about combatting this problem: Just do it! Cut up that sheet of paper to make that thing you want to make. If it turns out badly, a) now you know that the idea doesn’t work so well and b) you can start again. It seems so simple, so basic but I can read and dream up the coolest things but until I actually make a step towards turning it into reality, it’s pretty useless to the world (and to this blog). So I will try to do that more often. For example, last night, I took the following with the intention of making a “Happy Housewarming” card:

And almost two hours later, I hadn’t gotten any further. I spent an hour moving pieces around, thinking of the different things I could do. Why didn’t I just stick something down, decide I hate it and start over? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I will do that now. And tomorrow, I’ll report back on how the process went. To those of you who ever feel like this, I challenge you to go for it, do something, even it becomes a mess. Chances are it’ll give you some insight into your finished product!

Thanks for your patience with this blog. I’m still working on a plan for the blog and hope that things will be more organized as time goes on. Needless to say, your visits and comments are greatly appreciated.

Good news: the scarf (mentioned here and here) is complete:

I took pictures of it around my neck but those didn’t turn out too nicely. I hope the completion of this scarf doesn’t an early appearance of winter!

unfinished projects, knit, scarf, knitting, finished projects

A couple of months ago, I showed off some of my unfinished projects here.

Unfortunately, both are still unfinished. I have made an enormous amount of progress with the scarf though:

Goal: to be finished by the end of the month. My next knitting pattern will not involve a 1×1 rib (knit one stitch, purl one stitch) because it takes entirely too long to complete. I’m sure when the cold winter arrives I’ll be glad that it’s such a thick scarf though!

Oh glitter.

So shiny, sparkly and fun! It is impossible to be serious and boring and be a fan of glitter; I refuse to believe it. Once your favourite child discovers glitter and the other important “G” of crafting, glue, you are in serious trouble and will likely never again have a day that doesn’t involve finding random specks of glitter in your hair, on your cheek or in your morning coffee (you have been warned).

If you would like to keep your glitter activities confined to crafts alone, good luck! Here are some things that you can use glitter for:

• to outline anything, by first “writing” or drawing the item with glue, then covering the page with glitter. Do this over a flexible surface (paper is fine but a plastic placemat or craft mat works really well) and you can return the excess back into its container. If the thought of using liquid glue is too daunting to contemplate, you must check out the glue stamp pad that Kari wrote about here.
• encase glitter in clear plastic and it can add some dimension to your art work. You can create a frame that can be shaken to move the glitter around, or create a card that has the front half covered in glitter and a “Happy Birthday” or “Congratulations” confetti (picture to follow).
• if you’re having a somewhat fancy party, you may want to sprinkle tables with a bit of glitter and some metallic confetti to add a festive feeling to things

How have you been using glitter?

glitter, sparkle, shine, using glitter, crafts with glitter

A new show, Martha Stewart Crafts, has been acquired by the DIY (do it yourself) network. If you only have 30 minutes a day to get tips on all sorts of various crafts, starting this November you can make Martha’s show a part of your weekday. The new show will share the best of craft-related episodes from Martha Stewart’s own Martha Stewart Living series.

Could the timing be any worse.

I have a full week free from the pressures and responsibilities of work to craft to my heart’s delight, and share the results of this fun with you, dear reader. So, it’s only natural that my internet service become suddenly unstable, and I be unable to access the internet from my computer for nearly a week now.

The good news is having no internet means I have more time to craft and less time to waste online. The bad news is I shall have to take pictures and write tutorials that I may not show you for a while.

I am working on resolving the situation and hope to be able to report back to you soon!