Getting Crafty

I’ll be continuing on what I learned from taking part in the Get Crafty challenges, but I thought I should share one of the important things that I gained through this process: a new friend!

Sherry was the one who came up with the idea and she was the one whose comments encouraged me to create every week. She herself is an artist, and I can’t wait for her etsy shop to open up so you can see her work for yourself. When she first left a comment on this blog, I responded and soon realized she lives about five hours away. It’s always fun to meet a fellow blogger who doesn’t live halfway around the world. From reading her blog and the thoughtful comments she leaves on the blogs of others, it was easy to see what kind of a person she was, and I featured her in my positive bloggers entry on Life Tips Daily because of that.

During the course of the challenge, I noticed two things that Sherry was using that I loved: pretty chipboard letters and the cutest rub ons I’d ever seen, made to imitate ribbon and stitching! Ever generous, she shared where she purchased them, but when I tried to find them I didn’t have any luck, a fact that I mentioned to her her passing.

Well what should show up in my mailbox a few days ago but a gift of those very two things from her! They were unexpected but certainly served to brighten up my day. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that a relationship that was strained up until then was mended on the same day, soon after I received Sherry’s gift.

While these gifts are lovely, and I will enjoy using them, the true gift is Sherry herself: reading her encouraging words, both in response to my entries and on her own blog, and getting to know her better are gifts that I will treasure most when this challenge is long forgotten.

I apologize. This entry should have been posted last night but what I have discovered over the last few days is I’m drained. I am currently not speaking to someone very close to me and that combined with working long hours have led to me not being in the mood to talk much.

But I’m at work and it’s my lunch break at work so I’ll take a moment to share with you the results of the challenge. My first attempt at painting will not be shared due to its awfulness (you may wonder if I ended up deciding to share the photo anyway when you see the final result). Let’s just say I’m just getting the hang of this painting thing shall we? Better yet, let’s just look at Jummy painting as an experiment. There wasn’t much thought that went into this painting except that I wanted to experiment with black, white and purple:

I bought all my supplies at the dollar store and while Dollarama has never led me astray, they did this time. When 12 or so paintbrushes cost $1, you will likely have some problems with them, and I did: they shed like an animal and unfortunately you can see the “hairs” in the lighter shades on the painting.

Speaking about the painting…here it is:

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Today is the final day of the 4th Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge and the challenge was Crafter’s Choice - you were encouraged to make whatever you wished. I decide to delve into the world of paint and it was fun. I felt a little silly because I decided to paint whatever came to mind. There was no goal or idea in mind, just to paint.

Unfortunately, a post-painting rest period turned into sleep, and I was unable to grab a picture of my creation this morning before work. I won’t be home until much later today so I will be squeezing in my creation just two hours before midnigh!

If you’d like to see what Sherry made, please visit her site and read her entry. She always gives me such great food for thought. If you recall, in my last entry, she asked me a question that I thought I’d have time to answer over the weekend but I never did get around to answering. I will answer the question What have I learned through challenging myself? over the next couple of days.

Lesson 1: Accountability
When Sherry first suggested the challenge to me, I was excited because of the timeliness of it. I would finally be using all those supplies I had collected and kept buying, day after day. I would get to try out techniques I had read about or seen online, and perhaps tools that I hadn’t yet had a chance to use, or hadn’t used lately (paintbrushes!). It was a challenge, one that I had accepted, and I couldn’t let my partner in crime down.

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*You do not want to miss the 4th Get Crafty challenge, do you? Check out all the details here!*

We all have fears, but do you have any fears as an artist or creative person? Are there techniques that you’re afraid to try, or mediums that you’re wary of working with? How did you overcome your fear, or challenge yourself to try something new?

For me, that medium is paint. I’ve never really painted, except for what was required 13 years ago when I took a (required) art class in highschool. I am not comfortable painting because my drawing abilities leave much to be desired and don’t all good artists sketch things first? And abstract art…isn’t that only for true artistes?

Of course not! So, for the fourth Getting Crafty challenge, I will be challenging myself to paint. I am not yet sure what route to go: do I grab a paintbrush and paint and just practice techniques? Or do I lightly sketch something and try to copy it? Should I go with my first creation, or head to the dollar store and buy a few canvases to experiment on? How will I judge whether something, especially if it’s abstract, is good? What is good? Whatever I do, I’ll be sure to share the result with you.

I must admit I’m nervous about this challenge…but we’ll see how it goes.

Sherry asked a question that I had been thinking of addressing after the results of the final challenge are posted but I think I will spend some time covering it before the weekend is through. Her comment was:

You have to tell us now Jummy…after 3 weeks of challenge and the beautiful cards you’ve made (even with the pointy prongs biting you!!), have you enjoyed this? Have you had fun? From the look of the cards you’ve done, it looks like you’ve enjoyed this!! And I seriously and sincerely hope you will keep it up…not just the knitting, but all kinds of wonderful crafts and art…you have a good eye for colour and combinations…share it with the world!

For those who have been challenging themselves for a while, how would you respond to this question?

*You do not want to miss the 4th Get Crafty challenge, do you? Check out all the details here!*

So, one girly card was made for the Challenge #3, and at the last minute, I decided to make a card for my brother, even though I had bought a couple of potential cards.

When you think of a masculine card, what comes to mind? Blue, black and pewter accents came to mind for me. I didn’t have any pewter letters, so I had to settle for these shinier letters.

I got them ages ago because I love the way the letters are formed (I’m especially partial to that ‘g’) but if you look at the back you will see that they have these ghastly, very sharp prongs behind them:

Very very painful!

So before we go any further, I must ask you: how does one manipulate these prongs without getting pricked a million times? Your answers won’t help with this card, but I have many more alphabet letters to somehow adhere to paper, and my fingers would greatly appreciate your insight! After getting sick of being used as a pincushion, I eventually used a pair of scissors to push the prongs in, then adhered them to the card using handy adhesive dots.

I don’t often use stickers but I found one that I thought applied to my brother. Even though he’s only turning 21, he fears that some of the decisions he made a few years ago are irreversible, and I’m hoping this card will help him believe otherwise.

(The pronged round letters spell out his name) It looked a little plain to me, but all the other things I wanted to add seemed too much. I then decided to run to my old standby, ribbon! I never thought I’d put ribbon on a guy’s card, but I think the selection of colour (and the lack of pattern) somehow makes it ok. Perhaps ribbon without a sheen would have been better but that was not in stock in the Jummy stash.

I haven’t given him the card yet (I’m 3 days late!) but I hope he likes it. Even if he thinks the card itself is lame, I hope he takes the words within to heart, and remembers them always.

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If you’d like to see more card-making goodness, you must visit Sherry’s site and see what lovely cards she has for us to behold this week!

*You do not want to miss the 4th Get Crafty challenge, do you? Check out all the details here!*

Big reveal time already? I’m ready!

The first card I made was for a friend whose birthday is on November 6. I am not sure if I’m even going to see her on her birthday (she’s newly engaged and has just recently bought a house with her fiancé so I haven’t seen her since mid-August) so I think I will surprise her by mailing the card to her new house (I know just the person to get her home address from!).

When I first started out the card, I knew what paper I wanted to use. It’s from a new pack of paper I picked up last week at Wal*Mart (I did not need more paper but the sheets in the pack were so tempting! I was unable to resist). My love of symmetry and ribbon is pretty well known from the last two challenges, and I didn’t deviate from that. This is how I started:

I can’t stress enough how handy the dollar store is and has been for little embellishments—the brads, ribbon and the pen are all from the dollar store. The pink pen had a far more neon-y tinge than I was going for (it looks like a dusty rose from the outside) so I chopped it off and tried something different:

Rub-ons are great and I like how they turned out at the top of the card, but they are time consuming to apply. I need to start abbreviating what I want to spell out with them! What I love about the pink paper is it’s reversible: the other side has a slightly lighter shade of pink. I love reversible paper.

That’s card number one. I ended up making another for my brother who just celebrated his 21st birthday. I’ll be putting up the story of that card shortly.

I cannot believe that I’m about the share the final challenge of this quartet of challenges.

Sadly, I never got around to making a button for the Get Crafty challenge. Perhaps if my partner (and inspiration) in crime Sherry is interested, we can start another round of challenges after giving us a rest (and I’ll get my act together and make a button then). Sherry is in the midst of opening up her own etsy shop to share and sell her work so this might not the best time to start a challenge for this busy lady. If any of you are interested in suggesting challenges, please leave them in the comments and I will definitely get back to you about it.

For this final installment of the Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge, please find below the details you need to get started:

Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge
Challenge #4: Crafter’s Choice

The first three challenges focused on holidays and events that are widely celebrated and all the challenges have been to create a card. This challenge, as you may have guessed from the title, is your choice. Sherry had mentioned creating something that is 8 x 10 size-wise, but use that as a suggestion only (I will be attempting to make something that size myself). You know what? It doesn’t even have to be a paper-type craft! If you feel like presenting a knit product for your final craft, or a collage, or something that you refinished or painted, go for it! As Sherry reminded me, the whole point is to get crafty and you are welcome to do that in whatever way you wish! As usual, you are encouraged to use whatever materials you have on hand to make your creation, but you are also welcome to buy any materials you wish.

Due date: November 5, 2007. Please send a photograph of your creations to jummy.gettingcrafty@gmail.com if you would like it to be featured on this site. Please also post it on your own blog or website if you would like.

On this day, both Sherry and I will reveal our creations on our blogs and also share any of your creations that we have received.
If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments, and I’ll try to address them to the best of my ability.

I truly do feel like I am in school, and working at the last minute to get in an assignment! I mentioned that I would likely have to pull an all-nighter and the fact that I let the internet distract me meant I didn’t get down and creative until nearly midnight.

At 2:35am, I decided that the two cards I had created would have to do although I had ideas for a few more in my head. Over the next few weeks, I plan to take the time to use all those other supplies I mentioned in here in order to make a pretty card.

You’ll notice that both cards I made relied heavily on the cutting tools that are the bane of my existence. I still haven’t fully gotten into “freestyle” mode, where I cut things freehand with a pair of scissors; instead straight crisp edges rule my creations.

Card #1: Christmas reds and greens:

I first cut the red cardstock to the size I wanted and folded it for the card. I then stuck the striped paper along the bottom of the card. I applied the Christmas message using rub-ons. Rub-ons can add a lovely touch to your cards but they are a pain in the neck to use, not to mention time consuming. Either that or my rubbing technique could use some work. The green brad separating the words was put there to cover up some rub-on mishaps.

At this point, I thought the card was finished, but the card clearly told me that something was missing. It was too red. When I saw that I could cut the green textured (looks like corduroy!) cardstock in the opposite way to make a vertical ribbed effect, I knew that’s what I needed to cover up all the red in the card.

Unfortunately, during the gluing, I had a little mishap which I tried to clean with kleenex, leaving an attractive stain.

The same striped paper, cut the opposite way, was snipped into a small strip and saved the day. Now I think the card wouldn’t have looked quite complete without the top strip.

Card #2: Winter
I knew my second card would be predominantly blue, white and silver because I loved my textured blue cardstock and I had a fair bit of winter themed paper.

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Good morning!

It’s not quite time to reveal the results of the second challenge, but in the meantime I thought I should let you know what the next challenge is. For those keeping track at home, this is the third installment of the Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge. Here are the details you need to get started:

Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge
Challenge #3: The Birthday Card
The first two challenges focused on upcoming holidays that are widely celebrated and have specific colours and images associated with them (these challenges had no restrictions though: you were welcome to think outside traditional colour schemes). Birthdays are similar in that there are images traditionally associated with them—cake, balloons, candles, presents—but the best cards that I’ve ever received are ones that speak to me as a person, as Jummy, not just as another person celebrating a birthday. If a friend or family member has a birthday coming up, here is your chance to create a card that evokes just the emotion you want to evoke, and relates to the recipient’s particular likes and dislikes, any inside jokes you may have or the words that you think they need to hear at this point in their life. You can tailor the card to its recipient in all aspects, from the cover image to the words within (or on the outside).

As before, you are encouraged to use whatever materials you have on hand to make this card, but you are also welcome to buy any materials you need to create your card.

It just so happens that it is my brother’s birthday on Friday, so the timing of this challenge couldn’t be better.

Due date: October 29, 2007. Please send a photograph of your creations to jummy.gettingcrafty@gmail.com if you would like it to be featured on this site. Please also post it on your own blog or website if you would like.

On this day, both Sherry and I will reveal our creations on our blogs and also share any of your creations that we have received.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments, and I’ll try to address them to the best of my ability.

In roughly twelve hours I’ll be unveiling my results for the second Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge. This challenge desperately needs a cute little banner and that will be my bonus project for this week. The actual challenge this time around was to create a Christmas card. The timeline for this project was the same as the last, one week.

Last time, I bought the materials I needed soon after (or was it shortly before—the joys of having inside information meant I could get started earlier!) the challenge was announced, then thought about possible ideas without actually doing anything concrete throughout the week. Even so, ideas were welcome to float into my mind and stay a while. By contrast, this week flew by and while I kept reminding myself to make some time to work on the card, my brain was never in a position to do much brainstorming. Instead, not unlike back when I was in university, I will pull an “all-nighter” (which is thankfully much shorter nowadays due to my advanced age and inability to function with little to no sleep) and hope that something worthy comes of it.

I did manage to do one thing constructive towards my challenge yesterday: I gathered up all my Christmas-themed materials that I had at home:

My stash includes the following:

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From the results of yesterday’s challenge (see here, here or here), it’s clear that by choosing a theme (such a Halloween), and an item such as a card, you can still come up with a number of very different interpretations, depending on the person creating. That is what makes it so fun: imaginations can still run wild. For someone like me, who finds having too many choices overwhelming, a starting point is a definite help.

How is the second challenge coming along for you? This challenge will be harder I suspect, because for those who celebrate Christmas, Christmas means so many different things: winter activities, hot drinks and a roaring fire, loud family get togethers, with lots of food and laughter. Perhaps Christmas is a more contemplative time, where thoughts of goodwill towards others and peace on earth fill your mind. If you are Christian, Christmas may cause you to think deeply about the special birth that is celebrated during that time. Whatever your interpretation of Christmas time, I hope you enjoy the challenge of trying to capture it in your card. You may find that Christmas means too many different things to you that you have to make a couple of different cards to showcase these things. Don’t hesitate–go for it!

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While I was at the local dollar store a couple of days ago, I came across the following which I may or may not use for challenge number two (details here):

There were also Christmas stocking brads but they were green and I felt I had enough of that colour already. If they had been red I would have grabbed them for sure.

Good morning!

Have you by chance stopped by to see what we came up with for the first ever Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge (details here)? Well I’m happy to say that we didn’t disappoint: procrastination is the name of my game, but knowing that others are expecting me to do my part allowed me to complete the challenge.

Since Halloween isn’t really my thing, I didn’t want to get carried away purchasing materials for the craft. I went to the local dollar store and bought three things:

a package of six halloween brads

some halloween confetti in four shapes (cats, bats, pumpkins and spiders)

a small package of ribbon with writing and halloween images on them

I had some black paper at home, and thought I had seen some orange paper around, so my plan was to make a dramatic card that would be predominantly orange and black.

I ended up making two cards:
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Are you taking part in our challenge? You only have one more day to complete it so get crafting! Whip up a Halloween card (or two) using whatever materials you’d like and please feel free to post a picture of what you came up with on your blog, or send it to me to post (jummy.gettingcrafty[@]gmail.com). I wish I could say that I have been working on a card all week, since last Sunday, but the truth is I spent much of the week thinking about different things I could try, and didn’t actually stick anything together until last night. I still spend too much time thinking rather than doing. Some days I would look at my materials and place things, trying to imagine without actually doing anything permanent. I threw caution to the wind last night and really got into it and while I like what I came up with, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t think of them all day today at work and either end up adding to it, or starting completely from scratch. But that’s the fun in this creativity thing: exploring your ideas without fear.

Sherry, Emma and I will be revealing our cards tomorrow so stay tuned.

If you just don’t have the time to work on this challenge, don’t worry because I’m here to announce the second challenge! That’s right: no resting is allowed between challenges. We must keep the momentum going at all costs! Like the first challenge, you will have one week to complete it. Looking for details? Here you go:

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Thanks to faithful reader Sherry, we now have a challenge in place for all of you who find yourself in the following situation:

You have enough paper, embellishments and other craft materials to sink a ship, yet you continue to buy more. You’ve lost track of exactly what you have and where it is, and on the rare occasion that you decide to organize things, you invariably discover that you’re the proud owner of five packages of green paper (which you may never use). Not only do you have more crafting supplies than you know what to do with, you haven’t been feeling motivated of late to do anything with it (except collect more of it).

Well stop your needless collecting and fretting because Ready Set Craft! - The Get Crafty Challenge (name subject to change) is here!

The purpose of this challenge is to:

• encourage you to get crafting
• allow you to explore your creativity
• give you a starting point (since many of us have trouble starting because there are just too many choices out there!)
• serve as a catalyst: today you master crafts, tomorrow your junk drawer, next week the world!

Sherry has come up with four challenges for us already! However, if you’re as much of a novice crafter as I am, having too much choice at one time is daunting, so we’ll do them one by one. Ready for your mission?

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