I am really not feeling the crafty thing this week, and today has been the worst so far. It feels like everything I touch today, at least craft-wise, is bound to turn out wrong.

Like I mentioned the other day, I have a few swaps and a birthday gift to get out by July, and I’ve been collecting items for them all. I just need to finish the handmade items, so yesterday I cut out and pressed a bunch of fabric to make several tote bags and zippered pouches for them all. I had some trouble getting the sizing right, but it eventually got done.

This morning, I had the sudden realization that I should really get a few things mailed out today, due to the long weekend. As soon as I got dressed, I started sewing away, starting with a tote bag for my sister’s birthday. I should have been good to go, what with everything ready from yesterday, but it went so poorly. I ended up with crooked seams, holes where there shouldn’t have been, and slight imperfections everything that were so glaring to me. I almost ripped it all apart at that point, but I just left it and walked away. Eventually, it was fixed for the most part by folding the top over like a cuff and sewing over that.

I took a break and worked on a few other things, but I decided to scale back a bit on my swaps. One handsewn item per swap is probably good enough, and the recipients will understand if they’re not immaculately done. They’re not meant to be as good as store-bought, especially since I’m not very experienced with sewing yet, and besides, the results aren’t that horrible.

That said, I think I might take a break from the rest of the sewing for now. I have the whole weekend to work on everything and with how poorly things have gone so far, I don’t want to ruin the rest of the day for myself. It’s beautiful outside and I want to enjoy this great weather before it gets too hot again. I’ll leave you with some more “work in progress” and finished project images.

I’ve been trying to finish up final classwork as the semester winds down, so I haven’t had as much time for any major craft projects over the last few weeks. It doesn’t help that I hurt my back while lugging my laptop to class (to work on digital art), so I’ve been trying not to sit for too long since that makes it worse. That doesn’t really work well with any sort of crafting unless I want to stitch while pacing around the apartment or down the street.

In between all the classwork and back pain though, I’ve started getting into stamping again, little by little. I think going to the South Bay Stampers meeting really got me going, especially since I got to poke around all of the supplies in the studio we met in.

I decided to give heat embossing a try first, since we’re going to have a demo at our next craft group meeting. I had actually bought a heat gun and embossing powder several years ago, but I never had the time to actually try it out for myself. I eventually sold off these items, so I had to buy all new ones this time around. Here’s my first go at it:

Not perfect, but a good first try. I’m not sure what caused the little pocks (air bubbles?) in the surface, but it might have been a problem with ink coverage. It was a lot easier than I thought to do it, but it looks like it’ll take more work to improve how I do it.

I’ve been stopping by the few stamp stores in the area (Stamp On Over and Only the Best mainly) on and off to look at what stamps and supplies are out there these days. The basic supplies are fine, but I haven’t found very many stamp images that I like enough to buy. I even stopped by a used stamp sale at one of the “crafter’s malls” nearby, but only left with a vintage stitching kit I found inside the rest of the store. I think I need to try making more of my own instead, and here are a couple I carved the other day, after finding a neat popsicle pattern on some scrapbook paper:

Otherwise, I’ve only been making a few envelopes here and there, and just trying not to overdo it with my back. Hopefully it won’t be hurting me too much longer, because I really need to get going on a bunch of swaps I signed up for. I sent off my end of an envelope swaps I organized on Craftster, but now I have three color-themed swaps and a handmade postcard swap (via Swap-Bot and Flickr) to get going by the first week of July. I’ve done a bit of shopping for the color theme ones, but they all require handmade items, and all I’ve put together so far are these envelope sets:

I need to get some sewing done and pack everything up, as soon as I finish one last class assignment. The heat is on though, since I already received my things from my partner in the Turquoise Swap. Jen, the organizer, sent me some really lovely things, including cards she designed herself and some actual turquoise earrings:

I only hope I can whip up something that my partners will like just as much as I’ve liked what I received so far.

On Friday, I decided to check out the first meeting of a brand new craft group in San Jose that’s entirely dedicated to rubber stamping. I wasn’t sure about going at first, but I’m glad that I did, mostly to have met more crafters in the area.

The South Bay Stampers meeting was held at a very cool paper arts studio called A Work of Heart, which I had intended to visit before but never had. The space was a bit messy, but it was full of all sorts of rubber stamp and paper supplies, including stamps, inks, diecut machines, adhesives, and a lot more. They apparently teach classes and rent the space out for parties and paper crafters.

Although there were only three of us in attendance, it made for a nice evening, with each of us working on various projects and chatting. I poked around the supplies a bit and then made envelopes for the rest of the time, spending most of my time talking to Khris, the organizer, about various crafty things. Khris teaches classes at the studio and has various crafty business ventures as well, and it was really great to hear about what it’s like. It definitely made me think about trying it out for myself (someday). We also talked about various craft blogs and organizing craft fairs, and I invited her to check out the South Bay Craft Group.

I ended up spending nearly 3 hours there and I had a pretty good time, so I’ll definitely be going to the next meeting. Hopefully we can get more people interested in joining the group and attending as well. Khris and I talked about this being a major issue in this area, that there are plenty of crafters out there, but not many get involved in groups, even if it’s totally casual and social. I’m not sure what the reason is (too tired? don’t know about groups? don’t care? too lazy?), but I’d love to figure it out. It’s frustrating because it seems like I always hear about cool crafty things happening up in San Francisco or thereabouts, but not often down here. I don’t mind driving up there sometimes, but it’s nearly 2 hours round trip, so I don’t want to do it all the time. My current thinking, though, is that if people actually organized and attended events down here in the South Bay, that interest would group and end up perpetuating itself. It’ll just take a bit of work to try and get to that point.

My attempts at learning to knit are on hold for the time being, as I just got too frustrated with the whole experience for now. I think I was doing it right for the most part, but all the stitches were too tight and everything kept slipping off of the needles. I’ll come back to it eventually, but in the meantime, I’ve tried to jumpstart my craftiness with a bit of embroidery and sewing.

After the knitting thing didn’t seem to be working, I dug around my stash to find something I could actually do and feel good about doing. I found a kit from the DMC Linea series and decided to go with that. Basically, you get a fabric base item (purse, pillow cover) with a pattern already printed on, and then you can pick your own colors and stitch it all out. I ended up choosing some pinks and ended up with this after a few hours:

I think this series is DMC’s attempt to get a younger, more “hip” crowd into embroidery, which is fine by me, especially because it’s so easy to do and the kits are pretty nice. I don’t know if they’ve done well, but I know they look a lot better than the usual embroidery kits you find in the same aisle. It’s kind of depressing to look through all the same old designs of clothes-wearing teddy bears, fairy-filled fantasy scenes, and awful, inspirational quotes, so when I saw these, I was pretty pleased. I hope to work on a few more of these, and then move on to some of my own designs.

Originally, I was thinking that I’d buy some readymade items and embroider them, but after looking through some newly acquired craft books and fiddling around with my sewing machine, I think I might make some of my own from scratch. Awhile ago, I’d emailed Sarah of Hip to Piece Squares about how she makes her tote bags (aren’t they all just gorgeous?!), since I couldn’t find any good patterns elsewhere, and she offered a lengthy set of instructions to get me going. I put off trying it out for awhile, but after making a zippered pouch at our last South Bay Craft Group meeting, I was able to figure it out. The approach isn’t too different really, with one using handles and the other a zipper.

I messed up on a few bits and even had to rip out some stitches at one point, but I like it as a first try. I even made a little zippered pouch to go with it!

I’ve also been trying to catch up on old projects and intended projects lately, and it feels so good to get them done. First, I finally washed and ironed a major embroidery piece that I worked on for months and that is a very belated wedding present for a good friend. (No photos yet, but after it’s been framed and delivered, I’ll post some.) And then I sewed up a pillowcase that I had intended as a Christmas gift for my sister. It was so much easier than I thought:

She’s attending my alma mater and is a lot more “rah rah” than I ever was, so I thought this would be perfect for her. We’ll see what she says when it arrives though.

Anyway, I feel so much better having worked on all of these projects now. It’s just no fun being in between projects, so I’m hoping to keep up this momentum and move on to other things. It’ll help, considering that I have a bunch of swaps on Swap Bot to work on over the next month or two!