I seem to go through these phases of being very interested in a particular craft or material, during which I immerse myself in everything about that craft or material. Sometimes, I create some nice projects as a result of these phases, but they’re often pretty short-lived, and then I move onto the next thing that catches my eye. The worst phases are when I buy up a bunch of supplies and then never get around to making the thing I wanted to make in the first place. (That doesn’t happen as much as it used to, and at least I usually come back to them later.)

After a brief interest in making keychains that never went anywhere, I moved on to cross-stitch and embroidery projects again, thinking that I might work on so many stitching projects that I’d get sick of it. Of course, I only finished one small project and bought a few books, before promptly losing interest in it (for a bit, at least). And now it’s clear that the next big thing for me is paper (again).

I can’t remember exactly what sparked my interest this time, but lately, I’ve been very drawn to any sort of Japanese paper, especially the large sheets of chiyogami (yuzen) washi. They’re really beautiful, made with a special sort of silkscreening process, and often have a little bit of metallic color to them. There are a few local stores that carry both the large sheets of this paper and packages of it in origami-sized squares, so I’ve been doing a little shopping around here. I’ve found some good sources online as well.

• Paper Jade - A nice selection of sheets and packages, good photos of the items, and the service was amazingly fast and good!
• Paper Mojo - Gorgeous sheets of Japanese and other specialty papers.
• eBay - I found a lot of sellers by searching for yuzen, chiyogami, and washi.

I’m going to use some of the papers for envelopes, collages, and for another quilted kimono piece, but here’s something different that I put together earlier tonight:

(More photos here.)

The matchboxes are fun to make, since they’re so small and simple. And the badges were done with a Hello Kitty toy badge maker I’ve had for a bit but haven’t used for awhile. I’m going to make more and then take some of these to the employee craft fair next month, though I’m not sure if they’ll get any interest. I figure I can always put them up on my Etsy store if they don’t sell. I like them though.