As you can tell, my craft projects have become few and far between these days, but I’ve had a few little things I’ve worked on in the last two months.

In November and December, I went against my previous decision to quit swaps for a bit, and signed up for a few of the final Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama swaps. I really liked the color combinations, and shopping for other people is fun. Here’s what I came up with for the two swaps:

One of the swap requirements is to include one handmade item, so I made a little card/envelope set for the November swap, and then for the December swap, I put together one of my square collage postcards.

Sadly, the packages I got through these swaps didn’t exactly knock my socks off, so to speak, but oh well. At least I enjoyed putting them together and making my swap partners happy.

Shortly after the second swap, I joined in on a bit of card- and envelope-making at this month’s South Bay Craft Group meeting. I don’t send out holiday cards, so I just made some general ones, based on a cute postcard I have. And some envelopes of course. The paper was just too lovely to pass up.

And the most recent craft project was a shared one for a work holiday party that I helped to organize. We decided to decorate gingerbread cookies as the main event, and of course we had to have a contest for it, complete with varied categories and matching trophies. Our little trophy team came up with these four trophies during two long nights after work hours. It was a lot of fun and I think everyone who attended the party liked them as well.

I don’t really celebrate the holidays, but if you do, here’s a great project related to gift-giving:

It might look like I haven’t been doing much of anything crafty in the last few months, but that’s not entirely true. (It’s not entirely false either though.)

I’ve been pretty busy at work in the last few months, and the only crafting I did for awhile was participating in craft group meeting projects or making mini envelopes for my eBay auctions. That changed last month though, after a huge Halloween crafting project developed.

So, I haven’t dressed up for Halloween much in the last decade or so, and certainly not at work. However, when I found out that it’s a big deal at my new job, especially within my group, I thought I’d at least give it a try. My team talked about dressing up in a common theme, and eventually we (mostly) agreed upon one theme. One of my co-workers and I took this project on fully, and started coming up with rough sketches and even creating a prototype costume to see if it would actually work out.

After the first version worked well enough and the whole team seemed to like it, we went shopping and set up a few sewing sessions with the team. Ultimately, it was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun (with only occasional frustrations ), and in the end we made 6 whole costumes from scratch and helped put together a 7th costume from purchased items. Here are a few photos of the final result:

I hadn’t sewn for awhile, but I am definitely thinking about doing a bit more. But may after I recover from these, and hopefully not with any ironing board fabric or much felt!

YUZEN wooden clothes pins
Originally uploaded by karaku*

Aren’t these gorgeous?

You can buy these and other handmade items from the creator at her Etsy store.

Sadly, there’s still not much crafting going on around these parts. At most, I’ve occasionally making up batches of little envelopes for my eBay auctions, and looking through the occasional craft magazine, but I haven’t been feeling much motivation to actually come up with a new project.

I’m ok with it, for the most part, though I’m aware that this blog is collecting quite a bit of dust in the process. I’ve had some occasional “pokes” for more posts, though in more indirect ways than that sounds. I get the occasional “tag” with some topic to post about, but it’s usually on personal stuff, like weird things about myself. I’ve never really wanted to post that sort of thing here, though I’m sorry to disappoint them.

I guess I’m more drawn to doing things in person now, whether it’s talking about myself (oh, the weirdness) or crafting (if I ever do that). Which is why I end up crafting only when I go to craft group meetings or am invited to a craft day at a friend’s apartment. I was actually talking to someone at work about arranging a crafting night for a few colleagues, though I still need to find out if anyone would mind us using a conference room for that.

Speaking of craft meetings, the September meeting of the South Bay Craft Group is coming up next Wednesday, and we’re going to make lip balm, as taught by one of our regular members. I remember wanting to try that at some point, but never did get around to it. That’s probably a good thing, just from the amount of supplies it involves, and I’ve spent plenty of money on other craft supplies as it is. Anyway, if you’re in or near the San Jose area, please stop by.