My crafting hasn’t really progressed much since my last post. I’ve been wanting to work on something, but then I can’t think of something that I really want to work on. At most I’ve made a few envelopes, but that’s not quite as creative as other things.

Envelopes are always something to fall back on when I can’t come up with something else to work on. I don’t go overboard with them, so it’s just about picking the right papers and template, and then cutting and assembling each one. It’s nice to at least have a straightforward process that doesn’t require much thinking for each item.

I’ve mostly been making tiny envelopes lately, for my eBay sales (I include loose stickers inside a handmade envelope, as an extra gift), as well as a few that I’ve listed on my Etsy store. We’ll see how the latter go, especially with how little promotion I do for my store.

Until I’m swept up into a new project, I’ve also been reorganizing my craft room a bit. I have way too much stuff in there, so I’ve been sorting through just about everything and purging as much as I can. I think it started with the realization that I’m really drawn to crafting with paper, moreso than with fabric or yarn or whatever else. So I started picking out fabrics and yarns and other non-papery things that I figured I probably wouldn’t use. The next step was weeding out the paper crafting items I wasn’t as into anymore.

Parts of my craft room look a bit better for now, like my bookcase and under my desk, but now I’ve made a bigger mess with all the extras to get rid of. I’m hoping to bring some to the next South Bay Craft Group meeting, but there’s way too much to do in one pass.

So, as I’ve done before, I’d like to offer the extras to anyone reading this. If you want a Priority Mail flat rate box full of as much scrapbook paper as I can fit, let me know. I have enough paper to ship several of those, and I can also do one with yarn and maybe another with miscellaneous stuff. I only ask that you pay for the postage to ship it to you (about $9).

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been up to much crafting as of late. Things have been a bit busy around here lately, as I’ve been working on switching jobs at my company (finally falling into place!) and also looking for a new place to live (close, but still looking). This hasn’t exactly left me with much energy, let alone much interest in the things I sometimes do for fun, especially when things didn’t seem to be going my way or weren’t very clear.

I won’t get all philosophical about this all, going on about whether or not I missed crafting, or whatever else. Just that I think I’m starting to get back into it gradually, working on an occasional project here or there. Make a few envelopes, put together a few cards.

That said, I know that a lot will be going on in the next month or two, so I will probably not be posting tons of projects. But that’s ok.

 

(These were made for a swap with the color scheme of yellow, black, and white.)

Oh, and for what it’s worth, it seems like everyone liked the top envelope in my last entry’s photo. That one is actually made with a “baby” envelope template from Paper Source, so it looks like they created a good style.

Just a quick poll of sorts:

Which style do you like better? The top one fits a business card-sized card, and the bottom one has a card that is slightly taller and less wide.

I want to make some sets like this, but I’m trying to decide which way to go.

We just had our March meeting of the South Bay Craft Group this week, and the workshop I taught went pretty well. I showed how to make the “quilted washi” cards I mentioned in my last post, based on a kit by Hanko Designs.

I brought a few examples that I’d made beforehand (see below), including a kimono card which I suggested people follow along with. There were some variations, including simplified hearts and gifts and such, but all of the resulting cards turned out pretty well.

 

I made up a quick worksheet for the class, and when I get a chance, I’m going to fix it up and post a PDF online somewhere. I have a few other info sheets for past workshops, including one on envelope-making, and I thought it might be worth sharing online if they’ll get people to try out a new craft or technique.

Towards the end of the meeting, I also did a brief “rerun” of the February workshop, which was on how to carve your own stamps. A few of our members had missed the original class, but definitely were interested in learning, so we might do a repeat of it at some point. The original class was pretty fun, since everyone got to choose their own image and take something home with them that they could reuse for other projects.

Besides preparing for craft workshops, I’ve been doing a few swaps via Swap-Bot, mostly just to keep myself making stuff, especially while dealing with a bunch of work and health things lately. It seems like most of the swaps are for small items, like the matchboxes that seem to be so popular lately. I can definitely understand why, since it’s so easy to decorate a small box like that, and if you don’t like how it turns out, you can just decorate another. I think the hard part is finding things small enough to fit inside.

These are two of the purely matchbox swaps I did, for a “kawaii” (cute in Japanese) one and a black and white one:

I’ve also made a few more of my matchbox pin sets, for both swaps and for selling on my Etsy shop. Here are the latest ones:

The first one was for a swap (following the blue and green theme for the March Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama), and the second two were posted to Etsy. My favorite of the three was the bunny one, since it’s very in tune with spring, which I’m really looking forward to, especially after having some warmer days teasing us with the chance of spring. Not surprisingly though, the bunny set sold within only two days of going up on my Etsy shop! I want to put a few more together this weekend, mostly because it’s fun to play with different color combinations, and the spring colors are really so nice right now.

Aside from teaching a workshop on stamp carving at last month’s South Bay Craft Group meeting, I haven’t been doing a great deal of crafting. I made a few stamps in preparation, using images from some new stamp books I bought (check My Library for the specific titles). And I created a few square collage postcards, including one for an upcoming color-themed swap, but nothing major otherwise.

However, I’ve been starting to prepare for next month’s workshop, which will be on “washi paper quilting,” based on these kits from Hanko Designs. I’ve done a few of these pieces before, but the idea is that you combine washi paper, cardboard, and thin sponge to create a padded or quilted effect. I’ve been trying to find a pattern that will be easy enough for a first-time project in a class format. I was looking at the Hanko Designs page and saw mention of “kimekomi,” which they said is a traditional Japanese art (or craft?) that inspired their kits, so I started searching for that online.

What I found about kimekomi seemed to mainly refer to 3-dimensional dolls that use fabric and padding, with many layers to add dimension (check out this site’s examples). They’re quite beautiful, but not entirely like the 2-dimensional pieces you can make with the kit. Then I remembered having seen some intricate 2D pieces like this in a local Japanese arts store, so I tried looking for that. Let me tell you, if you don’t know the exact term for something, using general but related terms takes awhile to get anywhere! But I eventually found what I was looking for.

Kurumie, or oshie, is another traditional Japanese art (or craft?) form that uses padded pieces of fabric or paper, but in 2D form. Some of them are quite intricate, like these kit examples, with many complex pieces and layering. The idea is still the same as the Hanko Design kits though. You start with a sturdy base, add some padding (cotton or sponge), and then wrap fabric or paper around it, finally assembling everything to create an overall picture. Some of them even have a bit of embroidery or painted areas on them, to add even more detail.

Anyway, I’ve been looking at so many web sites to find as much as I can about this art, but there isn’t a whole lot out there, especially about the history. It’s really great to discover things like this though, to see where certain creative forms come from and what from the past inspires people in the present. I’m going to continue to look into this as I work on my class examples, but I just wanted to share a bit of this in the meantime.

If you’re interested, I’ve bookmarked a bunch of kurumie links and I would highly recommend the Hanko Designs kits (and their other items) if you want to try your hand at it.