One of the things that comes with having a full-time job again is that I only have so much free time outside of work. Since that time is so limited, I’ve had to be a lot more careful about how I spend it, including including what sort of events you choose to attend and what projects I can commit to and actually complete. Having spent a year and a half taking time off between jobs, I’m definitely having to re-learn this, especially since I’ve picked up a number of hobbies and interests in that time.

When I wasn’t working, going to crafty events was something I felt I almost had to do, whether it was a craft group meeting or a craft fair. I needed some good social things to do, and so whenever I found an event, I went. Now though, I’m having to set limits for myself, based on the time and energy involved in attending anything. I’ve had to pass on a few recent crafting events, even though there were some I initially wanted to attend.

Similarly, I’ve had to limit myself when it comes to craft projects, despite finding plenty of new things I’d love to try. I haven’t really worked on much since my last post, beyond a silly Halloween costume and a few swaps I got involved in despite telling myself I wouldn’t.

I just finished up my items for a Japanese-themed swap on Craftster, and here are a few photos:

The first is a padded or “quilted” kimono art piece, made using chipboard, thin layers of foam, and various papers, plus plenty of glue. I got the supplies as part of a kit from Hanko Designs, and it was actually a lot easier to do than I thought. Some of my measurements were a bit off, but I thing it turned out all right.

The box was originally going to be decoupaged, but then I didn’t feel like doing that after all, so I just painted it. I tried to replicate a very delicate design I found on a piece of origami paper, but it was a lot harder to do than I thought. It takes a lot of patience and a steady hand, and I wasn’t doing too well on either of those. I think it still looks all right though.

And, of course, the final item was one of my standard envelope and card sets, made using origami paper in various colors. A nice tiny item to include, and there’ll be a few store-bought items included as well.

I actually received my swap items from my partner already, and unfortunately, there seemed to be some misunderstanding about what is Japanese and what is Chinese. My partner sent some interesting items, but they were mainly Chinese in pattern and design. That’s ok, but not really my thing.

There were also some issues with the organization of the swap overall, so my disappointment in Craftster swaps continues. As much as I like that the site exists, the swaps are hard to organize and follow and I almost never am satisfied with how they turn out. As a result, I think I’m going to give up on the site, especially swaps there, for the time being. I never post there anyway, so it’s not a big deal, but still disappointing that it has come to this.

I have one more swap to finish up by next week, but this one is a one-on-one swap with another crafter who participated in some of the Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama swaps. I love the color themed swaps there, and the organizers are great, but I keep missing the sign-up deadlines lately. Fortunately, I received a message from Helena, who had also missed the deadline, asking if I’d be interested in a direct swap. We’re following the same color themes as everyone else, but with a little more knowledge of who we’re swapping with.

After this swap though, I think I’m through for awhile. Lately, whenever I sign up for a swap, I go through this minor freak-out about whether or not I’ll be able to make the deadline. It’s mostly due to not having any good ideas about what to make, though usually I figure something out and manage to finish in time. For now though, I’d rather do without the pressure and just take it easy. I don’t know how much I’ll post here as a result, but I will try to keep it up as much as I can.

Man, this going back to work thing has been kicking my ass in a major way! Well, at least when it comes to trying to do things when I have some free time. On weekdays, my brain seems to have turned to mush by the time I arrive home, and I’m still working on pushing myself to do fun things on weekends. We’ll see if this keeps up though, but I’m trying to be crafty, I really am.

On Labor Day, I got together with Amytha and some other crafty friends to help her prepare some Halloween decorations for a party she’s going to throw. I mostly worked on painting a cardboard cutout of a scary clown, as part of a gory circus theme, and it was fun to just dive in and go to town with a paintbrush. There’s more work to be done, so we may have to gather again sometime before Halloween.

The painting continued at our September South Bay Craft Group meeting, with a demonstration on decoupaging wooden boxes, led by Amytha. Painting was optional, of course, but I thought the cut-outs I chose would look better on color than on plain wood. Here are a few photos of what I created:

Here are a few more photos of the box, if you’re interested.

Otherwise, I’ve mostly been buying more craft supplies I really don’t need. Amytha and I went to a rubber stamp show in San Jose, and I left with a pile of more origami paper (for making small envelopes) and some Japanese stickers from Hanko Designs. I bought some supplies to make some of these cotton webbing keychains, though I have yet to actually try to make one. I just haven’t felt like sewing much lately.

Instead of sewing, I really want to work on another cross-stitch or embroidery project, even if it takes awhile to complete. I have plenty of floss and various pieces of Aida fabric, so it all comes down to the pattern, which is the most difficult part of it all. I’d rather not create my own design, just due to the extra work, but then everything I see at local stores is just awful. I’ve lamented about this before, but there really needs to be a total revival of cross-stitch, and with better designs than the crap that’s out there now. There are plenty of cool things being crafted these days (just look at all the stuff on Craftster), but not enough in cross-stitch patterns. I don’t think it’s because there’s anything inherent about cross-stitch that prevents it, but someone needs to get the ball rolling, and with something more than just phrases. I want images and colors, people!

Anyway, enough ranting for now. I’ll just have to work on my own patterns in the meantime, and I’ll make sure to post anything I come up with. I’ve got some swaps to work on in the meantime though…

Before I go, I just want to thank Alicia at Posie Gets Cozy for linking to me this week. I’ve noticed a huge spike in my traffic, with lots of referrals from her site. Thanks to her and hello to anyone coming from there!

The cross-stitch demo I gave last week at the South Bay Craft Group meeting went all right. It’s a bit hard to show something that is so small, so I used a piece of plastic canvas and some yarn to demonstrate how to do the stitches. After a bit of explanation, everyone went at it and asked me questions when they ran into trouble.

I have to admit that I was feeling a bit bored with cross-stitch that night, most likely brought on from looking through so many bland patterns in preparation for the class. We used some free starter kits that I got from DMC, all with simple, but somewhat boring flower designs to them. Their site offers a few others, but there isn’t much variety. I think if I give this demonstration again sometime, I’ll make sure to use more interesting designs, like these abstract art patterns.

I guess I’m feeling a bit stuck in the crafting area overall lately, partly due to my recently begun job search. I think it’s about time to get back into the workforce, so I’ve been busy fixing up my resume and putting together a web portfolio, as well as talking to a few headhunters and HR people. All of this takes quite a bit of energy, and I don’t feel like doing much creative afterwards. I’m sure it’ll only be more of a struggle once I’m working again, so this is quite frustrating.

I will say that I’ve still been looking for new project ideas though. Last week I was searching online for hours to find Japanese sites about carving stamps, and found so many good resources, none of which I can read. I started with some new Japanese books on the subject, and eventually figured out the phrase for carving stamps (it refers to using rubber erasers as the carving base). I ended up with lots of good bookmarks, but never carved any of my own stamps after that.

And then last night, I started browsing Etsy for things I might like to buy, but it turned into gathering ideas for my own projects. I went from wanting to learn how to make mosaics to thinking about creating my own jewelry (which I don’t really even wear), and then ended up feeling like painting. And yet I didn’t make very much when I was through, and everything I’ve tried today just didn’t seem to be quite right. Maybe I just need to do something else for a little bit, and a new project will come to me. Sometimes the things you look for the most come out of nowhere when you stop actively looking for them.

Phew! I made it through the heat ok for the most part. I think my brain may have melted a bit, but I’m starting to get back to normal so far, and fortunately the weather should be a lot nicer for awhile.

I’ve knocked out a few of the swaps that I had due, though I realize I didn’t take any photos of them before packaging them up. Two were varieties of paper, and since they weren’t handmade by me, I didn’t feel as compelled to photograph them. A third swap was for items that correspond to the five senses, and I did include a print of some digital artwork and a wrapped postcard, but nothing handmade otherwise.

Now, my focus is on my package for the August round of Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama, and it’s been fun to work on so far. Usually, there are one or two theme colors, but this month, it’s been bumped up to six to make a rainbow effect: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. It’s nice to expand a bit, but then it makes me want to include more items, just to cover all of the colors.

For my handmade items, I decided to stick with paper, mostly because I didn’t feel like sewing, and I made an envelope/card set (the envelopes are primary to me, what can I say?) and more “square” postcards.

I’m really pleased with how the postcards turned out, and I’ve received a lot of nice comments from people who viewed the scans on Flickr. They’re really pretty easy to make, only requiring paper scraps large enough to cut 1-inch squares from, a bit of glue, and a postcard (4×6 inches) to paste the squares onto. I have a thing about squares, I guess, or so you’d think looking through some of my previous work. Maybe too easy, but they’re simple enough to work with.

Speaking of squares, I attended a scrapbooking workshop at the library last night, where we created the 6×6-inch accordion books. It wasn’t too difficult to follow, especially with all the components provided, but it did feel a bit too specific for me. There’s a follow-up session next week, when we’ll start decorating the books, and it seems that there is an exact order of different layouts in mind for us to create. Not that I don’t mind the occasional kit or guided instruction, but I like to have a bit more openness for projects like this. I’m more interested in learning techniques from others than in replicating the exact project they already made many times before. At the very least, now I know how to make a book like this, even if I don’t use the one I made for anything in particular.

Along the lines of teaching classes, I still need to prepare for giving a cross-stitch demo at next week’s South Bay Craft Group meeting. I have the basic supplies, but I have to figure out how to demonstrate it all, especially with something so small. Maybe everyone will have to gather around and look over me as I work, though I’m going to see if I can find some diagrams that I can use. It should be interesting at least.

Last night’s South Bay Stampers meeting was nice, though there were only two people there: Khris, the organizer, and myself. It would have been nice if more people had attended, but I didn’t mind a quiet evening of playing with stamp supplies.

I did bring my wrapped postcards to the meeting, though I wasn’t as interested as working on them. The finished pieces didn’t really turn out as well as I’d hoped, but I got to experiment with different inks and embossing powders, as well as try out chalks for the first time. I think I want to buy some chalks of my own sometime, though the ones I want aren’t inexpensive. Here are the cards though:

Khris and I ended up talking more about trying to get people involved in and attending craft groups, and how we’ve both found it to be somewhat difficult. We have all sorts of theories on it, but nothing that stands out as the most accurate. A new suggestion I had was that perhaps it’s a bit intimidating to go to a new group, where you don’t know anyone and are going to work on projects in front of the other members. I can definitely understand this, having had the same concerns when I first attended a South Bay Craft Group meeting, but I soon found that the attendees were all pretty laidback and it was definitely a relaxing environment. Purely social, with a bit of educational curiosity mixed in, and not a bit of pressure to follow along or work on anything in particular.

I’m not sure what it’ll take to crack this problem, but I have a feeling that word of mouth will have a role. We’ve definitely had a number of evenings when friends of regular members appear and then begin to become regulars themselves. And the social crafting activities I’ve participated in outside of these meetings, though with people I’ve met at them, seem to happen a lot more easily, since there’s some familiarity and a social network already established.

Related to this, my Saturday afternoon was spent with Amytha, who founded the South Bay Craft Group. After letting her rummage through my excess craft supplies, we drove up to parts of Los Altos and Palo Alto to stop by a few estate sales. I think it was my first time attending an estate sale, and there’s definitely a creepy, morbid sort of air to the idea of walking through the home of someone who has died and poking through their belongings, with the aim to take some home with you. Not disturbing enough to keep me from going to others, but still kind of sad.

Amytha bought a few things, including a few vintage, women’s hats (40s/50s era?), and then we headed over to the Los Altos Library to take part in a t-shirt alteration workshop organized by Sarah, the teen librarian there. It was inspired by the book Generation T and though it was geared towards teens, it was fun. I ended up using an old sweater, embroidery floss, and a few buttons to make a three-eyed monster plush toy. It was hard to embroider through knitted material, and we didn’t have any stuffing on hand, but I made do with what I had and I like how it turned out: