I haven’t been working any further on my cross-stitch project in the last weeks, though I definitely wanted to. I even brought it with me on a little trip up to San Francisco, but it sat in its bag the whole time.

The main reason is that I’m going to be moving soon, so I’ve been focusing a lot of my energy on finding a place (done!), sorting through my things, and packing everything up in boxes. I’m going to moving to a smaller place, so my craft room is the main thing being downsized.

It’ll probably take me a bit to get set up in the new place, especially in terms of crafting, so I probably won’t post much until after then.

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.

The latest count of items prepared for the employee craft fair:

• 49 greeting cards
• 43 mini envelope/card enclosure sets
• 19 envelope sets
• 16 pins in matchboxes

Phew! Granted I’ve never sold at a craft fair before, but I think this is a pretty decent amount of stuff to have. Time to focus on the extraneous details, like a sign and business cards and craft group fliers.

To the craft swappers out there:
If you’re going to be moving, don’t sign up for new swaps, or at least leave a forwarding address or give people the new address. Otherwise, your package is just going to be returned to the sender weeks later, they’ll be out the postage, and they’ll have to deal with shipping it to you again! Not cool.

To the craft bloggers out there:
If you’re going to post about an awesome craft store that you discovered, especially with photos of it and the lovely items they sell, don’t keep the location a secret. You will not only be teasing your local readers in a way that is not amusing, but you will also not be supporting that local business by keeping potential new customers from visiting them.

To the craft store employees/owners out there:
If a customer tells you they are preparing for a craft fair, don’t laugh at them because they mention it’s “only” two weeks away. You have no idea how much they’ve already done or how long it will take them to make more stuff. Also, you will potentially sour their experience at your store and make them not want to come back there.

That is all.