I stopped by the rubber stamp convention this weekend, though I didn’t stay too long. I usually just go to stop at the Hanko Designs booth, and to walk around and look for a bit. There were a few new vendors, including The Paper Palette, but the show is gradually getting smaller each time I go.

I ran into someone from the craft group while I was there. She explained that she’d missed the last several — as have I — but was going to try to go again. I mentioned that the meetings will be shifting to Saturdays, as per someone new getting involved in the planning, and she sounded somewhat disappointed. I have to admit that shifting from Wednesday evenings to Saturday mornings isn’t exactly a smooth change, and I don’t think I’ll be able to join in then for sure. It’s a shame, though I haven’t really been doing much crafting as of late.

I did sneak in one little card this afternoon, after poking around online a bit and looking at various Japanese things. I’m very interested in seasonal imagery from Japan, and one of those items are the flat fans (uchiwa) associated with summertime. I decided to try this shape with the “quilted” washi approach, and it turned out ok enough.

It looks quite simple, but it was probably the most involved of all the shapes I’ve done, due to the curves and tiny handle. It takes a lot to wrap around curved edges, so it turned out a bit more jagged than I would have liked it. I might try it again and see if I can do better with it next time, but I’m satisfied with my first attempt.

For a friend’s birthday last month, I decorated a sturdy cardboard box with glitter (to put a necklace inside) and also made a card to go with it.

Her favorite color is purple, and she does like glitter, so the gift box was a simple thing. I ended up with plenty of glitter all over my desk and person, but I like how it turned out.

The card is done in the “quilted washi paper” style made popular by Hanko Designs, and is based on a pattern included in one of their kits.

For anyone who is drawn to the small details, the patterns in security envelopes can be quite nice. Here are a few from a Flickr photo set called Security Patterns.

Great for little collages and other things, or try reusing the envelopes by turning them inside out, as shown in this Design*Sponge tutorial.

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.

The workshop for this month’s South Bay Craft Group meeting was making shrines, and you could either use a wooden box or a paper one, including making your own matchboxes. I didn’t really know what to put inside of mine, so instead I focused on making and decorating a matchbox, similar to the ones I’ve done before.

I used a scrap of cardstock to create the box, and then covered it with some origami paper I happened to have with me (for making envelopes, of course). I made the lid from a cardstock tag, then wrapped a piece of a Japanese map, more cardstock, and a bit of sparkly fiber around it.

I couldn’t decide what should go inside it, so I just brought it home in that state. Unfortunately, the box is coming undone on one end, so it might need a bit of fixing before I use it. It would be perfect for a Japanese matchbox swap though. (Not that I’ve been participating in any swaps recently.)

Speaking of Japanese designs, I went to a Japanese/Asian-themed craft fair this morning. It’s a regular event to raise money for a local Japanese-American senior fund, and pretty much everything sold there is Japanese, Hawaiian, or Asian in theme. Hanko Designs was there again, and I ended up buying a few packs of yuzen washi paper, as if I need more of that. Most of the other items being sold were handmade purses and art and things like that, but nothing really stood out at me as something to have.

I did happen to see a colleague of mine at one of the tables, as she was helping her mother sell rubber stamps. She just moved here from Hawaii and illustrates some of the rubber stamp designs, which are in Hawaiian and Asian themes. You can check them out and buy them at the Mari & Me web site.