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.

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.

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.