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.

The employee craft fair is only a few days away, and I think I’m just about ready for it. I printed up some business cards earlier this week, and though they’re not professionally done, I think they’ll do. I haven’t made any more items to sell, but I need to make one item for a raffle they’ll be holding. And perhaps make up a sign for my table. Oh, and price everything. That would probably be important.

I’m still unsure about how it will go, but I will definitely keep in mind that I can always list things on my Etsy store if they don’t sell. (I’ve actually already listed a few cards there too.)

 

They’re very simple, but I like them that way, especially with how vibrant the colors are. And these are easy enough to reproduce, so I can always make more if they do sell. No takers yet though.

Otherwise, I’ve just been collecting more lovely Japanese papers from various online sources. My favorite paper purchase came from Paper Jade; I bought the large kondo yuzen set, and it was filled with so many beautiful designs that I might have to buy another one eventually. I would definitely recommend this shop if you’re into paper though. The owner has shipped everything so quickly to me, and has been kind enough to exchange emails with me about the items for sale and even sent me a free holiday gift set.

With a long weekend due to the holiday, I’m going to be working on a lot of prep stuff for the craft fair at work. I’ve got just under 2 weeks to go, and I got up nice and early to get started on some greeting cards. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

You can view the rest on my Flickr account.

There’s still plenty left to do, but hopefully I can make some good progress this weekend.

Work has been a bit hectic as of late, to the point of taking some work home last weekend. However, I made a point of setting some limits on this work and spent the rest of the weekend working on some craft projects for a few swaps that were due this week. It was really nice to just dive in and focus on them, especially since I’d already figured out what I wanted to make.

First up was the Matchbox Craft Swap, which required making something tiny enough to fit inside a matchbox. I had some blank matchboxes that I’d bought for a past project, and I thought about making a miniature scene inside of one of them. I didn’t really know what to make the scene out of or where to find the right items for it, so I scrapped that idea and made a cross-stitched pin instead:

The pattern is my own creation, though I have to give proper credit to another crafter for the inspiration. I was browsing Flickr for cross-stitch and embroidery photos and found this lovely set of cross-stitched pins:

Very cool, and definitely not like the sappy cross-stitch stuff you find in local craft stores. I decided to start with this and play around a bit, and this will hopefully lead to some variations and further patterns. And if anyone’s interested, I’d be more than happy to share my pattern, either in PC Stitch or image format.

As for the pin itself, I basically stitched out the design and then sewed the fabric around some layered pieces of template plastic. I wanted to add a fabric backing with the pin back, but I got tired of sewing and just hot-glued the pin back on. Maybe not the best approach, but it gave me a reason to finally use the hot glue gun I’ve had sitting around for a few years.

I was still in a cross-stitching mood after this project, so when I moved on to the Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama October Swap, I worked in another piece. This month’s colors were orange and purple, and after reading that my partner likes elephants, I combined the two into this framed cross-stitch piece:

I found the elephant pattern online and modified it slightly, dropping the border and filling out the background to fit inside the frame. The frame came from a $1 bin cross-stitch kit I found at Michael’s; it was some awful candy cane pattern kit, but it was worth it for the frame alone and I tossed everything else aside. Stitching the elephant part was easy, but working on the orange background took forever, so I probably wouldn’t do another one like this, or at least not for a swap with a looming deadline.

My other handmade items for this swap included collaged postcards and mini envelope/card sets (my old stand-by), plus a bunch of drawing supplies and candy for my partner. Here are a few photos of it all:

And now I’m all done for a little while at least. I signed up for a Japanese-themed swap on Craftster, which I have yet to start, and then I think I’m going to take a break from swaps for a bit. Or at least the rather involved ones that require a bit more time than I feel like dedicating right now. It’s hard to keep up the motivation to do things when I’m not at work, and I think a project without a due date would be more relaxing and easier to get into.

I’m still taking it easy with craft things, especially since I’m gearing up to start a new job in about a week’s time. But I have been doing a few little things here and there.

Last week, two of my friends celebrated birthdays, so I made a square collage postcard for one and a set of wrapped postcards for the other.

I liked playing with the combination of brown and blue color combination, after having tried it out for a swap last month.

However, I think the monkey cards were a much bigger hit, though the recipient had requested that we all not bring gifts to her party. I figured this might be an ok exception though, since it was a small gift and a handmade one at that. Besides, she likes monkeys and it seems like that monkey stamp is everyone’s favorite (it’s made by Rubber Soul, for what it’s worth).