Craft Room Spring Cleaning Time

 Sorting out the Craft Room

So spring is here and I have 2 rooms now filled with my craft items. The original craft/office room which has always housed my paper craft items, and now the other spare bedroom filled with fabrics and on-going projects for my “Sew Useful Bag” makes. 

Spring cleaning certainly has become more complicated and time-consuming. So, as in other years, I am determined to down-size my craft mountain.  I started in March and was making some headway when I was contacted by someone who offered me his late wife’s craft items as he had found me on-line from my days of running workshops. although I no longer do these on a regular basis I talked to him about the outlets I had who could benefit from the craft items and he was happy that they would be going to fellow crafters, which is what his wife had wanted. 

When I went to pick up the craft items I had no idea how much to expect, but it turned out it would not fit into my Nissan Juke and I needed another trip to complete the pick-up. It took me 6hours to sort it and put it into piles for various crafting groups. There was a lot of very useful card, many, many dies a lot of Tattered Lace construction dies and a wonderful assortment of pencils, paints, inks etc

The craft group I attend weekly had a lot of the constructions dies and some card as we could make use of it all. Another bundle of dies and bits went to Wales to my sisters church group who make cards to support community projects, and a lot of card papers and some dies went to a craft group in Burnham that make for and sell for the local hospital. More bits and pieces including childrens craft papers went to a church group in my home town of Bridgwater as they have a childrens group and a family day where they could make good use of it all. Any remaining items went to the Childrens Hospice shop in Glastonbury as they have a craft section in the shop. I am so lucky to have friends and contacts who could make  good use of all the lovely craft items and well over a hundred pound was donated that I have given to Friends of Bridgwater Hospital in the name of lady whose husband past them on to me.  

It was about 4 weeks before I got my sofa back in use, after the distribution of all this, when I was contacted again by a WI friend with craft goods. Again I explained the various outlets I had and it was agreed the persons who had donated the items would be happy with them being distributed in this way, and the second lot was sent out. 

I am now tackling my craft room, with a view to cutting out anything I have not used for a while and selecting my favourite sets of stamps and dies for each occasion and shedding the rest. How will I get rid of my excess.  Well, again some will go to craft groups, some will get sold on Ebay and the money given to charity and the rest will go to the Childrens Hospice shop. So far I have sorted:

3 boxes of ribbons 

4 Boxes of dies plus my Anna Griffin dies, These are now in Storage folders (after an expensive bout of purchases, but that’s another story) 

3 boxes of embellishments 

Multiple Paper pads and packs

2 large boxes of cards envelopes and display sleeves. 

All my card is sorted into plastic boxes according to colour and finish 

My inks, paints, ink pads sprays and embossing powders etc have been downsized 

All that remains to sort are 2 boxes of stamps and more embellishments, beads and cords .

The job of sorting would have been faster if I had not had to stop every so often to try a new form of card making inspired by items that I was suppose to be tidying away. 

But I am happy with my makes which have used up some of the many many bits and bobs sorted from the boxes. Sorting through has also reminded me of lots of papers and embellishments I had forgotten were in the cupboard and these have inspired me to new designs 

So I encourage you to do a regular sort through and recycle, re-use and gift some of your craft products. It will make you feel better about your stash and give you inspiration for the next projects.

Happy Crafting Dee

 

The Easter Bag & Card Workshop

Gift Bag & Easter Card

Hi Crafters

You will have seen from a previous post that I was going to take part in a craft workshop for my WI group.

I had been asked to provide papercrafts and suggested a gift bag and Easter card. As it was a short run up to the actual craft day I put together the bag and card quickly to give anyone attending an idea of what they would be making. `they could choose from knitting, sugar crafts, paper-crafts, beading and sewing.

When it came time to prepare my groups items I decided on a bigger bag and a slightly different finish to the card.

As you can see we used the Tim Holtz leaping bunnies to decorate both the card and the bag. I used the 8 x 8 bag from Sam Calcott and cut and scored all the papers ready for the group of ladies taking part so they could finish both in the time. 

From my vast stash of ribbon I found some lovely cream ribbon 1cm wide with rabbit on. 

Here are the Instructions 

Card is a 6 x 6 Kraft Card 

Coordinating 4” square cut with a 3” circle die

Doily 

Tim Holtz Leaping bunny topper

Insert:- copy paper 11” x 5.5” folded in half

Bag

2 pieces of 12 x 12

Both cut down to 8 x 8 

Used cut-offs to make 3 pieces 8” x 4”

1st 8 x 8 is scored at 1.5” and 7 1/8”

2nd 8 x 8 is scored at 7 1/8th

2  side panels are scored at 1.5” and 2.5” lengthwise

Turn and score at 1/2” and 3.5”

Then score at 2” down to first score line

3 piece is score at 1/2” and 3.5”

Punch 2 holes along the top score line of the front and back

2 - 2.5” from either side

Put together and decorate to match the card

Everyone seemed to enjoy the afternoon and we finished in plenty of time, each person took home a lovely bag and card, with ideas of making more, particularly for Christmas. 

Happy Crafting 

Dee

Covered Journal

 Reusable Covers for your Journals

As a lover of pretty stationary, one of the items I have started to sew for my craft stall, is a fabric Journal Cover. The journal slips into the cover so that when you have filled it up you can slip it out and re-use the cover on the next journal you use. 

 I have then added a decorative closure 

As I enjoy making charm & beaded danglies I have added them to one or two of my Journals.

The two above use the same fabric, one decorated with an elastic fastener with a decorative button.The other one has a printed elastic closure with a large elephant charm.

Both have been made with embroidered fabric.

The third  one also used embroidered fabric with a lovely red flower. On this one I added a beaded dangly I had made from recycled jewellery..

These will be a regular on my stall as I see people using notebooks all the time and I think a lot of people like the action of writing down their daily lives rather than just using their phones and iPads, both of which I have but I find it much easier to look back over my memorable moments when they are written down, so I keep a journal for design and craft ideas, travel-logs and notes from meetings etc.

Back soon with the outcome of my spring fair.

Dee

Another Craft Fair item

 Travel Bag & Makeup Bag

So here are my bag sets for holidays and weekends away. I think they would make great Mothers stay gifts.

The larger bag will hold lingerie , nightwear etc , while the smaller bag is o perfect for makeup 

I have decorated the larger bag with a solid cream tassel .

I have several sets  in a  good choice of fabric patterns.already made and packaged.

Back with another show item tomorrow

Happy Crafting 

Dee

Easter Egg Collecting bags

 More items for the Craft Fair next week

So my machine came out ready to make items for the Craft Fair next week. I had some items to finish and I wanted to make some small bags suitable for Easter egg collecting. 

These bags were made with 2 pieces of fabric 12” x 15”. I used one piece of fabric from my fat quarter stash and I piece from the upholstery fabric end of rolls fabric, as this saved using a stiffener to form the basket. The handles were made from a yarn that is made from recycled cotton called Bobbing. I love it for craft work and purchased it from a shop called  Magpies  in Bideford, when I was visiting North Devon last year. The yarn is strong enough for this type of small bag and is soft enough for little hands.

I added a pocket to the front with a piece of matching “fat Quarter” fabric which was embellished with an Easter Bunny.

These cute baskets will hold enough eggs for anyone to enjoy.

I have made just 5 to try at the Craft Fair. 

Check back soon to hear more about the Craft Fair.

Happy Crafting 

Dee.

Next Workshop

Easter Workshop 

With the new year underway, I am looking forward to trying to work through some of my craft stash. After recycling my Christmas cards, I am moving on to pastures new. 

I have been asked to do a workshop in March and was looking for an Easter based project. Looking at the papers in my stash I decided to offer a gift bag and matching card. The papers were The Paper Tree card pad and to decorate I just love Tim Holtz Leaping Rabbits, for Easter. 

I cut the rabbits from Kraft Card, and used distress inks around the outer edges to give them some colour layers. One of the 3 rabbits in the set was used on the card. I  l cut 2 layers of  the same papers as the bag, with a few strands of string around the top layer, before the rabbit was added to the top 

I

The bag is made using a video from Sam Calcott.

I thought  the bag would be the right size for Easter Egg hunt or for an Easter Gift ..

My problem now is: I have a craft fair coming up at the beginning of March and some sewing to do to make my stock levels up, but now keep seeing paper projects I want to try. So keep watching to see which craft gets my attention 

Happy Crafting 

Dee 

Recycling Christmas Cards

 Recycling My Cards

It’s January and first craft groups of the year are dedicated to recycling the Christmas Cards.

This year I want to sort out my craft materials so having kept my Christmas cards in a ready pile and for speed decided to select a couple of designs and blitz the card making ready to move on. 

This method was helped by the fact that in recent years it has become popular to donate to charity in lieu of giving cards and so I have fewer cards to recycle. 

I started by sorting my cards into those suitable with suitable prints for trees and stars  for the  designs I had decided to make and those that would be re layered into new cards.

My designs were simple:

The first one used A6 cards landscape. I used Pearlie doodles to make a snow landscape in the lower half, then cut tree triangles from the cards using templates made from scrap card. Using 2 sizes of trees I placed one slightly behind the other and then drew a tree trunk at the base. 

Lastly I added the greeting.

Design 2

This was using stars cut from the cards that had appropriate colours or prints.

I cut 2 sizes. On the blank card I stamped a lovely swirl, and added some glitter glue, I use sticklers.  I then added cut out stars to the bottom of the swirl. I mixed it up a little, some had one larger star and some had 2 stars. 

After i used up the stars the remaining cards were used for layering cards and tags 

Everyone knows how to re-use cards by layering them onto fresh blanks so I will just show a couple I have re-used

These have now been put away ready for next Christmas

Here’s to happy crafting in 2024.

Dee