I'd had a busy summer in which I'd neglected my (then quite new) blog and my little Etsy shop and not done much crafting. I missed the happy, satisfying feeling of making stuff. I hoped the challenge would help me make time for my crafty hobbies, help me fill up my shop and generally help me kickstart my creativity.
It totally worked! When I'd finished the project just over a year later (via a few breaks due to domestic disasters like a broken boiler) I'd made soooo much stuff and had a ton of fun doing it.
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have", as Maya Angelou said, and all that making bred more making, all the ideas I came up with sparked more ideas. It was awesome.
Sharing my work here on my blog and on Flickr gave me a sense of accountability that kept me going through the year. It also led to some great (and unexpected) opportunities, helped me connect to a whole community of crafty people (many of whom started their own Crafting 365 projects) and got me totally addicted to blogging!
Chatting with some friends recently about how I've been feeling in a bit of a creative rut, I remembered my Crafting 365 project and thought "ah, how wonderful that was!" Then I thought "what's stopping you from doing that again??"
So... here I am. Starting a new "do something crafty every day for a year, take a photo, share it online" project. This time round I won't be blogging every day. Instead I'll be sharing my daily photos on my Facebook page and on Twitter (#Crafting365), then posting a round-up of all the recent photos here on my blog.
The only rule I'm setting myself is that if I'm working on something I can't show you (e.g. if I'm making a project for a book or magazine) I have to squeeze a bit of non-secret crafting into my day so I have something to share and so deadlines don't totally distract me from my personal projects. "There's no photo today because I'm on a deadline, aaaargh" = not acceptable, even if I just knit two rows of a blanket square before bed :)
Today is day three of my project. On day one, I decided I wanted to make something that was an explosion of summer colour so I drew lots of flower templates and started cutting out lots of felt pieces. I couldn't resist arranging them in rainbow order for the photo...
Then yesterday (day 2) I cut out lots more flowers. Just one more to go then I can start sewing.
I hope you'll enjoy following along with my making over the coming weeks and months!
What a good idea. I wish you lots of luck and look forward to seeing all your work. :-)
ReplyDeleteIt means such a lot more that you cut out the pieces yourself instead of using pre-cuts as some people do. That said, you must be queen of cutting neat felt shapes. It isn't easy to keep it that neat! They look so colourful all together like that.
ReplyDeleteSara
Crimson Kettle - Thank you! :)
ReplyDeleteSara - It does take a looooong time to cut out lots of felt shapes by hand! I definitely understand why people use die-cut shapes instead of cutting their own. As for the neatness, I've had a LOT of practice over the years :D