Archiving

I am feeling a bit under the weather this week. You know that kind of bug where you feel okay (if a bit sleepy) until you try and stand up and do stuff and then you feel all wobbly and have to sit down again? I've got one of those. Ugh. 

I've been putting my feet up and reading some great books and magazines...

... but I've also been working through some of the tasks on my To Do list that I can do while sitting down and not 100% awake!

One of my ongoing projects at the moment is "archiving" - a fancy word for me sorting through all my paperwork, old photos, notes and sketches from finished projects, bookmarked blog mentions, magazine features, etc... and organising them into something resembling a proper "archive" of my business over the past few years.

Instead of a box full of contracts and paperwork: a neatly labelled file with everything organised in any easily-findable order. Instead of a bookmarks folder full of nice reviews of my books, etc, gathering digitial dust (and potentially vanishing if the various blogs get deleted): a folder of colour print outs for my records. And so on.

I've also been putting my magazine features from the past couple of years into my folders of clippings...

 

 

 

...it's lovely having the magazines lined up on my shelf for a while, but they take up so much space! I do keep the most recent magazines and a couple of special ones (my very first magazine feature and my first cover project) but it's great to get the rest filed away like this... not least because it makes me feel very fancy having a "portfolio" of clippings to show off :)

Next up: sorting out my 2013 and 2014 crafting photos so they're ready for the next time I make a crafty photobook! 

Less Faffing, More Organising

Yesterday was all about paperwork. This is not the most thrilling task in the world, so I've been cheering myself up by using silly pencils :)

I also downloaded and printed a wonderful free calendar from The Elli Blog, so my work and Nice Day Out planning for 2014 can be more organised (and stylish, too!).

 

As well as being a) free and b) lovely to look at, I love how these calendar pages include space for notes. This will be the perfect place to write my "things I need to focus on this month" list for work - projects with deadlines looming, but also projects/tasks I need/want to focus on that might otherwise get neglected in favour of the demands of the things with fixed deadlines and the general everyday "stuff" that is always shouting for attention. 

Crafty stuff has been a little bit squeezed out of my schedule by all this admin, but I did some work on my Stop Faffing sampler last night after neglecting it (yet again!) for ages.

 

There's not much more to stitch now, then I can get it up on display in my studio. I am hoping it will be a good reminder to help me stay focused and get on with the stuff I have planned for this year... and also that this will be just the first of many projects I get off of my "work in progress" list and Finally Finished over the next few weeks and months.

Taking It Easy & Doing Some Decluttering

So, this past week I have done a bit of mending (mending some dresses that had holes in them, sewing some buttons back on a cardigan, sewing up a couple of holes in some blankets)...

... and I started sewing up some Big Knit hats which I think I made last year (?) and then forgot about (oops, lucky it's on again this year, eh?)...

... but mostly things have been quite quiet on the crafting front.

I have been feeling exhausted this week - partly with the sadness/stress of my grandmother's death and funeral (thanks for all the kind messages about this, by the way, they are much appreciated!) but mostly because I've been ill quite a bit this spring/summer and I think it has just worn me out.

Long-time readers may remember that I've had M.E. since I was a kid. It's mostly pretty manageable these days as long as I take care of myself, but my immune system is still a bit rubbish and when I get sick it hits me hard and then it takes me a loooong time to fully recover. So although though there are a gazillion things on my work / crafting To Do list which I'm itching to get on with, my main priority at the moment is to try and take it easy so I can get well as soon as possible.

So last week I didn't do much work but instead went to my grandmother's funeral, spent lots of time watching DVDs with my mum, and continued to have a bit of a tidy up and a clear out, gradually working through loads of old boxes.

I've really been enjoying clearing stuff out recently. It's been nice having a lovely nostalgic look back at stuff like old mix tapes & teen poetry but it also feels great to be tidying and decluttering and generally making my space a bit less busy / messy / full of stuff. And it is wonderful to have a relaxing, not super-demanding task I can get on with slowly when I need to take the afternoon off (or the whole day off) and rest for a bit. Also I think having a clear-out can be quite therapeutic and stress-relieving - I don't know if you feel this way too?

I'm definitely one of those people who tries to have "a place for everything and everything in its place" but I am much better at the first part than the second! I have a pretty detailed filing system, but my "things to file" pile often gets so big that it nearly falls over. And like many (most?) crafters I find it pretty hard to make stuff without making a huge mess in the process... and, well, it's hard to find time to put things away when there's all this exciting new stuff to make! :)

So actually getting round to tidying / filing / sorting things / properly putting stuff away feels great. A mega filing session always makes me feel super-efficient and organised even though the only reason I was able to spend the whole day filing things was because I'd been lazy not filed anything for months, haha.

As well as being a bit lazy with my filing, etc, I also have to admit to having slight hoarding tendencies. Being both "crafty" and thrifty, I am forever keeping things that "might be useful" ... and I'm quite sentimental too. I'm forever keeping stuff like ticket stubs and newspaper clippings and old postcards and birthday cards and so on, which all adds up to a lot of stuff after a while.

I actually had to give up making scrapbooks (which is something I loved to do as a kid and in my early teens) because I'd scrapbook everything and end up with loads of scrapbooks with a ton of really random stuff in it which I'd look back and and think why the heck did I keep that?? Nowadays I have "memory boxes" (this sounds a bit cheesy but I'm not sure what else to call them?) full of all sorts of sentimental paper-y bits and bobs in them, which can be easily edited as time passes and things cease to have that nostalgic appeal and just become "stuff".

Here's a quick snap of some of the paper-y stuff that I cleared out last week (plus some old headphones that sadly will cost more to mend than it will to just buy a new pair, boo).

I still need to sort all that lot into piles to chuck, shred and recycle. That second pass through is very helpful, I find, as it stops you accidentally throwing away anything you didn't mean to (or, at the very least, it stops you worrying that you might have next time you can't find something important!).

As well as sorting through old boxes and files, re-organising things and clearing out small bits and pieces, I've also been doing some "proper" decluttering, clearing out things like books and clothes and jewellery and Christmas ornaments and CDs and bits of vintage china.

I did quite a lot of decluttering a few years ago, trying to make space in my old flat for my expanding crafty business and to help the flat look tidier & generally nicer. I am not (and will never be) a minimalist but I cleared out a lot of junk and old / unwanted stuff to make room to better display and store the stuff I needed, used and loved. Then I cleared out even more stuff when I moved out of my old flat and back into my parents house, and packed up all the "household" things from my flat into crates ready for when I (eventually) move out again.

I'm really lucky to have a large studio/office space in my parents house (I've rearranged things a lot since I first moved in, but you can see some old pics of the space HERE if you're feeling nosy) so I don't have any real space issues at the moment, but after looking at some flats online I've realised that when I do move out it will likely be into somewhere pretty tiny, so I need to try and downsize my stuff down quite a bit more. Chances of me having a studio space in my new place? Slim to none.

And what better time to make a start on this when I'm pottering about my parents house with not much to do because I'm having to rest & take a bit of time off work? So, I'll be continuing to have little clear-outs for a while and I've also decided to do another Less 365 project, getting rid of one thing a day for a whole year (from now until this time next summer).

I really enjoyed the challenge of my last Less 365, it made me properly think about my stuff - what I really loved, what I actually needed, what I was using and what I wasn't, and so on. I also found it made me much more mindful about buying new things, which was great for my bank balance! (I'd really recommend trying it if you fancy doing a bit of decluttering yourself).

Hmm, this has turned into a bit of a ramble, hasn't it? Anyway, I hope you'll wish me luck with my decluttering! I'm not 100% sure I'll manage the full 365 things, but I'm going to give it a jolly good try and - fingers crossed - hopefully get most of my stuff a lot more organised along the way.

My New Pinboard

After wanting one for ages I finally got a pinboard for my studio last month. I took some photos of it a few weeks ago to show you guys and when I was editing them I realised there were a whole load of projects in shot that I'm not allowed to share yet! Oops. So, finally, here's a photo:

It's so good to get all that paper off my desk! My lovely red desk is next to the window (you can just see the corner of it on the left in that photo) so no room for a pinboard there, but this is the next best thing as I face this wall as I work.

I've also found new homes for the bits and pieces I was keeping on the top of that small shelf unit, so I can use the space as a sort of extension of my desk, with "in progress" piles of paperwork. It's great to have a dedicated space for this stuff instead of just having it cluttering up my desk or the coffee table or (being honest with you here, folks) in a messy heap on the floor.

It's also nice to have a space to pin up a few pretty postcards - though the board itself is currently mostly taken up with boring work stuff like to do lists and bills I need to pay, I've used some polkadot washi tape to stick up some postcards along the side of the tall shelf unit.

I bought these on days out last summer, choosing a postcard or two from each place I visited as a memento, it's nice to have some of them on display instead of stuck in a drawer somewhere...

... and they're a great reminder that I need to plan some more days out this summer!

Catching Up

I'm slowly catching up on some work - gradually replying to emails from the past week, sending out all my shop orders, and writing some blog posts with "help" from this little lady!

I'm also working on a whole bunch of tutorials (for a couple of projects I, alas, can't talk about yet). I find it helpful when I'm working on lots of tutorials at once to make a chart instead of writing lots of to do lists. It works pretty well even if the tutorials are all for very different things as they all involve the same basic steps to get from idea to finished tutorial. Ticking each small task off as I work through them I can see the progress I'm making and can see at a glance what tasks still need doing. 

This is my current chart. Lots done, but quite a bit still to do! 

I made a gigantic "to do chart" when I was working on my new book and it really helped keep me organised during a very hectic time.

For each design I worked on I needed to sketch it, design the templates, (maybe) sew a prototype, write notes on how to make it, sew it, take step by step photos, edit the photos, resize and label the photos, take final reference photos of the finished piece, type up my notes, draft the tutorial, proofread it, make final changes, draw the templates out neatly, make copies of the templates, pack up the project, and then post the project & templates and email the tutorial & accompanying photos. 

Multiply that by all the different projects that make up a book and, well, you can see why the chart was so useful! :)

A Quiet Week

I've been doing some sketches / working on some proposals for a few new projects this week, which is always exciting (fingers crossed some of them get accepted!) but alas I can't tell you guys about any of that yet.

So, what can I tell you about? Well, to be honest things have been pretty quiet here this week as I've been slowly catching up with emails etc from my time off sick... and I've also been trying to take things easy so I can get back to feeling 100% again after this ongoing bug.

It can be quite tricky to do this when you're self-employed, as there's always a big pile of stuff that needs doing and work to catch up on and projects you're itching to get started with... but sometimes you just have to press pause and do some restful things instead!

One of the upsides to still feeling a bit worn out though is that jobs you'd usually find really really boring don't seem too bad. I've been having a mega filing session - gradually working through my archive of blog photos and product pics, getting them all neatly labelled and filed.

It's very dull, but long overdue and the perfect job for me to be working on at the moment!

I also have an extra bit of incentive, as I need to have my photos better organised so I can use them to make lots of mosaics for the fun scrapbook / photobook I'm planning as a record of all my crafting.

I'm getting there slowly!

Pssst - remember, you can get 25% off any orders from my Etsy shop or my Big Cartel shop this weekend with the discount code ILOVEFELT - and remember, postage will be going up next week thanks to the new Royal Mail parcel rates.

Studio Shelves

I've been having a bit of a tidy up and a sort out in my "studio" today, getting all my remaining felt squares & craft supplies organised and doing lots of boring stuff like filing. So I thought I'd take some snaps of some crafty shelves to share with you guys :)

Lots of colourful bargain bundles of felt squares...

... and here they are again. I am going to miss all that delicious colour!

The pile of knitted squares at the top left are the squares I'm knitting with all my leftover sky blanket yarn - I've been slowly knitting quite a lot of squares but there's many more still to knit.

The tin at the top left is full of felt tip pens and coloured pencils. The set of small drawers is filled with office-y things like staples and highlighters, and then the rest of the shelf is full of scrapbooks and notebooks and craft books and my index box of crafty ideas.

As you can see, my stock of felt squares is shrinking rapidly...

... I've got no idea what I'm going to use this bookcase for when all the felt is gone!

Closing up my supplies shop has also freed up lots of other shelves around my studio, meaning I've got more room to fit in all my other crafty stuff without it being crammed into every nook and cranny and - most pleasingly - I've got lots of shelf space for my ever-expanding collection of craft books.

I've even got a whole shelf just for "craft books I need to review" which makes a nice change from keeping them in a pile on the floor by my bed :)

Fancy a nose round the rest of my studio space? You can see more pics here and here.

Getting Organised

I was listening to this interview with craft blogger Haley Pierson-Cox a few weeks ago and among lots of other very interesting discussions about blogging, Haley talked about how she organises her tutorial ideas. Apparently she writes every idea she gets down onto an index card and then files it by season or type of material so she always has a file full of project ideas ready to go. Such a simple idea but so brilliant!

I am forever scribbling down ideas for possible tutorials on scraps of paper which get a bit lost in my studio, or thinking up a great idea for a project out of season and forgetting about it by the time the right season rolls round... so I find the idea of a neatly organised box full of project ideas very appealing.

Index cards are so perfect as you can re-organise them as you like (unlike a notebook, or a long list that becomes a bit useless when you've done some of the projects but not others) and they cards are just the right size for a quick sketch and a few scribbled notes about the tutorial. Plus filing them neatly appeals to the side of me that likes nice storage boxes and a place for everything & everything in its place (I don't always succeed in keeping things tidy... but I do dream of tidiness!).

Basically, I love this idea, can you tell? :)

I immediately wrote down "buy index cards" on my to do list before I'd even finished listening to the interview and then last week I bought myself some blank cards and a box to store them in from Ryman's:

(Click on the images for the individual product links)

So my tutorial ideas will go on index cards... and any random doodles I do will get stuck in my  "ideas scrapbook". No more messy piles of paper for me, hurrah! Hopefully this new "system" will lead to lots more crafty goodness here on my blog :)

Paper Work

Lots of my tasks this week have involved paper.

I've been drawing, making pattern pieces, writing notes, processing orders, ticking things off to do lists... and sorting receipts & printing out lots of spreadsheets for my accounts ready for filing my tax return (yawn).

I've also been doing some cutting and sticking, which is always fun (and rather relaxing, too).

Whenever I design something new I do a lot of brainstorming and doodling of random ideas until I settle on one that I want to develop, so I've built up quite a stash of doodled-on scraps of paper over the years. Looking through them can be great for sparking new ideas, and often a drawing that wasn't quite right for one project becomes the seed for something completely different months or even years later.

But my stash of scribbled-on paper scraps was starting to get out of hand, so I thought I'd tidy up a bit by cutting out all the "useful" doodles and sticking them in a blank notebook. So eventually (when I've finished all this cutting and sticking) I'll have a sort of ideas scrapbook that I can  flick through next time I need a bit of crafty inspiration.
 

A Rainbow of Embroidery Thread

I finished winding all my embroidery thread onto those cardboard bobbins...

Next came the fun part: sorting it into colour order to make an embroidery thread rainbow!

The rainbow is pretty (oh so pretty!) but also practical as I can see at a glance what colours I've got in my stash.

If you fancy organising your own embroidery thread stash, I've added some boxes to the craft supplies section on my website. There are large boxes...

... and small ones too:

Each box comes with lots of card bobbins for winding your thread, but I've also got packs of card and plastic bobbins you can buy separately if you fancy organising your threads neatly but already have a box to keep them in.

Over in my Etsy shop you can buy sets of boxes + embroidery thread: a large box & 72 skeins of thread, or a small box and 36 skeins of thread. Here's one I wound earlier:

Untangling Threads

I have a horrid cold. Ugh.

So yesterday I took the day off and watched lots of murder mysteries (and a vampire movie) and made a start on sorting through my stash of embroidery thread, untangling it all and winding it neatly onto little cardboard bobbins.

So neat! It's taking a while to work my way through all my threads, but it will be totally worth it :)

Filing some Felt

I'm trying out a new way of storing my "in use" pile of felt pieces, filing them away by colour...
Definitely much neater than my previous solution which was just to carry them all round in an unmanageable heap!