Crafting 365 - day nineteen - cutting out a lot of felt

As the title of this post suggests, I have been cutting out a lot of felt. I am taking a break from my scissors for a while to come and post this and then I shall probably return to snip snip snip my way into felt-based lunacy.

Here you can see what I am talking about:
In the box (if you look REALLY closely) you can espy some moustaches I finished late last night (and a couple more just in front of it, waiting to decorate moustache cards). Then there are lots of butterflies (to be brooches and also ornaments) and lots of circles destined to be biscuit badges, ornaments and cards. I shall be sewing lots of biscuits this evening and also some pants badges as I have a custom order that needs doing. So much sewing! Perfect occupation for me this evening as I've got a Sherlock Holmes dvd that I fancy curling up in front of...

Oh, and I have set up a group on Flickr called Crafting 365 to encourage people to join in with this project of mine. A bit of crafting a day does you the power of good, I promise you. I was so miserable last month when I managed to make nothing at all and now I have lots of lovely projects on the go and I am very very pleased. Whether I will stick it out for the full 365 is another matter! Please do join in the fun :)

Crafting 365 - day eighteen - stationery and rearranging my stash of supplies

Last night I got all those sheet music notecards wrapped up into nice bundles of 3 and 6 cards, and then got a bit carried away with the old cutting and sticking...

I now have a pile of finished map cards ready to photograph (top left in the photo) and some brown & blue recycled envelopes ready to use for my own post (recycled from envelopes in our recycling pile). I also found two gorgeous 1940s maps in a box, put away because although they are delicious to look at they were too delicate to use for envelopes. One small brainwave later, and the maps have been cut into pieces ready to adorn some notecards which I shall pair with handmade envelopes of brown paper (I do love brown paper, and it goes really well with the colours in both maps as well as adding an extra vintage feel to them).

Off to the Post Office soon, and to buy some more Prittstick so I can glue those 1940s map pieces together.... I'll also be doing a bit of tidying as I have been re-arranging some of my supplies, my packing materials and stationery and things like that. We have been moving lots of furniture around the house and re-organising an awful lot of our stuff, and this has freed up a small bookcase for me to use near my workspace (ie just off the kitchen). It will be great having even more things to hand instead of 90% of my stuff being tucked away in the spare room. I shall take a picture when it's all sorted out - only halfway there yet!

Crafting 365 - day seventeen - cards as far as the eye can see...

... well, almost:

I thought it was high time I actually finished making all the sheet music notecards (to match the envelopes I finished the other day) and got them out of my "in progress" pile and into my finished stash. I have basically run out of glue now, haha. Sooo many cards!

Oh, and I got the giftwrap envelopes finished too (destined for my own personal stationery box) and glued together a few map notecards & envelopes. All these cards need to dry and then have my shop details written on the back and then finally they will be parcelled up into neat little sets. And then they will be finished, hurrah! I do love finishing things, it makes me feel all efficient - no matter how long the thing in question has been "in progress" for.

I am going to try not to think about how many other half-finished projects I have lying about the place... Not having a dedicated studio space means I spend my life getting a project out, working on it for a bit and putting it away again. I have developed many elaborate storage systems for all these in-progress bits and pieces but really the whole thing is just a big mess of clutter and the moment things go in a box they get forgotten about and remain half-finished seemingly forever. Ah well. One project down, many many many to go...

Crafting 365 - days fifteen and sixteen - supplies, shopping, some crafting too

Wednesday's trip to Hobbycraft was very dull. They didn't even have what I wanted! Rubbish! I didn't do anything even remotely crafty all day until about 11.30 that night when I cut out a few more map pieces before going to bed. Really not thrilling at all.

I did however get some EXCELLENT post on Wednesday morning. I'd ordered a gorgeous bag from CharlotteNarunsky and traded for some lush postcards from Gilfling, and they both arrived beautifully wrapped and looking even more delicious than they did in the pictures. I also got a very lovely surprise parcel of books (made even more enjoyable cos the boyf got out of bed to answer the door thinking it was going to be his parcel arriving and instead it was suprises for me, hurrah, I gloated sooo much) one of which even has cover art by one of my favourite illustrators, Tom Gauld. There really are few things nicer than surprise books arriving through the post.

Here is my lovely post, pictured with the cute Etsy dot com badges I bought from the EtsyLabs shop the other week. I wanted something with "Etsy" on it to aid with spreading the crafty word, and they fitted the bill beautifully. I love those little scissors, too. So cute.

I have already started spreading the Etsy love thanks to Charlotte's gorgeous bag - I took it into work with me that day and my boss made me look up her Etsy shop on the spot so she could see all the lovely handbags. She ended up sneakily checking out loads of Etsy shops as we had rather a quiet day, and went home planning to buy a print from the very talented Sugarloop. Ah, I do love a nice conversion...

Today (Thursday) I have managed to do some actual crafty things, hurrah! This is what my kitchen table looked like earlier (it was MUCH messier yesterday but I solved that by sweeping the whole mess into a big cardboard box and hiding it in the spare room) :

I have cute out yet more moustaches, ironed some envelope shapes ready for folding and glueing, and finished my first batch of moustache notecards. I need to take much better pictures of these in good light later in the week (oh how often do I say that? I am like a broken record with my bad light photography, far too impatient to wait for the sunlight) and perhaps to make a few more so I can list them as a set ... but I am rather pleased with them. Say it with a moustache! Go on, you know you want to :D