The Introverted Crafter

I've been thinking lately. When I was a kid being an adult seemed straightforward. You went to university, graduated, got a job, met someone, had kids. All the things that are supposedly inevitable. Now, I feel like I've slipped through the cracks of life, settling amongst the fluff, dust and other discarded things. Languishing there, unneeded, unwanted, forgotten. I'm not stupid. I know that life is what you make it. It just seems so hard sometimes. My depression and anxiety have eased in the past couple of months but they will never fully heal. We have good times and bad times, and some of us are better at dealing with the bad times than others. Right, onto todays crafting, which I'm entering into  That's crafty keep it simple challenge . I had one wooden box left over, and a ton of grungeboard letters that don't make words, so I started there. I only put letters on the top part of the box, as I only wanted to decorate that part. Next I painted it in...

I figured the best way of doing the advent calendar was in parts, as it is going to take a while to complete, and I don't want to stop posting on here due to the fact I haven't finished a piece! So today is part one. The first thing was to put it together of course. I forgot to take a photo of it when it was done, so you'll have to forgive me for that. It was relatively easy to put together, the pieces all have letters to identify them. I used cement glue to stick it together as I don't have a glue gun (perhaps something to add to my list) After I did this (and obviously waited for it to dry) I coated the whole thing with black gesso. As well as the wooden structure, there are 25 chipboard boxes, and wooden numbers to accompany them. They can be glued with normal glue, I used glossy accents. Here is the box in its glued, undecorated form. Now one thing you have to be wary of; these fit into the calendar very snugly and, as such, you can't really decorate th...

I've not posted so far this week but I've not been idle. This is a stitchy post, so to start with, here is the update on the Kili stitch For those of you who have seen my other stitches, you will know that I have done a couple of photo stitches, by buying kits. For this one, I decided to utilise a free online program called moulinella. As you can see. it worked really well. You may have to tweek it a little to get the pattern exactly how you want, but once you do it tells you what shades you need, and how many stitches of each shade. Brilliant. I've also started working on the christmas presents, which is why I've waited until now to put a post up. The first part of each persons present is a cross stitch piece. I bought some bezels a while back and decided to use those, to make keyrings and necklaces. So you are limited to an extremely small amount of stitches, depending on what your aida count is. For those of you who don't know, your aida count is how m...

Today I decided to alter the nine drawer mini chest that I bought in Plymouth. I wanted to use some of the craft stuff I bought as well. Before I do that, a little confession. After buying Invisible Bilbo for a treat I was a little naughty and bought an extra treat. I've wanted the Tim Holtz pen nibs for ages but thought they were too expensive but I managed to get a set, as well as some gem clips, stencils and epoxy charms, all for £13.30. I know I shouldn't have bought them so I've deliberately delayed completing an extra task this week, as I've treated myself enough lately. I've also assigned specific treats to a few tasks. As well as this I've spent £18.44 getting eggs, walnut whips, kit kats, green beans, tic tacs, antacid, fanta, oj mango and passionfruit juice, cereal bars, tuna and cat food. With that I got £10 cash back and bought a portion of fish and chips to share for £5.90 Anyway, back to the chest. For those who didn't know what it looked lik...

Again with a masculine present today. The recipient is my older brother, who, over the past couple of years at least, has played a pirate at a tourist attraction, meaning I've quickly gone to the whole pirate theme as presents for a while. Not this year though. I wanted to do something different. When we were kids, and heading up to see our grandparents, we had a long boring journey. One thing we loved on the journey though, was listening to music on the way there. We had one tape, but we were happy with that, because it was one we loved. Dangerous, by Michael Jackson. So I wanted to do something with that. It's a beautiful album cover, and once I looked at it, it gave me an idea. I got an old perfume box, and printed out a few copies of the cover. Then I fussy cut certain aspects, to give a 3D effect. Here is the finished result I've also been working on the next cross stitch. There is a woefully inadequate selection of Hobbit memoribili...

I find it very hard to make presents for guys. It's so much easier with girls - alter something, add some flowers, and you're done. You could go the steampunk route of course, but I didn't feel it was right for a fathers day present. Then I thought about my dad's dog - Oscar. I decided to make a treat tin for him, out of an altoids tin. The inside is painted black around the sides. The dog paper is simply white paper with some stamps I had. You can see this by the fact that the dogs on the top and bottom are in different arrangements. The outside is painted black as well, and then kraft resist arrow paper was used with some distress ink. A polymer clay bonio - it even says woof (courtesy of a stamp) I painted some cardboard with gathered tigs and made it into a collar, added a fragment for the tag, then the bone and the word treats. Spending wise the Sky bill came out (£21.50) and I decided to buy some easter eggs, some Danone...