Declutter...or don't?

I've said before I have a lot of stuff. A lot of clutter. There are two types of people with regards to clutter; those who love it and those who hate it, and I very much fall into the former camp. I did contemplate that whole Kon Marie thing that people raved about last year, but I don't really hold with that emotional attachment thing in quite the way she does. Perhaps it's because I've lived so long with depression but I don't find joy in items. I don't really find joy in much to be perfectly honest.

So, decluttering is off the menu on the whole. On the occasions I do attempt it I give up quickly because of the sheer enormity of the task, but I have found recently, as with everything else I have a modicum of success with, that doing little bits at a time works better. So I might wake up one morning and pick up one item to get rid of. This week I've managed to get rid of a bin bag of clothes and a few old mementoes.

The other solution to this is of course stop buying things. Not very good at that either. Definitely don't need more craft stuff. I have stopped buying cross stitch things, which is a start. I've got five charts still to finish (including the massive Middle Earth map) so don't need anything for a long time. The problem is, I like buying new stuff. Not as much as I used to, and I've come to realise the shine wears off sooner rather than later now.

Speaking of the middle earth map gives me a nice segue into the crafting. Three things today. First, of course, the map.

This is the work on page three so far, and it's made me realise how big it is! I looked back at the picture of the whole thing, and this little dip is such a small part of it.

Second thing I decided to do was to experiment with the Versamagic chalk inks I got in the job lot from ebay. I have four colours - red, yellow, white and black. I got some heart blanks (wooden ones) and started to blend the colours. A couple of pieces of advice here - do not use a light colour after a dark one. Both my yellow and white pads have a tinge of red now. Second piece is leave the chalk to dry at least overnight before moving to the next stage (stamping with stazon ink). Twice I tried it and all I ended up doing was lifting the white chalk onto the stamp. Finally managed to do it successfully, then sealed with multi matte medium and stuck magnets on the back.

These are now on my fridge, but they'd make a lovely gift too. My favourite one is the birds on the branches.

The third thing I did is finish the second bird house. I had started out by painting it black, then adding some woodgrain paper, painting the front pink, the roof grey, and adding some transparent matte texture paste. And I hated it. Really hated it. So I gesso'd the whole thing white, painted it silver, then painted black and wiped it off to give it a grunge industrial look. Once that was done I painted a cardboard swirl die cut silver and black in the same way, glueing it onto the roof.

The giant butterfly was in my stash. The butterfly at the top was stamped twice, edged with blue ink, then a zip (gesso black and distressed silver) was glued as the body.

The flowers have alternate layers - distress silver paint and white card edged with blue ink.

A flower on the roof, with a zip dragonfly. The dragonfly was stamped twice as per the butterfly, but instead of ink I used a distress marker on the wings. There is a zip body here too.

Here you can just see the texture paste stencil. It ended up working well with the industrial metal look

The second dragonfly has no zip (only had two.) You can see here the swirl I glued onto the roof.

Here's the finished item again. One thing I have noticed is that, though I have tons of dies, I go to the same ones again and again, namely the flowers and the butterflies. There's a good reason for this, but I must endeavour to use the others too.

I've just realised I did a fourth thing this week! My friend is getting married next week so I made her a card.