The Introverted Crafter

Not done any crafting in the last week. At all. It was actually quite nice taking a break. Unfortunately it means I have nothing to put on here. I did treat myself to a few new cross stitch kits in a bank holiday sale. Beautiful aren't they? There's a poppy one as well but I can't find the photo of that to share with you. With these and the ones I already have I have enough stitching to last me for a good while yet! want no distractions as I feverishly write until I finish The plan this week was to start, and finish, editing the ghost lights. So all my free time was devoted to editing my work using a red pen, then typing up the changes. You have to look really carefully when you edit; not only for the presence of too many that's and very's, too many commas, but at the continuity of the story as well. It's time consuming, and I had forgotten how time consuming it is. Suffice to say, I haven't quite finished, but I am exceedingly close, a...

I've been getting into the Christmas spirit this week, by designing a couple of Christmas cards. Initially I was going to do a snowglobe design for all my cards this year, but it takes a lot longer than I thought it would, so instead I have also designed an alternative one. I just have to decide who gets what. Here are the two designs. This is made using a Tim Holtz snowglobe die. I used kraft cardstock for the houses and trees, some paper I had in my stash for the mountain, some dictionary paper for the snow, and some wood paper for the globe base. The background is white paper coloured with sprays. I added a few stars too. The phrase is also Tim Holtz dies, cut out of black card and coloured with silver wax. This is the second, and simpler card. I used a white card and a snowflake embossing folder, using distress ink and silver wax to highlight the snowflakes. I then die cut and embossed some snowflakes and coloured them using the same items. Finally I cut out the n...

It's been a more productive week this week craft wise. I've actually managed to finish the calendar tags. Here are the last five months. I wanted the flower here to look more like autumn leaves in colour. I love this one. I didn't want to go too far down the Halloween route, so I added a black cat and a little girl with a pumpkin at the top. This was the nearest I could get to daisies. I love the little butterflies on here. The butterfly on this was actually from the May page, but March is my mum's month, and purple is her favourite colour, so I put it on here. The last month was May. Butterflies again! Good thing is I have plenty of extra things from the Time to Flourish papers, including some beautiful poetry that I will find a use for. I've also made a birthday card, which will not fit in an envelope. I started off by stamping my own background, with stamps from a magazine and my new dewdrop inks. I aged them with vin...

I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment. Creatively I am in a major slump, and as for the weekly tasks, I can't muster up the energy or the enthusiasm for them. Everything seems to be a slog, something to struggle through rather than something I am supposed to be enjoying. Struggle through I have done, and I do have things to put on here this week. This box was from The Works. I started by adding some paper clay moulds - flowers, leaves and a label. Once that was dry I thought it was too plain, so I die cut some leaves out of cardboard for the top, and some butterflies for the sides (mainly because the leaves were really hard to cut!) Once I had attached those I coated the whole box in black gesso, then washed it in chalk paint (which has separated a bit, but it added to the effect.) I then added some burnt umber stain (sorry I have forgotten what it's called but it's that one that you put on, wipe off the excess then seal with a varnish) ...