My crafty year so far and new adventures

With half the year almost done (and didn't it fly by?) I thought it was time to look at my year so far.
It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I started the year with a much needed new job and that meant 13hour days sometimes at least to start off with. So no crafting but I so wanted a new job for the past year that that was a sacrifice worth making.
Craft wise the year started extremely promising. I became a part of the Alter it monthly team, having admired the blog and challenges for a while it's great being part of it.
I also became a permament member of the Design Team for Just stamps - Einfach Stempeln. It's a small(ish) German magazine aimed at stampers and mixed media artists. It is also the only German magazine I have come across. It has such great potential to become much bigger and it's fab being part of the team. And of course it's such an honour to see my stuff in print every month.



I also had my first UK publication this year with a reader submission in Craft Stamper. My frame got accepted last year but wasn't featured til earlier this year.

My mum sometimes asks me what I get from having my things published, but it's just such a great feeling having something in a magazine and that other crafters out there may be inspired by my piece.

With this being my 2nd year of my craft madness I thought I should try selling my things at a craft fair this year as so much stuff accumulates around the house and at some point I will run out of wall space, so may as well sell some. Everything just fell into place and within days I had booked a local fair. It was all going too well I thought as later the fair was cancelled due to lack of stallholders. But I spent hours searching the net and found plenty more, from small fairs to big summer festivals. Many of them were already fully booked or I couldn't get the time of work but I am in a great position to start planning my fairs early next year and pick out the best ones. And I have still got 1 booked for this summer, it's a bit daunting but also exciting.


As it's a year of firsts, I also booked my first craft workshops this year. First one, of course the Artsy Crafts Event with Tim Holtz, he's been such an inspiration and it was great meeting him in person. It also inspired me to book another workshop with Lin and Leandra. The projects may not have been that much up my street but they were still fun and it was just so lovely being amongst crafters and I talked to a lot of lovely ladies there and made a new friend - Alison of Craftytrog's Inky Adventures. Check out her blog, she makes some great things and is so lovely to chat to.

A couple of months ago I had a very exciting email about a project, not wanting to jinx it I won't tell you any details but it got me very excited. It took up a lot of my time and my blog has suffered the effects as I had less to show on here. But everything was wrapped up and posted off last week and fingers crossed it goes through ok. If not then I have created some beautiful things on the way and learned some new skills and tried out products and things I may otherwise not have tried. It's all about the journey after all.

Having posted that project off seemed a little like something was ending and I had completely lost my mojo for a week or two there. But every end is the beginning of something new.

I have been eyeing up art journaling for a while and admired the messy and colourful doodles of many artists. I didnt think I would be able to do that. For starters I'm not a journal writer and I don't like my handwriting but I loved the style too much to give up so quickly.
I can always use stamps and quotes for the writing bit.

So I have watched many videos on you tube for inspiration and browsed many blogs and decided to give it a shot. I ordered Kate Crane's dvd as I love her style and I can't wait to watch the dvd and try out some techniques.

In the meantime I got all my art supplies and just had a go at it. I started off with some tags to make it a small and easy project. And I just had a go with gesso, paints, matt medium, stamps, ink, splatters, rim marks and all sorts of messy things. If I didnt like what I made, I painted over it and it just added to the texture and feel of the piece. So the tags you see here are my very first samples of my art journaling, doodle, messy art style that I am getting into. I liked them so much that I went straight onto another piece, bigger and better. I will show it on my blog when it's finished so check back.

All I can say is, if you like something, try it. You might suprise yourself and be a natural at it.

And here is to the next 6 months of inky hands and messiness!!!