simply-crafting

Well today was the first day of school for the children.  Can you say Yay!    Now don’t get me wrong, I do love my children to death but man, I get nothing accomplished when their home.  They have been home for about 10 weeks and my crafting and other chores have kind of gone by the wayside.  Now with them both in school I can get back at it again.   But first I need to get my groove back.

Well today was a pretty good day.  I got started on a lot of the housework that I’ve been putting off and was able to get a lot of computer work done as well.  Now tonight I have plans to start cleaning and reorganizing my craft room.  With this done I will be able to sneak in there every once and a while and possibly get some crafting done.

So hopefully soon you will see some posts on different crafts I have accomplished with pictures as well.  Like I said, I really do love the children, but thank goodness for the school year.

I always feel bad when I sit back and think about my crafting endeavours for the past week. Because lately I haven’t been able to do very much crafting at all. I have so many projects on the go and not enough time to finish them all. But hopefully this is all going to change.

On Tuesday both kids will be headed back to school so that will leave me more time to get things done which includes crafting. I have really slacked off this summer and I can’t wait to get back into a routine again. So after the kids go back to school I’m going to set up a routine and follow it. Hopefully when I’m back on a regular schedule I will get everything done that needs to be done around here which will free up some time for all my crafting jobs.

Yesterday my father in law came into my home with two huge cabinets.  One of the cabinets we are going to use for the kitchen and my husband said I could have the other one for all my craft supplies.  This is great news because this means that I  will be getting a couple of closets back.  My young son will be happy as he hasn’t never been able to use his closet because I have always had stuff in it.

So this weekend my husband is going to move the cabinet into my sewing room.  I need to clean it out a bit first.  Then I will be able to transfer everything out of the closets into this cabinet.  Once I get everything trasferred over, I will then be able to see what I have and what I need.  I can’t wait!!

One of my favorite places to shop for craft supplies would be at our local dollar store.  I usually go in there once a month and spend about $40 all on craft supplies.  With everything in there being a dollar I usually come out with quite a few supplies.  This is where I buy all my thread for quilting, all my yarn for knitting and a lot of my beading supplies as well.

I haven’t made my monthly trip to the dollar store in a couple of months.  The main reason for this is because with the children home I haven’t been doing a lot of crafting so I haven’t been running out of a lot of supplies.  But with the kids headed back to school next week, I can see my crafting hobby picking up which means that my monthly trip to the dollar store will be back on as well.

So this question is going out to all  you crafters out there.  Where do you purchase your supplies?  And do you make craft supply purchases on a regular basis?

Because I’ve had two little people underfoot all summer, not a whole lot of crafting has gotten done.  But this will soon change in about a week’s time.  In a week’s time my two youngest children will be headed back to school which will mean that I will have a lot more time to devote to my crafts and my crafting business.

I plan on making quite a few cross stitched pieces, some plastic canvas sets, more jewelry and I also plan to finish up a couple of quilts as well.  This way when the Christmas craft fairs start, I will have quite a lot of different types of crafts to sell at them.  Hopefully I am able to stick to my plans and get quite a bit accomplished before the beginning of December.  If not, then anything I make this fall will have to be put away for the Christmas season next year.

Wish me luck!

Oh my!  I was in the store the other night shopping for back to school clothes for the children and just happened (honest, just walking by) upon the crafting section.  Well you can imagine my delight when I seen their amazing sale on fabric.  Most of the fabrics that were there were being offered at a 50% discount.  And since all my windows need new curtains, I decided to purchase a pile of fabric.

My husband who was with me on this trip was just shaking his head at all my purchases.  I know what he was thinking.  Why in the world am I starting another project when I’ve got so many on the go right now.  Well I know that’s what was running through his head even if he didn’t say it.

So  sometime next week I will be starting on making curtains.  I can’t wait to see how this project turns out (if it turns out).

I have to say that I am totally addicted to crafting.  I do a lot of different types of crafts and usually have quite a few projects on the go.  The only problem I have found with this hobby is trying to find the time to do it.  Well…that and the cost of my supplies of course.

This summer I have really tried to stay on track with all my crafts, but for some reason time has seemed to slipped away from me.  Now it’s almost the end of summer and I don’t have a whole lot completed. This does bother me a bit, as in my case time is money.

And now I have decided to return to my former place of employment.  So once again I will be dealing with time constraints.  I really hope that one day my crafting hobby will be my full time job, but until then I guess it’s back to work for me.  But I am still going to try to set aside a block of time each week to continue on with my hobby.  I just hope I will be able to find the time.

Well so far on this blog I have discussed my jewelry making hobby and my knitting hobby. So I thought today I would tell you all about my scrapbooking hobby. Even when scrapbooking first came out, I wasn’t really interested in learning a new craft so I didn’t pay too much attention to the whole thing. Then both my parents passed away in the same year and all I had to remember them by was pictures. So I asked my brothers for all the pictures. I put them all away for about a year and then decided that it was about time to do something with them. So instead of just throwing them in a traditional album, I decided that I needed to learn how to scrapbook. It was then that the scrapbooking bug hit me and I’ve never looked back.

Since that time, I have started (yeah, I procrastinate a lot) three scrapbooks. One for each of the kids. And I have plans of doing two others. One for my husband and one for myself. This type of craft can be very expensive if you want all the embellishments and stuff so this is part of the reason why I haven’t finished any scrapbooks yet (except my parent’s). But I’m sure the bug will hit me again and I’ll be back at it. I know I really should as all the pictures are starting to pile up and I really should do something with them.

I have a friend who is attending a craft fair this weekend.  She has a booth booked for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  I will not be able to attend this particular craft fair myself as it is quite far away from where I live.  So she has generously offered to take all my handcrafted jewelry and try to sell it all for me.  Hopefully she will be able to sell quite a few pieces of mine so that I can get rid of some of the stock that I have on hand.  But even if she doesn’t, I am still quite grateful to her for her offer.

Later on tonight I am going to take down all my creations to her.  Hopefully she has a successful weekend, and I’ll be sure to pop back in here the first of next week to let you all know how we made out.  Fingers crossed guys!

Yesterday my father in  law had a huge yard sale.  So I thought I would take my jewelry down to his sale to see if I could sell anything.  I didn’t sell very much, but did sell a few pieces.  And at a yard sale I would say that’s pretty good as usually people want something for nothing and are always trying to beat you down in prices, which I refuse to do.

The good thing was, was that I received a lot of compliments on my work.  Most people who stopped to look at my work told me that they thought I did an excellent job on all my creations and that all my work was beautiful.  So I learned a couple of things yesterday at this sale.  First of all, a yard sale is not the place to try to sell crafts. And second of all, I am on the right track with my jewelry.  I just have to find the right buyers.  Hopefully the couple of  craft fairs that I have booked will do the trick.