Since my last post, I’ve continued to ponder project versus process orientation in my crafting. Actually, I’ve been a) feeling low from a lack of time and energy to actually make stuff, b) trying not to beat myself up for a lack of time and energy to make stuff, and c) surveying the many, many materials with which I could be creating new crafts. Funny how when we turn our attention to something it grows. Well, now it seems like all those materials I’ve been surveying are multiplying…by the hour. All of a sudden, I have loads of stuff but little time or direction to do much with it all! Ah! No wonder my head spins when I try to sleep at night: my mind wants to craft, craft, craft, but my body wants to sleep, sleep, sleep.
Good thing I am also in a cleaning-out mode, which is helping me sort through some of these materials. It’s also a good thing that my last post taught me I can approach crafting by simply looking over materials without specific goals or projects in mind, knowing that the crafts can bubble up from said materials. In this post, I’ll showcase many of these fine raw materials. I do have a few project ideas for each material, but for now, I’d like to stay open to suggestions and possibilities as they arise.
First, I cleaned out my stock. I started with one drawer at a time (beads, in this case). I had no idea there were so many beads and old, mismatched jewelry pieces in that little plastic box! Once I sorted out the “junk” (even I have a limit on how much stuff can hang around before I give it away), materials with real potential emerged. Here are some groupings of the “to-keep” materials from the Great Bead Purge of 2011.
After bead purging time, I attacked my random ribbon collection. I generally enjoy all kinds of gift bags, but most especially I prize them for their handles. I tend to snip them off and stash them anywhere I can, which, you can imagine, amounts to a tangled mess in more than one place. So after unraveling a few of these such messes, I found one true winner and lots of it.
Finally, I know many who might ask, “what can one crafter make out of a single bag?” but I ask, “What CAN’T be made from an attractive, durable paper bag??” So many possibilities…
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