So, it’s been forever since I last blogged, and after promising that I wouldn’t go away for such a long time again too. I put the blame for this pretty much on Gary Numan, Pete Doherty and Johnny Bramwell for not doing any concerts, so Mrs H3 and I haven’t been out anywhere near as much as we had by this time last year, although some of the blame also has to go to my mortgage brokers, who completely fucked up my re-mortgage application and left me close to destitute for a few months, meaning that I couldn’t afford to go out anyway.
Of course it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. The severe shortage of funds, not helped by the need to buy new glasses when mine died suddenly (another reason the re-mortgage fiasco was such a nightmare) left me alone and at home, surrounded by my never-lessening pile of crafting stash. With all manner of birthdays, anniversaries etc. on the horizon and inspired by reading Tim Holtz’s Compendium of Curiosities book, I felt it was time to get my arse in gear and actually use some of it, both in order to save money on cards/presents and to get my crafting mojo going again (and also to stop Mrs H suggesting, as she has several times, that I sell it as I never use it). There was also another UKS Cybercrop, which I actually only found out about the week before it happened.
And so I’ve spent the last few months, cutting and pasting, glittering and gluing and I’ve discovered a whole slew of things, which I guess I should have known before, but with the extended break from anything crafty had been pushed to the back of my mind.
The first thing I learnt, or maybe the last really, is that I’m far too much of a perfectionist to be a true artist. Not for me slapping a bit of this and that on wherever the fancy takes me and treating any errors as ‘interesting focal points’. The things I make have to be perfect – even the inking has to be precisionally placed.
Hand cutting can be tedious, really tedious: Now of course everyone already knows this, which is why lots of people have things like Cricut. But as a pauper who has stopped buying gadgets I don’t use (remember the Sizzix etc. – yep mine’s lounging in a cupboard somewhere), I had no choice but to hand cut – and not just once either. For the birthday cards I made I printed the messages in my chosen font, stuck them to card for strength, then cut them out. This was followed by covering in some of my favourite papers, which were then cut again. On the second card, which took three days to make, there were also flowers to cut and make. Oh, and once I’d made the flowers I didn’t like the papers I’d used for the letters so had to re-cover and cut them for a third time.
Fun foam doesn’t make a good base for something that is going to be heat embossed: Yep, pretty obvious I know, but I wasn’t really thinking sensibly and soon found that UTEE and foam don’t really mix, but I’d got so far by that point that I had no choice but to continue.
Hot UTEE is better handled with tools than with fingers: I know, I know…this one really is a no brainer. But in my impatience to create enamelled flowers I didn’t bother thinking about how I was going to handle them. Hurrah for cocktail sticks say I!
Distress Crackle Paint doesn’t always work: Actually, as it turned out I’m glad it didn’t or two days work would have been ruined as it wouldn’t have gone with my finished card at all. It may be that I just didn’t use it right, but according to the instructions you paint on a layer, then let it dry and it crackles of its own accord. Mine didn’t – did give a nice glossy sheen though...which isn’t what I want from a crackle paint.
Making Memories tweezers work back to front: These things are so annoying. Every time I tried to do anything I couldn’t. But I’ve lost my proper tweezers (along with just about everything else I needed) so had to make do. They’re almost as bad as the Provocraft Silent Setter, but that doesn’t actually work, whereas with a little concentrated thinking I can actually get the tweezers to pick things up, so these only come in as second worst crafting tool ever.
I need new scissors: No, I really do. I have a fabby pair of X-Cuts that I got at Bonanza, what seems like a million years ago now, and they’ve been great. But when you use them for cutting everything from paper to metal brad ends the blades get a bit dull. After a weekend of hacking at brads I realised my poor X-Cuts are just not cutting it (blah!) anymore. So I need a new pair of scissors and want the Tim Holtz (who else) Tonic scissors which apparently cut absolutely everything. Just need to get some money first.
Trying new techniques when you’re a perfectionist and on a short timescale is really not a good idea: Of course this is obvious too, but when I originally started Mrs H3’s “mini” book, three days before her birthday, I was expecting to paint a few beer mats, stick on a few pictures and decorate with primas, buttons and a few stickers and then hold them together with a few decorated book rings. As you’ll see from the photos, what started as a small project rapidly turned into one some forty odd pages long and it was only an hour before meeting Mrs H3 that I finally found a scrapbook big enough to put the decorated cards in (which I then, of course, had to decorate).
New techniques for me included creating my own decal transfers (hard when you don’t have the correct sealant – I only had glitter mod podge), painting strings of beads and (why, oh why) creating miniature plaques of the Hogwarts Houses and School Shield.
No glue sticks properly when you’re in a rush: I guess this is an obvious one too, but it seemed that for each mat I completed, I stuck everything onto it about ten times. Most frustrating when usually diamond glaze sticks absolutely anything. I even resorted to super glue at one point ... and that didn’t work either!
Primas can do absolutely anything! Yep, that really is a rendition of the Rose of England done in Primas on the page with Henry VIII. And bloody good it is too, if I do say so myself.
So I made some cards, and a mini book for Mrs H3, that turned out to be anything but mini and then finally even did some layouts for the Cybercrop, although I returned to my digital roots for that as it happened to coincide with the weekend that I returned to working at the pub. The results of my crafty sojourn are below, if you want to feast your eyes.
Of course it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. The severe shortage of funds, not helped by the need to buy new glasses when mine died suddenly (another reason the re-mortgage fiasco was such a nightmare) left me alone and at home, surrounded by my never-lessening pile of crafting stash. With all manner of birthdays, anniversaries etc. on the horizon and inspired by reading Tim Holtz’s Compendium of Curiosities book, I felt it was time to get my arse in gear and actually use some of it, both in order to save money on cards/presents and to get my crafting mojo going again (and also to stop Mrs H suggesting, as she has several times, that I sell it as I never use it). There was also another UKS Cybercrop, which I actually only found out about the week before it happened.
And so I’ve spent the last few months, cutting and pasting, glittering and gluing and I’ve discovered a whole slew of things, which I guess I should have known before, but with the extended break from anything crafty had been pushed to the back of my mind.
The first thing I learnt, or maybe the last really, is that I’m far too much of a perfectionist to be a true artist. Not for me slapping a bit of this and that on wherever the fancy takes me and treating any errors as ‘interesting focal points’. The things I make have to be perfect – even the inking has to be precisionally placed.
Hand cutting can be tedious, really tedious: Now of course everyone already knows this, which is why lots of people have things like Cricut. But as a pauper who has stopped buying gadgets I don’t use (remember the Sizzix etc. – yep mine’s lounging in a cupboard somewhere), I had no choice but to hand cut – and not just once either. For the birthday cards I made I printed the messages in my chosen font, stuck them to card for strength, then cut them out. This was followed by covering in some of my favourite papers, which were then cut again. On the second card, which took three days to make, there were also flowers to cut and make. Oh, and once I’d made the flowers I didn’t like the papers I’d used for the letters so had to re-cover and cut them for a third time.
Fun foam doesn’t make a good base for something that is going to be heat embossed: Yep, pretty obvious I know, but I wasn’t really thinking sensibly and soon found that UTEE and foam don’t really mix, but I’d got so far by that point that I had no choice but to continue.
Hot UTEE is better handled with tools than with fingers: I know, I know…this one really is a no brainer. But in my impatience to create enamelled flowers I didn’t bother thinking about how I was going to handle them. Hurrah for cocktail sticks say I!
Distress Crackle Paint doesn’t always work: Actually, as it turned out I’m glad it didn’t or two days work would have been ruined as it wouldn’t have gone with my finished card at all. It may be that I just didn’t use it right, but according to the instructions you paint on a layer, then let it dry and it crackles of its own accord. Mine didn’t – did give a nice glossy sheen though...which isn’t what I want from a crackle paint.
Making Memories tweezers work back to front: These things are so annoying. Every time I tried to do anything I couldn’t. But I’ve lost my proper tweezers (along with just about everything else I needed) so had to make do. They’re almost as bad as the Provocraft Silent Setter, but that doesn’t actually work, whereas with a little concentrated thinking I can actually get the tweezers to pick things up, so these only come in as second worst crafting tool ever.
I need new scissors: No, I really do. I have a fabby pair of X-Cuts that I got at Bonanza, what seems like a million years ago now, and they’ve been great. But when you use them for cutting everything from paper to metal brad ends the blades get a bit dull. After a weekend of hacking at brads I realised my poor X-Cuts are just not cutting it (blah!) anymore. So I need a new pair of scissors and want the Tim Holtz (who else) Tonic scissors which apparently cut absolutely everything. Just need to get some money first.
Trying new techniques when you’re a perfectionist and on a short timescale is really not a good idea: Of course this is obvious too, but when I originally started Mrs H3’s “mini” book, three days before her birthday, I was expecting to paint a few beer mats, stick on a few pictures and decorate with primas, buttons and a few stickers and then hold them together with a few decorated book rings. As you’ll see from the photos, what started as a small project rapidly turned into one some forty odd pages long and it was only an hour before meeting Mrs H3 that I finally found a scrapbook big enough to put the decorated cards in (which I then, of course, had to decorate).
New techniques for me included creating my own decal transfers (hard when you don’t have the correct sealant – I only had glitter mod podge), painting strings of beads and (why, oh why) creating miniature plaques of the Hogwarts Houses and School Shield.
No glue sticks properly when you’re in a rush: I guess this is an obvious one too, but it seemed that for each mat I completed, I stuck everything onto it about ten times. Most frustrating when usually diamond glaze sticks absolutely anything. I even resorted to super glue at one point ... and that didn’t work either!
Primas can do absolutely anything! Yep, that really is a rendition of the Rose of England done in Primas on the page with Henry VIII. And bloody good it is too, if I do say so myself.
So I made some cards, and a mini book for Mrs H3, that turned out to be anything but mini and then finally even did some layouts for the Cybercrop, although I returned to my digital roots for that as it happened to coincide with the weekend that I returned to working at the pub. The results of my crafty sojourn are below, if you want to feast your eyes.
