30 Day Coloring Challenge Day 1

Hi everyone!

It’s amazing how quickly time flies when I don’t have a dedicated space and time for blog posts and making things (meaning, sorry for the long hiatus…again). If anything was going to get me back here it’s the fourth iteration of Kathy Racoosin’s 30 Day Coloring Challenge over at her blog The Daily Marker.

She posts DAILY. It’s amazing. She’s amazing. I’m constantly amazed.

Last night I started collecting some of my goodies into a Coloring Caddy that I can carry between my basement Outpost and my actual craft room. In the past, I’ve tried to set up something more permanent downstairs, but then when I went to make something in my craft room, I would have to haul armloads of stash toys upstairs. And I’m pretty lazy, I mean efficient, (yeah, that’s it) and that didn’t go well. So this time, I’m going with portability over other considerations.

Coloring Caddy

First up, this Steampunk Alice stamp I got at a Green Whimsy consignment sale in November.

Steampunk Alice ready for the Ball!

One of my favorite things about this challenge is that it allows me to ink up stamps I’ve had for a while that I always thought would be fun to use or color, but haven’t gotten around to trying to make into a card, or they haven’t fit into a card I was trying to make. This way, I can just stamp it and color it. Now it’s ready for me to use when the mood strikes!

It’s easiest (for me AND Kathy) to post the daily coloring to Instagram, so if you want to see what I’m coloring, pop on over there to my Craftingwithoutkids feed. And you should totally join in! It’s lots of fun and low pressure and seriously, who doesn’t love coloring?!?!?

32/366 #yearofmaking

 

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Brooklyn Community Center Craft Fair

Did you miss me? 😉

I missed you 🙂

Forgive me internet, for I have been absent. It’s been…well…WAY too long since my last post. It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything, it’s more that I’ve been doing other things (I place A LOT of the blame on a little game called Dice Masters.) But I’ve been sharing them other places for now–like on Instagram. I had NO IDEA I would like Instagram. I hate having my picture taken so, generally in return, I’m not a picture taker. But then I started doing Kathy Racoosin’s 30 Day Coloring challenges at The Daily Marker, and uploading a daily little snapshot was the way to go. I also wanted to try a few new made-by-me challenges and those were also easier to do there because I could take a quick pic at a crop or something and post it with minimal editing and narrative.

However, I signed up to be in a small local craft fair with my mom which means “HOLY COW it’s been HOW LONG since I wrote a blog post ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod.” Yeah. And I want people that like what I make to be able to come and find an active online me. Someone at least as active as the real life me. And I need to focus and simplify so maybe this will help.

So HELLO TO YOU NEW VISITORS 🙂

Here’s some pictures of pretty things I’m selling this weekend.

I made some sweet wood ornaments (or just cute decorations).

Love them!

Meet Chester!

I don’t decorate much around the house. Since we don’t often have people over for the holidays, we don’t have kids, and we aren’t religious, then the whole decorating a bunch for Christmas is a little time consuming and we aren’t home much to enjoy it. BUT these adorable little canvases will work anywhere!

When starting to think about what I wanted to make for the show, I started making these little pendant rings..and then apparently I couldn’t stop. I’ve made A LOT of these. So please, if you’re in the area, come and buy one so that I can justify making more. That would really work well for me 🙂

There are SO many more where these came from.

So now I’m off to price and tag a few more things. I hope 3 things for the future:

1. Be on here more consistently.
2. Work on my follow through with planning and challenges.
3. Focus on the things that I enjoy.

I think by working on all of these, they will naturally feed off each other in a wonderful creative cycle. See you soon!

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Craftroom Cleanup

I can’t stand this anymore. This is it. Have you ever gotten to this point? Where you can barely stand to walk into your craft space, let alone even think about actually making something in there?

I have.

I’m used to clutter. I just have so much stuff that it seems inevitable. I usually have what we affectionately call a “Fort” around the chair I sit in most nights. My Fort is built of magazines to read, boardgames to punch out, images to color, and beading to work on. But enough is enough. I tried to get into my craft room the other day and it looked like this.

It’s ok. You can judge me.

I know. It’s insane, right? My poor buried Vagabond! Are you ready for another one further in? Prepare yourself.

Seriously. Judge me to your heart’s content.

So yeah. That’s the state my room was in. And I wanted to get in there and make something, but I couldn’t. It was just too much. After a little analyzing, the biggest issue is that I need to find a Home for everything–a Forever Home. Otherwise, I’m just moving and pushing everything around. So I drastically took a day off work and spent a long weekend working on it. Here’s what I have so far.

Look! Floor!!!

As you might remember, I’ve tried this before, and every time I’ve worked on cleaning up, I think it’s helped. I still love the Target shelves that I put up in this post, and as you can see in the pic above, they’re still there.

There’s Table!!!!

I didn’t get the exact same photo, but I think you can probably tell the difference. There’s actually table space!!!! Isn’t it incredible? Now for the scary part. I have to actually get in there and Make Something. I need to test my organization and see if it’s going to hold because if it doesn’t, then it’s not working and I need to try again. Right now I’m just happy to have clear surfaces. I think the key for me is going to be the combination of baskets and carts. Even though I like to have everything at my fingertips, this time, I tried to move as much off of my table as possible. These things I put into easy to get to baskets and tubs that I can bring to my table when needed–and then put back away when I’m done.

So many carts…

There are 2 carts here and 2 more behind my table next to my chair. That’s 4 carts (2 Raskogs 🙂 ), in my room. Since I don’t have enough room to make stations for different kinds of media on my desktops, I’m using these carts. The top of the white one is all my “good” paints and mixed media type supplies. I’m hoping that by having everything together, I’ll be able to just roll it near my desk if I need it all, or take some of them out to use and then, here’s the kicker, actually put them back, when I’m finished with mixed media projects. I even have one downstairs near my Fort with all my coloring stuff for my #TheDailyMarker30Day Coloring Challenge (which I still need to do today). I’ll let you know how the test of the new and improved craftroom goes.

Ok…I’m off to go color something! 🙂

 

29/365 #yearofmaking

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30 Day Coloring Challenge–Day 1

Guess what? Coloring is SO MUCH FUN! Remember?!?

I don’t have to remember too far back because I have a ton of coloring books in my basement on a shelf. You know, so I can get them out and color. So when I heard about the 30 Day Coloring Challenge that Kathy is doing over at The Daily Marker, I was in. The challenge is just to spend some time every day coloring. It doesn’t matter what it’s with or what you make, just color. As I’ve said about my #YearofMaking, that’s something I can get behind.

Today I even read an article on Huffington Post about how coloring helps combat stress. Fun AND a stress reliever? I’m double in.

So I won’t be posting my coloring here every day. Which I’m sure you would have guessed already based on the frequency of my posts (but I’m working on that!), but I will on Instagram (craftingwithoutkids) and on Twitter (@craftingwokids) and I’ll be checking in here now and again with my coloring. You know, when I make something out of it. Today I stamped some images to be colored later and then I made a bookmark.

Ready…Set…

GO!!!

I got the bookmark blanks from my friend Emily at Useless Without Pictures . She is doing the challenge too. I “talked her into it.” Hi Emily! This is going to be lots of fun. Promise. 🙂

17/365 #YearofMaking

1/30 #TheDailyMarker30Day

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#YearofMaking

When I read about Make Something 365 started by Noah Scanlin, and his 365 Skulls project, I was inspired. I was ready to try it. I couldn’t wait. I had great ideas!

And it lasted about a week.

And that was even with the caveat that it was ok to fail sometimes. But I didn’t like to fail, and skipping days felt like failing even if I had said it wasn’t. So I quit, and I hated that I quit. But that’s what happened.

Fast forward to about a month ago. I found the book Make it Mighty Ugly (which is AMAZING and everyone should read it) and that lead me to #YearOfMaking, which was started by Miriam Felton when she began posting what she was making every day. This resonated with me. There really aren’t any rules. Just make something. Or part of something. Or whatever you decide “making” means to you. I can’t even begin to tell you how freeing this is. And it’s a “year”, not “2015” so I (and you) can start whenever.  In fact, I started 16 days ago. SIXTEEN DAYS!!! Can you believe that?

Here’s a couple of the things I’ve made.

Day 2

Day 12

Days 13 & 14

 

So far so good. It’s been good having an excuse to make something every day, but it’s also been good not to be limited to making a specific thing every day. You’ll be seeing the days tick by at the end of my posts, and every once in a while I’m going to post a couple of things I’ve been making. If you want to see what I’m making each day, follow me on Twitter (@craftingwokids) or Instagram (CraftingWithoutKids). I post pictures there (the 99% of the time I remember to take one & it isn’t a blog post.) I’m also going to be following along with The Daily Marker and her 30 Day Color Challenge which starts tomorrow so you’ll see those too.

16/365 #YearOfMaking

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