I have been a bad crafter. I have not been joyfully trying nearly enough new crafts. I chalk it up to lack of time but I am pretty sure it’s my inner critic telling me off for wasting time and money on items that don’t make a guaranteed contribution to my professional body of work. Of course, I also tell all of my students and my kid to not be afraid of failing or not liking what they make because sometimes the process is the valuable part.
The irony does not escape me.
With that in mind, I challenged myself to think of a dozen crafts to try this year that I haven’t done or haven’t done much of or have neglected lately. Some of these I have everything in boxes or, in the case of woodwork and soldering, my partner has a full shop set up already.
- More drawing, inking, pencil work *
- Decorative painting
- Fabric marbling
- More pottery
- Woodwork
- More felting
- Sewing
- Soldering
- Crochet
- More vinyl and die cut
- Cement
- Weaving
- Video and photography
Phew! A lot of these tie back into work that I do normally but there should be enough completely out there things to spur some serious screw ups and fun successes. The pretty coloured fluffs up there are from one of the projects I did give a good shake in 2017: nuno felted scarves. Turns out, you can make beautiful merino and silk scarves with only a little magic. And a lot of water on the floor.
* Santa brought me a subscription to Sketchbox to help with this. I made him a website.