The Introverted Crafter

As you can tell by the title, I am not in the mood today. But you know what? I am an adult, and adults still have to do things when they are not in the mood for them. The last couple of days have been an entire reversal of what I have been striving to do all month towards my two resolutions, and I am pissed at myself. I have had not one but two Chinese takeaways, plus an egg and bacon sandwich from the local café, and I have spent a grand total of 166.96 on unnecessary spending. Aside from the Chinese and the sandwich, there was a food shop in Asda that I didn't really need to do (which included a couple of CD's), and some craft stuff. It's entirely my fault; I saw something that someone did that I really liked and ordered a mould that I saw them use, adding a couple more moulds to it, including one of some fish. That led to me getting some resin (which I have wanted for a while to use in charm bottles) and with that I got some moulds. So I have identified two things; one -

Well, one new die. I also tried out some black shrink plastic and butterfly dies to make some jewellery. The trick with doing this is to roll the shrink plastic and the die back and forth through your machine more than once. Black shrink plastic tends to be difficult to cut. Anyway, once I had successfully cut out the butterflies I shrunk them. The best thing to do is to shrink them on the lower setting. After they had shrunk, I painted them with the new Sparks paints I got just before Christmas, before assembling them into earrings. The pictures don't show just how beautiful the butterflies are. It's a perfect way of doing a pair of earrings for someone. I've also tried my hand at making a slider card. There is a mistake there, as I didn't position the background paper properly so there is a little kraft paper showing through, but overall it went well. With these ones, if you are using the spiral slider piece you need to make sure that you use foam pads in t

This week has not been great. I had to go home sick from work on Friday, for the first time in a good few years. I'm sure I am not the only one who hates being ill. This meant that the 10,000 steps for that particular day went out the window, but I have been keeping up with it every other day this week. Spending wise I have only had 3 NSD's bringing me halfway to my monthly total. Necessary spends included a driving lesson, food for work next week, and a new halogen oven, as ours is stuck on the same temperature. There have been a few unnecessary spends. On Tuesday I took mum to Franky and Benny's for lunch, to the tune of £20.90. The thing that annoyed me was it cost over £4 for a pint of lager! Obscene price. Still, the chicken Caesar wrap was lovely. I've also got two subscriptions on the go, with the hope that will curb random spending. One is £12.54 for a SnipArt lucky dip envelope, and the other is £22.45 for the Craft Box, which looks amazing. Speaking of craft

Perhaps I should have made my new years resolution about crafting. All this new stuff, and I cannot seem to find any inspiration. Or at least, any get up and go. I have started making a little house from my new die though. Haven't finished it, which is why the only picture you will see right now is this... As you can see I have the pieces cut out...just haven't put it together yet. Oh well. I have been stitching, and have finished page three. Here is the update. At least this is really coming together. There are 6 pages, but I wouldn't say I am halfway through, as pages four and five are choc-a-block with stitching, far more than the upper pages were. Lets say I am three eighths of the way there. I've done that last page in record time. I might start working on the frame soon, as I have an idea of what I want that to look like. As for the two resolutions I did make? They have been going ok, but it is still early days. I have kept to my exercising

I'm going traditional with resolutions this year. It's two-fold; to lose pounds, and to gain pounds. That is, to lose weight and to save money. Both things took a hit last year, due entirely to me stuffing my face and spending too much money. This year it changes, but before I go onto that... flashes in your eyes gunpowder in bright colours explosions deafen The last thing of last year was to stay up and watch the fireworks. Ordinarily on new years eve I go to bed quite early, mainly because I work the next day, but with the new job I actually get bank holidays off. Admittedly I did not actually go out, so I didn't see them in Newquay, but I watched the London ones on the telly. They were quite nice. I did think at the time that the soundtrack was overly feminine, but I didn't realise at the time that this year is the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote. Last year was on the whole successful, although my interest waned later in the year. Still, I was ver