Yeah, okay, it’s been a while since I have written on this website. So here I sit, drinking tea out of my Disney embroidery mug, trying to figure out how best to say what I’ve done in the last six months. What I need to do is just type. Not plan out every word and phrase. Just type. And proofread later.
I now have an Etsy shop. Eventually I want to get to the point of selling my work on this website. But as I’m still just starting, I am using Etsy with the wider audience of potential buyers. Or at least, that’s the hope. Click the link to see my Etsy shop – SMWcraftsShop. I need to list more of the ones I have done. I want to sell them, but I need to list them first.
I also have an Instagram profile for SMWcrafts. Please check that out to see me try to mix the projects I’ve been working with “popular” Instagram trends. I’ve never been one of the trendy people. So there really isn’t much of that going on. But I do love the tags feature, especially to see what other artists have done. So I can search by type of post rather than person. And add my own work to the mix.
I need to figure out a better system of organizing all my supplies. Currently, the tools (pliers, scissors, hot glue gun, tape, stamps & ink pad, tweezers) are in one of the drawers of my desk. The prepped jewelry is in a fancy cardboard box under my dormer window, followed by bags of beads, buttons, shells, and rocks. Next to my nightstand, I have prepped teacups and mini vases ready for candles; glued together and wick glued in. For that project I need to get a pan that no one cares about to melt down candle wax in and never be used for food again.
I have a pile of all the glass I’ve removed from the frames of my jewelry art. Right now my plan for those is to create a sea-glass type effect and use them for my mosaics. What else? Well I now have my grandmother’s sewing machine desk on the wall between my door and the mirror in the corner. I don’t know if I’m really going to keep it or invest in a newer automated model. Everything still works as far as I can tell, it just doesn’t work very well. We have a bunch of chicken feed bags that my dad wants me to turn into tote bags. Well, he found me a post that shows how to do it. Reuse and upcycle. I tried to do one and the sewing machine threw a fit. My mom would use it when I was little, but she told me that she stopped sewing when she no longer had the time or the energy to fight with the machine.
I have a plastic tote box next to my dresser of jewelry I’ve listed on Poshmark. A few other things, but mostly jewelry that was still in a good as-is condition. In one corner of my closet, I have boxes and packing paper saved from deliveries to our home that are close enough to the size I would need to ship anything I have for sale.
In the garage, I have one little bubble of space between the two doors with my mosaic prep work. I enjoy prepping my supplies in a way that requires as little clean up as possible. I’ve started going to garage sales picking up boxes of dishes and ceramics. Anything with a pretty pattern, or a color I don’t have yet. It started with going through an elderly relative’s shed and taking home anything cracked or chipped that we couldn’t sell in a yard sale and would have been trashed. I sit on the concrete pad atop a patio cushion grabbed from the deck, a hammer in my hand, and an old towel wrapped around the dish to catch the shards. “Smash it with a hammer” (Emperor’s New Groove, anyone) I have work gloves and a clear, hard plastic face shield on for protection. And I recently got a pair of tile nippers for about $10 to munch them up into smaller pieces. I debated about a more expensive pair, which I will eventually purchase, that had a spring form action to ease the shock to my hand when cutting thicker pieces. Other than the white pieces being in a separate container, the pieces are all mixed together in a couple shallow plastic totes we had on hand that were empty. Not anymore; they’re pretty heavy. I don’t move them very far. Even though I haven’t actually started the mosaics yet I have a bunch of ideas. Garden mosaics mostly. Stepping stones for decorations, flower pots, cement blocks, end tables, maybe a birdhouse or two. We’ll see how it goes.
The Skansen bench got pushed aside. One of the simplest reasons being lumber is so stinking expensive right now with the backlog from the pandemic. I still want to make the bench, but it will have to wait. And I still want to refinish, repaint, and upcycle furniture, but I don’t have a space to work on them. As I said “one little bubble” of space in the garage. We need to do a complete overhaul and reorganization, but I don’t see that happening soon. There are closer deadlines the family has with my grandparents moving into a new house. I’ve been putting my packing skills to good use with them.
Well, I’ll end this post here. I’m still new to the blogging endeavor. So Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful day. And I will try to write more often.
