Crafternoon

Me and my friend (who it must be said is also named Kim) both love to do artistic things. In fact, we sort of bonded over art - or art class to be more specific (yay, high school). We would kvetch over making art while I chewed her ear (NON STOP) about my boy troubles (she's a candidate for sainthood, that one).

Anyway, as we have gotten older and more responsibilities and priorities have filled our schedules, we have found it harder and harder to stay in touch with that artistic side of ourselves. We try to take in the occasional art class when we can, and constantly pin/save cool projects we find online that we will do "someday" but never seem to get around to, but it is often hard to motivate ourselves to sit our butts down and make something.

We were recently discussing how disappointed we are about this and we made a plan - see, we are both generally the kind of people who are more likely to stick with something if we a) schedule it and b) have a buddy to share it with (I am not very self-motivated as it turns out). So, we thought, why not schedule a day once per month where we get together and have a 'crafternoon' (clever, right? I came up with that), i.e. an afternoon or art and craft making!

It has worked quite well so far - we have met twice and have come away from both experiences feeling great and motivated to do it again. The first time we painted a mural on her bedroom wall - observe:

Photo by Kimberly Piccott

And the 2nd time (just last weekend) we made these:

Photo by Kimberly Piccott

FELT FLOWERS! This is a craft I found here. What is great about the blog post the craft is from is that she includes patterns for various shapes that you can print right off and cut out! This made it so easy and fast. You can customize these flowers using different combinations and layers of shapes, as well as different colours and embellishments. You can also customize them by putting different attachments on the back - we used alligator clips because we liked the versatility (you can clip them to a jacket, bag or headband, or simply right onto your hair), but you could also use pins, and various types of hair clip or comb, depending on how you plan on wearing them.

This was not only a super-easy and fast project - it was super-affordable too; This is the breakdown of supplies and approximate costs:

Felt sheets - $0.50 each x 16 (I got 2 each of 8 colours) = $8

Beads and sequins - $1 each x 2 packages (Dollar store!) = $2

Small alligator clips - $4.99 for pkg of 4 (Michaels - unfortunately all I could find) - $5

Grand Total = $15 - and you could easily make 2 dozen flowers with all the felt I bought (hundreds with the beads and sequins) so each one arguably costs pennies to make. I already had thread and sewing needles so that cut down on my costs as well. 

I look forward to making many more of these, for myself and as gifts. I know someone who definitely liked my flower - I came home from supper out that evening and the cat had knocked it on the floor and clearly played with it, pulling two of the yellow stems out!! I had to resew that whole section and it did not look as good after that, I'm sorry to say. 

Apparently they also make good cat toys (who knew).

Do you like arts and crafts? What do you like to make? Do you have 'crafty' friends? How do you make time for creative pursuits?