My Crafting Journey

Lots of pics so I will apologise now x

I have always crafted.  As a child my mum tried and failed to teach me to knit, but she did manage to teach me how to crochet lol  I am left handed and she is right handed so some of it was a struggle.  Poor mum.  I do think I got my love of creating from her though.

In m mid teens I was given an sold Singer sewing machine.  The type that you have to wind the wheel to do the stitches. That got me into sewing big time.  Everyone started getting quilted cushions and pillows as gifts and eventually I moved onto dress making.  By the time that I had my eldest son, making clothes was the norm so I made quite a few of his clothes and some of his sisters.

After the birth of my daughter (now 20) I started selling hand painted cushions. My house was covered in them because they needed at least six hours to dry.  I can't remember why, but I stopped sewing after that.

About nine years ago I discovered paper crafting, specifically, Scrapbooking.

This is one of my earliest layouts.

Soon after, I discovered card making and since you can use the same stuff for both, there was no stopping me then.  Anything to do with paper became exciting and the fact that I was helping out in a craft shop only fuelled my hunger to grow my stash lol

Scrapbooking kinda got forgotten not long after that while I focused on card making.  I started making at least one card a day in response to all of the challenge blogs that I had started following and being the geek that I am, I had a spreadsheet to keep it all straight lol.

My card making has gone from here

 to here

I don't know if this is my best card, but it is one of my favourites.

A couple of years ago I got into making Mini Albums.  This is the first one I ever made.

I'm still making mini albums.  I can't get enough of them and I recently taught a group of wonderful women how to make one.  The results were amazing and my chest is still puffed up with pride over what they have done with my design.

The other area of crafting that I have moved into in the last couple of years is altering and construction.  Both are very scary at first, but once you get into the swing of it, it is very easy to get carried away.  My stash has grown from a small chest of 4 drawers to 18 drawers and a number of big boxes.

This is my favourite constructed make.  I had no tutorial and no clue what I was doing, but I am very proud of this make.

That is an overview of my journey so far.  I'm still learning and there is still so much to try.

Take care

Naomi x