Baby Card

This is one of the happiest cards I've made! Super easy and fun to do:)

Cards and more cards...

Been making tons of new cards lately...

 

The pinwheels are my favorite!

Happy Father's Day!

Recycled cards!

I'm determined to make all of the family birthday cards for this year. For the latest batch I used exclusively offcuts of paper - I always feel so proud when I've been able to make treasure out of trash and I love how these came out :)

 

Getting my craft on in 2013!

I can't believe this is my first blog post on here since September! In between moving city and moving house twice, the legs have completely fallen off any creative activities. I can't tell you how much I've missed it and find it hard to believe that at one point I was creating something new almost every day. Now that we are all settled into our new home, I am slowly starting to organize my massive hoard of art supplies so that when I have the time and feel 'in the mood' I can act on it without a whole big performance to find what I need :) I'm making progress finally!

Living a creative life is really important to me - regardless of how much talent I may be lacking or how well things turn out, it's important to me because I have this whole theory for leading my most joyful life. Basically, I divide my life into what I call my 4 "zones" and I have symbols for each as follows:

• Heart with Wings (Creativity/Spirituality)
• Stick person (Health, Body and Activity)
• House (Home and Community)
• Money (Finances and Work)

Each year I set a 'vision' and make specific goals for each of my zones. At the beginning of each week I draw this little visual in my planner and set objectives for the week in each zone to stay on track:

 

 

The picture reminds me of the balance I need in my life. I think of my zones as like the legs on a stool. With 4 progressing well I'm feeling completely stable and joyful! With 3 zones going well I can still manage. With only 2, the stool no longer stands and that's when I struggle too. I've been using my zones (and the visual) to keep my life in balance for a couple of years now and it works perfectly for me!!!

 

One of my goals in my Creativity/Spirituality zones this year is to make something and blog about it on here at the end of every month. For my first entry I thought I'd start out by making some cards. They are really simple to do and always so gratefully received:)

 

 

I hope that every time I send a handmade card, the person who gets it knows that I truly made it with love. I'm grateful to have so many people in my life to make cards for :). Life is good x

Crafts, crafts, crafts...

I have really been enjoying making things lately and have been spending time on art and craft projects almost every day. Unfortunately I don't have much that I can share right now since most of my 'creations' are Christmas gifts for friends and family. After all, there are only 111 days left until the big day but who's counting?;). Anyway, here are a few cards I've made recently - I've been trying a bunch of different styles and really like how all of these came out!

Bulk Card Production...

OK I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to "Clare really isn't so craftsy after all" if I don't get my act together soon :).  I can't seem to commit to a good Halloween project at the moment. I did however manage to go through my enormous stockpile of craft magazines and pick out all of the Halloween ones instead of buying a new one for inspiration. There were eight! Just for Halloween!

By the way - please don't tell Michael I have spent literally hundreds of dollars on craft magazines. It's my guilty shame. What's that you say? He'll find out when he reads this? I'm pretty sure he's not reading my crafts blog girls...let's do an experiment to find out shall we?? Mike if you're reading this it was me that deleted Lost on Tivo...I'll keep you posted...

Anyway - I have managed to make some generic cards for birthdays and events that come up between now and the end of the year. I always feel like birthdays at this time of the year get lost in the Holiday shuffle so I thought I'd plan ahead. I was actually really happy with how these really simple designs came out...

Anyway...now back to the magazines to pick a project...:)