Another Bag - with a Crafty Individuals' Collage

I'm being a bit feast or famine with my blog postings and maybe should have held this one back but I finished it at midnight last night and was much happier with it than the previous one, so I wanted to blog it straight away. Although I adore the Sheherazade stamps, there were so many flaws of my making in the bag so I wasn't really happy with it, and I am still trying to get myself organized enough to be able to craft - you know how it is, if something isn't working out normally you have a product or a tool to hand to remedy it but I still can't find anything! Also my patience and concentration are not very good so I give up at the first hurdle!

As I have mentioned before, I have been totally inspired by Paula of Ephemera's Attic's beautiful work in making these bags. She has such a wonderful sense of colour and design.

This bag has two sides to it and I collaged together a selection of stamps and parts of stamps from Crafty Individuals. As it was then quite 'busy', I kept the trim fairly simple. The thing I am pleased with is I love a bargain and I got the base bag from the 99p shop (am I going back there? you bet I am!). They are nothing like as easy to work with as the lovely ones I normally get from Happy Daze as they are black and kind of snakeskin so you have to cover up the colour and the texture before you can do anything else, and they are less elegant as they don't have the chain handle. But for me at the moment having a cheap base item I can mess up if needbe gives me more confidence. And I found it satisfying as I was with my friend, Elaine, when I bought it and she thought it was hideous and wondered 'where is she going with this?', so it was rewarding to turn it into something pretty.

I started to feel a bit more like my old self as I crafted at midnight last night. People often talk about losing their Mojo and to be honest that hadn't happened to me before. That is not to say that I make good stuff or have good ideas all the time - far from it - but I had always felt I was in the mood to craft and I never felt I was sat in the craft room staring at a blank desk for long, I just get stuck in and make something even if it is rubbish. But these past few weeks I have had no desire to craft and not a single idea in my head, and I wondered if I would ever feel creative again. When I gave up my job a few years ago I wondered why I had never wanted to craft before and now I realize that the stress I was under at work didn't leave any space in my head. And that is what has happened again since our disaster - the stress has been so enormous I haven't been able to think about or concentrate on anything except house stuff and worry. So I'm hoping the worst is over now ......

On that note, I am hoping to soon be able to get stuck into writing a column for the new Blogozine, Unruly Paper Arts as I had to put my involvement on hold. Have you seen it yet? It is looking great! My contribution, I hope, is going to be a column on altered art with the emphasis on using things that are inexpensive either as a substrate or as a product, as that is what I find the most rewarding. Hope you will drop by and see what everyone is up to so far!

One final thing (crikey, I am going on a bit today, I told you it was feast or famine with me!) you may remember a while ago I ran an on-line course on making your own moulds which went really well. This perfume bottle was one of the items I showed you how to make:-

If you would like to take this class and didn't have the chance before, I am running it again before I start on a new one. The cost is £7.50, $12 US dollars. Please drop me an e mail at lucy@cedmondson.net if you would be interested.