Have you ever considered how your climate may affect your projects? Here in the Gulf Coast, it tends to be pretty hot and pretty humid. This may not have much of an effect on textile crafts, but paper crafts get a little trickier.  Humidity dampens the paper to a degree which is ok, as long as you’re expecting it. And some glues and adhesives don’t quite cut it with this munch moisture in the air.

That said, we’re on the coast so there are lots of fun coastal craft supplies that you can find yourself by just taking a walk along the beach. Shells, agates, rocks, driftwood, etc can all be great for crafting especially if you’re working with some sort of coastal theme.

We’re also not too far from New Orleans, and I know lots of us like to get away for long weekends in the Big Easy. New Orleans is a great city to find impromptu craft supplies whether that be inexpensive trinkets from the tourist shops (I especially like the voodoo themed stuff!) or simply the abundance of beads everywhere all the time!

Once you start looking around you, you’ll start seeing more and more!

Speaking of locality, I’ve been reflecting lately about how pleased I am that my former employer, a personal injury law firm, is still local so that I can stay in touch with former colleagues and maintain a social life.  Crafting can be a very solitary hobby (unless you take advantage of our great rental group space!) so I’ve found it to be very helpful to maintain a social life when my boys are with their dad.

Between my ex-husband’s and my law careers, we’ve worked at a lot of different legal firms and this was the only one where I ever felt like our legal services provided more benefit to the clients than to the attorneys.  That’s not something everybody can say about their personal injury law practice!

Have you ever made your own Halloween costume and those for your child/ren, or are you an October 30^th Halloween Store Make Something Work type of person? If you’re the latter, but you’re interested in becoming the former, let’s chat! We don’t have Halloween-specific options but we have lots of baubles and doo-dads from which costumes and costume accessories can be made.

I’m also trying to garner interest in having craft tutorial days to be advertised on our social media pages.  So if there’s a specific craft or craft style you’re interested in trying, please do reach out and let me know what you’re interested in learning and what time(s) work best for you.

Also, if you tried any of the novice craft ideas I provided before, please let me know how they went! I want this blog to be informative, fun, interesting and to help you getting to work on projects that you and your kids will love!

Pinterest can be a godsend to us crafters. It’s such a great way to explore options, get feedback from people who like the same things, and bookmark the little things so that you have them in your back pocket should you need a quicky idea.  My store has a pinterest page you can follow and everything I pin there is something you can make with supplies from my store.

If you’re not tech-savvy, just stop in and we can explore options together! I’ll let you know the skill level required, a price point to expect, an idea of the hopeful outcome, and hopefully send you on your way with everything you’ll need at a reasonable price.

I also lost all of my own personal crafting on the store’s Instagram and Facebook pages, not only to convince you to come visit the store, but to demonstrate ideas. I also like to put up my best crafting fails because I don’t want anyone out there to think that I never fuck up these projects.  I have an entire hashtag committed to demonstrating my failures!

I haven’t been clear enough about this yet: crafting is about the process, not the product.  Not everything you make is going to be cute or useful or valuable, but the process almost always is.

There are some days when not even crafting can raise you out of a funk.  My gosh, I work hard, I keep the house clean, I take care of my boys, I try to remain cordial with my ex, and I do mostly an ok job.  But every so often, something falls through the cracks, or doesn’t, and I find myself crippled by sadness and feelings of alienation.

When I stopped working to raise my boys, when I was still married, I was so worried because I’ve always gotten so much gratification and self-worth from having a job I believed in.  I was a legal aid, which is how I met my husband, and I was so enamored by his status that I felt more important in my own status.  We worked together for three years before we got serious and then I left to avoid conflicts of interest and started at a different firm.

By the time we had our first kid, a year into our marriage, he had convinced me that I’d find as much value in a lifestyle as a mother as I’d had as a professional.  This was certainly true for the first couple of years, but once we split up and I found myself still depending on his income to fund my lifestyle, I began to feel worse and worse and of less and less value.

Creating things, running a store, being a mom, these things help to make me feel useful in the world but like I said – the sadness can be sometimes overwhelming and unshakeable. In my younger and freer years, I could just take a day to myself to stay in bed or do some self-care or watch movies and will myself into feeling better. If it didn’t work, I’d just lock myself inside for a day or two until it went away.

As a mom, there’s no longer space for that. Especially as a single mom. And there’s no damn way I’m leaving my boys with my parents just for the sole reason of “I’m feeling kinda down lately” even though they’d jump at the chance.

Creating little art projects is a way to stay busy, to keep one’s mind fresh, to keep one’s fingers moving, to explore creative ideas, and to have a token of having survived a sad day.

So don’t worry if you’re not in the mood every single day! Wait for inspiration to strike! Write down ideas as you have them so that if you quickly need something to keep you busy for a half hour or a day, you have a running list of options to try.  Keep some spare supplies at home so that you can’t use the excuse of not having any. Get your kids excited about it so that if you’re not in the mood, they can work to convince you.

Just never stop moving.

One of my favorite things about crafting is making sweet projects for my friends and family who have life events worth celebrating. I’m the go-to person for every baby shower, bridal shower, birthday party and christening and crafts work both for décor at the event as well as gift-giving.

Some people find gift cards to be so impersonal but I think there’s no better gift to receive. To make it a little more personal, I like to put it in a homemade card that speaks to the interests of the person.  For example, when my sister Gloria had her son Harry, I did a whole Harry Potter themed card and baby shower.  People loved it!

We had games and craft tables and snacks – all Harry Potter themed.  From the butterbeer cupcakes to the wand-making station to the trivia corner, everyone was running around have so much fun and I got to sit back and admire my work feeling proud and wistful and honored.

This also saved my sister hundreds of dollars on professional planners and decorations.  Crafting is often considered to be an expensive hobby, but my store is reasonably priced and I’ll help you meet a price point should you arrive with one in mind!

Have you ever noticed how crafting is so very limited to females, for the most part? My suspicion is that this is because of the patriarchy. For centuries, men did all of the manual labor leaving their wives at home to raise the children. But what could these women do with their time while their babies slept in their clean homes? Lace-making! Knitting! Sewing! Quilting! There were so many crafting options for these women.

Now certainly part of this was some condescending misogynist bullshit because men wanted to trap their women in the home and give them little tasks to accomplish. This kept them busy in the house, stimulated enough to not be stepping out, and distracted them from what bastards their husbands probably were!

While this is certainly not my intention in crafting, I do respect the history of it and how it contributes to the limited and under-compensating career options for women. While part of me thinks that as a feminist I need to get out there, provide for myself, and show my kids that I can take care of us by working – the other part of me prefers being a stay-at-home mom, funded by my ex-husband-lawyer-earner, doing these things that make me happy.

Have I been indoctrinated by the idea that I should be at home? Yes. But I have also found a way to monetize this experience with the shop and I hope to continue having it both ways until my boys are out of the house.

I’ve been getting the feeling lately that people find crafting to be a hobby, a pastime, entertainment for lonely under-stimulated pinterest junkies.  While this CAN be true, it is certainly not the rule.

There are many studies to suggest that performing a coordinated series of movements can improve brain capacity which can contribute to a sense of calm and satisfaction that comes along with creating a plan, carrying it out and having something to show for it.  There is a great deal of proof that these kinds of activities can also help with anxiety and attention deficit disorders as they take up down time with low-pressure engagement.

For moms, it’s also a great opportunity to demonstrate to your children that manual labor can be rewarding and encouraging.  Creativity must be encouraged in children, especially in the time where the internet and video games and media dominate the brains of children.

Further, concentration and focus can limit negativity and distract from active problems; repetitive motion can be calming and allows for contemplation; and knitting circles and crafting groups for parents AND their kids is a great way to get together and form a community.

This is why my shop has a small back room for crafting circles. Inquire with me about renting it out!

My husband used to love to buy me jewelry, and I used to love to accept it. Now that I know most of it was tainted because he was using it to absolve his guilt for sleeping with his law practice’s secretary, Nancy for three years, I’m a little less fond of it. This is why I sold most of it.

So now when I have an event to go to or a reason to dress up, I like to create my own accessories. One of my favorites uses pistachio shells, cardboard and nail polish!  First, pour yourself a glass of wine and have a snack of pistachios.  Set the shells aside until you’re ready to begin.

Pick your nail polish colors and get to painting the shells – don’t forget to use a no-chip top-coat.  Then begin hot-gluing the shells to a small (or large, your call!) cardboard bib of whatever shape you like. Some people like to do ombre colored, what a trend, and some like to do one color or one color family. This allows so much flexibility!! Stop by the store, show me what your dress looks like, I’ll help you design the necklace!

Now you want to let the bib dry for a day or so before affixing a necklace (chain or my personal favorite, braided thread) and wearing out.  You’ll get so many compliments you’ll wonder why you ever wore diamonds!

Maybe you have a bunch of fabric strips lying around from a project and you don’t know what to do with them. Crafting is a great way of taking scraps and turning them into décor. This could be a good project to get your kids involved on a rainy day. It’s not like their dad ever has them do anything tactile when he has them one weekend a month – he just plops them down in front of Netflix while he does some work at his desk.  You gotta engage the mind!

My kids names begin with L and W so I cut out two big cardboard letters to match. I then gave them a big sack of fabric straps and buttons and needles and thread.  For about an hour and a half they sat quietly suffixing the goods onto the letters until they each had a big door tag for their bedrooms with their first initial.

Ok so this isn’t exactly YOU crafting. But it’s something to keep your kids busy while you work on a t-shirt tote. We all have a million old t-shirts lying around from footraces, events, the dresser drawer your ex-husband never cleaned out, etc. The ones that are cute enough not to be made into rags but not quite wearable anymore, let’s make a tote bag!

First, pour yourself a glass of wine and take your t-shirt and cut off the sleeves and collar. Cut the bottom (front and back) into little strips – picture a bulletin where you pull off a strip on the bottom with the phone number. Do this to the front and back of the bottom of the shirt.  With the shirt inside out, tie corresponding strips on the front side and back site of the shirt together, so that the bottom is now sealed by little knots. Flip the shirt back right side out. The knots will now be on the inside of the tote and you can clip the strips.

Hey! Look! Now you have a tote bag, your kids have door tags, and everybody is just a little happier!

If you’re new to the crafting world, the best way to maximize your rewards for this fun new hobby, is to find your niche. So let’s start with one novice project from each genre: today we’ll work with paper.

A little bit about me, I’m a single mom in the suburbs running a craft shop and I just love helping people out who pop into the store and are looking for creative ways to work on their mental health.  I’m so lucky to have this shop following a small mesy divorce from my former husband, personal injury attorney, ambulance chaser, real piece of shit.  I was able to heartbreak and betrayal into a little shop that makes me happy, and I want to be sure it makes other people happy too.

So let’s start with some paper party decorations. I love to make garland. It’s simple, quick, cathartic and inexpensive. And it makes a statement. Since Valentines is right around the corner, we’ll do some themed garland.

First, pick out the colors you want to use – traditionalists will lean towards red, pink and white. But I like to be a little outside of the box, so I’m going with all of the pastels.

Pour yourself a glass of wine, grab your scissors and go to work cutting out as many hearts as your hands can manage. With each little heart, you can imagine something like your shitty ex-husband the lawyer, the living cliché, the secretary fucker! You can imagine just how sad his life is how that you’re not in it. You can think about how you won – you got the house, the kids, the money, the scissors, the paper, the crafts.

Once you’ve cut out as many hearts as you can, in variety of sizes for fun, pour yourself another glass of wine and grab your sewing kit.  With whatever color thread you have around (it won’t be visible) start stitching the hearts together – either by having one long stitch through each heart, or several stitches crossing it.  Make one really long garland or a bunch of shorties.

See! That was so easy! Now you have garland AND A BUZZ!

Now the hardest part: DO NOT TEXT YOUR SHITTY EX-HUSBAND THE ATTORNEY TO BRAG ABOUT CRAFTING. Let him imagine that you’re doing literally anything else with your time. Men simply do not appreciate the catharsis that comes with paper crafting.