Crafting Clutter

Clutter is the curse of a crafter, or at least, it is the curse of this crafter. I find it very difficult to control my buying and I am always on the look out for new crafts to try (which inevitably require new and exciting equipment or materials). It goes without saying that I never turn down anything when it is offered to me…

Just before Christmas I was given a big bag full of fabulous retro fabrics and was very happy to give them a home with all of my newly purchased Ikea bargains. Until tonight, that home has been the lounge floor. I just couldn’t look at them any longer; I had to attempt to organise.

I store my crafting materials in boxes on a bookshelf in the spare bedroom, on another one in the lounge, in magazine racks on a desk in the lounge and in a chest of drawers in the lounge. In short, I need a bigger house with at least one room just for my crafting. It’s hardly a surprise that it quickly ends up in a mess and I can rarely find anything. I’ve done a lot of sorting this evening and was astonished that I needed a whole drawer for “cutting and sticking” and an entire shoebox for my ribbons, many of which are harvested from cards, chocolates and flowers given to me by my students – David’s not the romantic sort!! It’s getting a little ridiculous. I have card, thread, buttons and beads everywhere.

I’m a little ashamed of the amount that I have collected and so have made a late New Year’s resolution not to buy more for some time. I’m not prepared to put a timeframe on this but I do promise to try.

Now that I am almost certain my dear husband will have had enough of reading this post and returned to reading something bird related I shall divulge the second and much more important reason for organising my crafting things today. I needed to sneak a few new crafting books into the house…

These are not all brand new – some are old friends! What you see here is my entire crafting collection. I was given The Happy Hooker, Crafting by Concepts and one of the Compendiums of Cardmaking for Christmas. I bought Quilting In No Time from The Book People in November ( I think) but Kirstie Allsopp’s Craft and Fast Fabric Gifts arrived today. They look fantastic and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the projects. They were heavily reduced on Amazon so I couldn’t resist. I may even try something tomorrow if time allows.