To keep buying crafting supplies?!

[CraftyClaraChaos]

I feel the need to confess. I keep buying new crafting supplies, mostly fuelled by social media. In January I started with needle felting. Enjoyed it but didn’t complete the kit, it’s still in the cupboard. Went on to buy a sketchbook and set of black pens inspired by the zentangle pictures I saw on FB, turns out I wasn’t as good at that as I thought I might be. By June I had bought a set of acrylic paints and brushes. I stayed up till 2am when my DP was away and the kids were in bed, painted a lovely picture I was quite impressed by. Painted another following an online tutorial, was ok, but haven’t done another, although I’d like to. Painted my own Christmas cards using the kids watercolours but now feel uncertain about sending them out. Just received an engraving tool I saw advertised on FB (£100), but my head has already been turned by decorated cookies - I’m sure these are the way forward! Help me please?!

Anyone in your family diagnosed with ADHD?!

It’s fine! You can learn lots of skills, then choose which you want to invest more time and money in (if any of them). Try and give each one a give go though if you’re spending £100 on a tool. I have lots of minor hobbies and one major one, the skills overlap sometimes so they all kind of help each other.

I'm sure your cards are lovely. I make Christmas cards every year and as far as I'm told my friends love it as they know they won't get doubles.

One thing I would say about moving between crafts is that it is generally difficult to gain any proficiency in anything without practising. I know as I do a few different things (drawing, watercolour, acrylics, jewellery making, and papercrafts) and sometimes I get frustrated that I'm not better at the different things I do, so I've started practicing a bit more (my current project is to learn to draw British wildlife as I'm much more of a landscape person and don't usually draw animals).

As long as you can afford it, enjoy your forays into the art and craft world, and if you find things you don't enjoy, you can always pass things on.

Nah, she sounds totally normal.

Welcome to your new life. There is no going back, so the best thing is to embrace it wholeheartedly. Enjoy the stash acquisition, enjoy the making, let go of the need to have a good end result. If that was the point, you’d just buy stuff other people had made. I’d try the zentangling again. You probably need new pens though…

Buying craft supplies and doing crafts are two separate hobbies. I'm an anomaly it seems in that I only do knitting, and I have a really good set of circular needles and only knit with wool or alpaca yarn. I'd rather spend a lot on one hobby and use the supplies than buy lots of small cheap hobbies that go unused because they weren't very good to begin with.

I have so many balls of yarn that I'd be crushed under their weight if they ever fell on me. Every time I see a pretty colour, I buy it. I am slowly working my way through them by crocheting blankets for which I have no use, but I can't help it. The colours are like sirens calling me to shore.

Picture of your work please OP - not for judgment just appreciation of someone creatively doing what they love

Crafting activities are ALWAYS the answer: relaxing, mindful, creative, anxiety-reducing, gift-producing, time-filling…

Some knitters have such impressive yarn stashes that arrangements have been made about what will happen to said stash when they die.

I was also a serial craft starter... just dabble here and there now, finishing off some projects.

My MIL did some beautiful crafts, she has dementia now and is in a nursing home, we had to clear her house for sale there was over £20,000 worth (when bought) of craft stuff. All damp, ruined in her old decrepit house.

It made me rethink, so now I am finishing my 2018 advent cross stitch... but I will have to change the year at the bottom.

Exactly! Craft stashing will always and forever be entirely justified since lockdown. Obviously I have had to rebuild to pre-pandemic levels and a bit more just in case.

Same! 😂

This is so me, I can't stop. I've recently subscribed to a magazine again, yet I hardly make anything in them. I'm just oh look at this.

YANBU, as long as you get some enjoyment out of it. I hear you as it's difficult to know what to do with creative crafting output. Inflicting it on other people needs some serious consideration before doing so, lol, but your cards sound fine! Do it.

Nah you’re good! Carefully not looking at my yarn stash and diamond art stash, intentionally not learning quilting!

Tell me about it! Half my spare bedroom is taken up with resin, resin moulds, all the add ins, such as tiny little doughnuts, sweets, sequins, glitter, coffee cups. I see cute stuff and I buy it. I watch endless videos and see beautiful creations, yet I never get mine right!!! I must have £600+ of stuff in there! I seriously need to get some things made when the weather gets warmer! I feel your pain @CraftyClaraChaos

Funnily enough my ds has left to got to uni and we’ve been emptying out his room of 25 years of assorted cables, old drawing pads etc and I was just thinking that I’d like a hobby. Maybe though it’ll be a slippery slope from rug making to yoghurt weaving (joke) I have been looking at looms on eBay though, and harps.

A few years ago I used up almost all my stash in one massive blanket, mainly done in half trebles. I used my biggest hook & usually 3 yarns at a time.

Now, of course, the stash is building up again.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Or with having quilling (not quilting) supplies, more balls of yarn than anyone could reasonably crochet with, air dry clay (unused so far), resin and moulds (ditto), sewing machine and many bags of fabric, acrylic paints, floristry supplies, beads/embroidery silks/ jewellery making supplies and equipment and still putting watercolours and brushes on an Amazon wish list... (to go with the watercolour paper I have in the shed that my mother used and I kept 'just in case')

I have a yarn habit. I also have a fancy notebook habit. I am not ashamed🤣🤣

i am still entirely unsure what you do with one of those!

Ha ha you sound like me. Although I do finish stuff. I made my own wedding invites which turned into card craft.
Baking, cookie decorating. cake pops and all stuff like that.
I make my own candles and wax melt. (room spray and diffusers are something I want to try)
I make soap and bath bombs and fragrances bath salts. Mud masks.
my sister bought me a clay pottery set for my birthday so I can’t wait to try that. I’d love a wheel.
Basically if I see a craft, I want to master it.
I’ve done book folding which I loved but it was very time consuming.

edit because I forgot about sewing! I’ve made a lot of going out clothes. I honestly thought I’d make stuff for my daughter but haven’t had the time.

I knit. I have a huge wool collection.

I can crochet a granny square and find it relaxing to make them on car journeys because the husband insists on doing most of the driving.

I have a wonderful collections of notebooks and pens. Lately, I discovered disposable fountain pens.

I do plan to write a family history for each son in a notebook with a nice pen...

I have soo many crafting supplies.
I've tried my hand at knitting, crochet, clay crafts, jewellery making, sewing, sketching, painting, macrame, acrylic pouring, resin crafts, knitting loom, cross stitch, needle felting to name a few, I'm sure I've missed some 😳
I craft therefore I hoard.