My Crafty Spark - Amy at Badskirt

One year minus two days ago, I started my blog. But that's not where my craft adventure started. It started a few months before that. My friend Cindy lives in the US. Cindy and I went to grad school together to study visual effects. Then we worked together at film studios in California. I'm not sure that I'd call that crafty, but there a big art component to it. We made digital images pretty. We made movies you loved and more likely movies you didn't see. We looked at light, colour and composition. We made pixels, but nothing tangible. It was a craft, but in a different sense of the word. Cindy has always been creative and a maker of things, but I always came up short on the tangible side of things. I studied business. I programmed computers. I lost my creative edge. In February 2008, Cindy participated in A Thing A Day. I watched with envy as Cindy made 29 pieces for February and then some. I looked at my husband and said, "I want to do that. I want to make things." Fuelled with an energy to create, I headed to the local jewellry supply shop. I bought beads. I bought wire. I bought jump rings, and then I brought it all home. I sat on my couch and started to make. After a few hours, I failed to cobble anything together. My husband sat next to me and asked if he could try. He promised to take apart his disaster to recycle the beads. Craig's creations left me a little stunned. In 15 mintues, he had created a gorgeous necklace. This left me dumbfounded as I was still struggling to pair the bits. Feeling a bit defeated and deflated, I put the beads aside for another 8 months. Hot on the heels of my beading disaster, I launched into the idea of buying a sewing machine. That was March of 2008. Now I sew all of the time. I wasn't very good in the beginning, but I had moxie to carry me through. I launched my online store in October and poor Pip bought my very first softie for sale. I feel sad sometimes when I think about that first softie and how bad it was. Pip is inspiring, she's a crafty spark in herself and I want her to have the very best softie in the world. I don't make them good enough for Pip yet, so I keep sewing and smiling and enjoying craft. That's where my spark started. The photos are from my first month of sewing. Whatever your style or materials, I hope you like to make too. Amy Amy is a 35 year old American who has lived in Australia for 5 1/2 years. Her house has a loving husband, big sofa and a lot of soft toys. Amy now blogs at badskirt.

My Crafty Spark - The Crafty Librarian

Pip has set the prefects and authors on this blog an assignment...being a bit nerdy, I love this sort of thing! She has asked for us to post the tale of our "Crafty Spark", to tell the story of what it was that made us say, "Wow, I want to make things!"

I have posted about this a little before actually...but I do like reminiscing... it seems like such a long time ago now, but was actually only about 18 months ago.

First of all, a bit about me: my name is Jess a.k.a. The Crafty Librarian. I am a teacher librarian who lives in Sydney with my boyfriend. I have only been a Sydneysider for just over a year now, previously hailing from Melbourne. I'm still sussing out the craftiness of Sydney but seem to have found it with the awesome group of girls in Sydney Brown Owls.

Image from here.

So what was my Crafty Spark? This book right here: Softies. I saw it at my local library and couldn't believe how cute everything was. It had the blog addresses of all the very clever authors and I just started clicking away and I haven't stopped since. This book linked me to all my favourite blogs that I read today. It lead me to Mike's and to the shop and to my first crafty project: Miss Buttons.

I have been crafting away ever since; sewing, crocheting, embroidery, you name it!