Sharing For the Love

I've enjoyed crafting and creating fun things for many years. I started after a friend suggested that I look into scrapbooking (oddly enough, she is not a scrapbooker), and I became a CM Consultant. I really enjoy making pages, but the perfectionist in me makes the creative process both rewarding and painful at the same time. I love that scrapbookers love to share their pages to help inspire others or just outright encourage people to copy their work.

From there I progressed to rubber stamping and tried my hand at being an SU! Demonstrator making hand stamped greeting cards and other paper crafts. Ladies who stamp love to share and copy too.

I found that paper punches filled my OCD need to have perfect cuts and I absolutely LOVE them.  This little guy is a candy holder. I made a whole line of Halloween candy holders but Batty is my favorite.

I started making altered chipboard magnetic names and had quite a few orders, but found that my creativity was blocked - partially again because of my OCD need to have perfect lines. Here is my last and my favorite.

Still another friend taught me to crochet. While I enjoy crocheting very much, it does NOT meet my OCD needs, which I think is a good thing, to teach me that perfection is my own prison. My first project was a blanket. It took me about 5 restarts, if not more, and it's a patchwork of odd black and yellow squares and rectangles that don't quite meet up correctly. Still I persevered and kept at it and now, I'm not half bad.  I found many free patterns online, including YouTube tutorials from Clare http://www.bobwilson123.or and Kris Hopper http://www.youtube.com/user/hopperkris?feature=watch. I am ever so grateful to these ladies for sharing their love of crochet without asking for a penny. I am actually quite annoyed with people who charge for patterns instead of charging non-crocheters for the finished product. Then, a friend started a wonderful blog http://momzillajen.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-first-blog-post-seems-so-incredibly.html. She is amazingly creative and loves to share! And I think she's hung out with me in my OCD prison too. Finally, while surfing for ideas online, I found a cute turtle. I was disappointed that it was a pay pattern, but decided I would try to find a way to make it myself. Happily, I found a free pattern for a granny stitch pattern that could be used as a turtle shell. I made it (wrong I might add, but that made it perfect - now if I could only figure out how I did it wrong so I can incorporate it into my pattern) and was thrilled. Took a picture of it and uploaded it to Pinterest.

Then someone liked it and asked me if I had a pattern she could buy! WHAT? BUY? No way. If I can figure out the shell, she's getting it for free. Sorry $4PatternCrocheters. I choose to PAY IT FORWARD as thanks to all the lovely ladies out there who shared their wonderful creations for free. Stay tuned!