Building the dream

Building the dream

I got back into crafting in 2014 with the birth of my beautiful god-daughter and started stitching away and whilst Cross Stitch remains my first love I have started making other things. I completed two crochet courses and as I got asked to be godmother to three others, got a niece and nephew, more friends gave birth and I got more adventurous my crafting “portfolio” expanded as I wanted to create personal gifts. In July 2017 I arranged a girls weekend away and part of that was a baby shower which I made all the things for that. A trip to a craft fair introduced me to paper craft and so my craft stash has expanded and my bank balance decreased! Throughout all of this my friends have said “you need to start an Etsy shop” or “you should sell some of this” or “you should start a business”

Have you ever had that thought – if I won the lottery………I have, many a time!! This dream started as a shop in one of our local towns, the shop would sell crafting supplies and completed crafts by myself and some select others. I would also have space to hold workshops. I work for adult social services and unfortunately see a lot of loneliness, and people who have knitted/ stitched etc. who can no longer fulfil their passion due to ill health. Therefore a key thing for me would be free workshops for the elderly and work in association with Age Cymru, Action on hearing loss, RNIB etc. to develop a way that those people who have lost the ability to carry out their craft to start again! There would of course also be workshops for all other age groups.

I do a lot of miles for work and one day I drove past a caravan site and my mind started developing my dream into perhaps a more sustainable business plan. This would definitely need that lottery win though!!! I would love to have a few lodges and a campsite/ caravan area with a site centre that would house my craft shop and workshop space (as well as conference facilities). By having those lodges in place I would be able to hold “crafting retreats” – a weekend of crafting with guest hosts. I would also like to be able to host crafting fairs.

However, that is the big dream and without a lottery win I can’t see this being possible so we will start out a bit smaller than that!

I started by creating an Instagram page dedicated to my crafting– as I thought that not everybody would be interested in yet another card! For this I needed a name! I wanted a name that was clear what I did but not specific to one craft. Also, I wanted it to be personal to the area I live and so Ithon is the name of the river that runs by where I grew up and by where I live now. Therefore Ithon Crafts was born. From this I received yet more compliments – and yet more “you should start an Etsy shop” comments. The next step was to create this blog. There are some fabulous crafters out there who are very successful just from their blogging – Sarah Froggle at Bella CoCo for starters! So I thought this was another step to getting known! I’m not very confident and so doing things in small steps helps to steadily build that confidence up!

I have taken a deep breath and posted on Instagram yesterday about Mother’s Day cards for sale! So far no purchases but then not many people may have seen it. I have therefore created a Facebook page today but I am yet to publish - far too scared to!

Eventually I think I would like to go to craft fairs with cards and other small items for sale and maybe even create an Etsy shop. My colleague sells her crafts and after a discussion with her I feel like I want to make more and try and sell some but then my anxiety kicks in and I don’t think I am good enough.

I studied business studies at university and a key part of creating a business is knowing your market therefore I created a survey monkey questionnaire that I have circulated to a few friends and so if you are reading this I would appreciate you completing it: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ST6PL3N  

So that’s my dream……………….if you see #buildingthedream its another step towards achieving it x

Make one Christmas card a week Challenge

Make one Christmas card a week challenge

It was a sad week this week as my favourite group on Facebook closed. The make one Christmas card a week group was run by three (or more) admins and there was a few thousand members (shows how popular card making is!!). They released a statement this week to say that due to personal circumstances they were closing the group on Facebook. 

However, I love the challenge so I'm going to keep going with it on Instagram

The admins set a theme for every week at the beginning of the year (which I thankfully printed off) and so got you to make 52 cards ready for Christmas (always best to be prepared for Christmas when you're a crafter haha!! I'm using #makeonechristmascardaweek2019 on instagram

We are currently on week 8 and this week is "sentiments take centre stage" so I had an idea in my head throughout the week. I was speaking with a colleague who uses a cricut this week and I had fell out of love with mine. So I decided to try and give it another go this time for a poinsettia to go on my card (perfect Christmas flower!)

I used a plain background from a paper pack I had and was going to use a merry Christmas paper with a die cut merry Christmas on top but it looked too busy so just put plain paper in the background.

Christmas cards need a bit of glitter - friends mum always puts glitter inside the card too so it's lucky she has recognisable hand written and you're prepared! However I really don't like the red glitter card I've used - I like the colour but the bits keep coming off and make the card look messy! The blue glitter for the sentiment peeled a bit too - maybe I need to invest in better quality card!!

I added the cricut ponisettia and curled the card a bit to make it look more real.....and this is the result.

Next week is bringing home the tree/ gathering the festive foliage so time to get thinking cap on!

#threaduary

#threaduary

If you are a follower of me on Instagram then you would have seen me mentioning #threaduary daily this month

Threaduary was created last year by marnalunt as way of making her do a project to focus her mind to help her mentally get through what could be a very hard month. The message of making to help ease mental health is very important to her, it has been her saviour on many occasions.

Sew and so were inspired by this and so created some prompts to help people to follow and support #threaduary. So that it what I am following. It got off to a rocky start when somebody commented that Sew and so were getting too much credit for it and marnalunt wasn’t, how it was said didn’t really support the ethos of #threaduary but I tried to ignore it and carry on. If you’re on Instragram why not take a look and maybe join in?

Crafting has always been something that helps with my mental health, I suffer with anxiety and losing my mum in 2016 means that I quite often get “bad days”. However, as the motto goes “its ok not to be ok” and an hour of card making or a few stitches of my cross stitch and I’ve had my “me time” to think things over and what better way to do so by sticking a needle in something over and over again!!?! I often find if I’m having a stressful day in work or I am in a strange situation that makes my anxiety go up I’m dreaming of curling up with my cross stitch – a lot of people reach for a glass of wine – I reach for the stitching!

A good friend of mine works for Mind and runs the successful “mums matters” group and one thing that sticks in my mind from what she has told me is that you need to have something that defines you as a person and crafting is that thing that defines me! A lot of people know about my love for craft and I always get positive comments about it and people are genuinely interested.

It’s my excuse for spending hours crafting anyway and I’m sticking to it!!

This is me!

So here goes......going to give blogging a try! 

My name is Rhian and I’m a craftaholic!! 😂

I started crafting 5 years ago this November. My best friend had just had a little girl and I wanted to make her something special for her first Christmas. (I also needed a distraction from wedding planning and boredom which was leading to picking of food!) So I picked up a needle for the first time in adulthood and stitched her a stocking!

 Fast forward to 2017 i started a learn to crochet class and loved it! My amazing tutor Vicky was so patient and learnt all the basics.

 Then in 2018 my friend and I went to a craft fair at the NEC in Birmingham and i saw a demonstration by card-io cards and was amazed by how quick it was to make beautiful cards.

 So (a lot of money spent later) here I am. I made a special crafting Instagram page at the end of last year to share my makes and just love all the crafting there is out there. My three main crafts are cross stitch, crochet and card making but I'm always keen to try new crafts

    Ithon is the river that runs through past where i grew up and where I live now so what a better name could i have chosen!!

 Hopefully my blogging skills will improve.....