crafts

[Angela Knight]

hi all i am wondering how many of you are crafty i do lots of different crafts some of which are card making x stitch latch hook rug flower making all of which i di for intensive care i spent over forty days in back in 2010 so wonder what you all do to relax look forward to hearing from you all take care x x

[Tanya52]

Hi and thanks for this topic.

 

I had a go at many things, you name it - I’ve done it. Now I’m in education and have no time for crafts. The best thing that I’ve learned from crafts is that the feeling of self-worth inspired by doing a creativity is transferable and can be recreated in any kind of activity, well in my case anyway.

[Special_talent123]

Yes I am. I love painting sometimes. I am thinking about making a thank you card when I am paid.

[Lynden]

I used to do a lot of crafts - I have a lot less time now. I used to crochet, cross stitch, paint ceramics and machine embroider. I did turn the machine sewing into a business for a few years but L only sleeping 4 hours per night and the business taking off meant I couldn't keep up and had to let it go! Was fun at the time and I don't regret it now

 

Lynne

[Angela Knight]

Hi and thanks for this topic.

 

I had a go at many things, you name it - I’ve done it. Now I’m in education and have no time for crafts. The best thing that I’ve learned from crafts is that the feeling of self-worth inspired by doing a creativity is transferable and can be recreated in any kind of activity, well in my case anyway.

yes the feeling of self worth with doing crafts is an amazing feeling xwell done you for now being in education what do you do x

[LancsLad]

I have changed my mind in respect to 'craft' activities over the years. I have always been a creative individual and have painted and drawn at serious levels since I can remember, as such I saw the craft sections in art shops and the majority of the things for sale in hobby craft with real sceptisism.

 

My views changed following having to spend time in a secure mental health unit and a condition of being allowed to go home was that I returned to take part in their art therapy group. I made the decision that I wanted to do some sculpture work and arrived for the first session with a stack of modeling clay, with a perception it would be very serious analytical art based stuff designed to psychoanalyse my inner thoughts. The truth is we were simply expected to make an effort with whatever we decided to do, for everyone else this was painting by numbers, making mugs, birthday cards with gliter, doing a cross stitch sample from a pre bought pack.

 

The truth is I made some very revealing sculptures which are very sad when i can bring myself to look at them, so I got out of the sessions what I wanted. The other participants got a lot out of the sessions as well, and the craft activities were the entry point into this experience. I have since looked at my mother in laws craft activities in a different light. She may not have the most artistic talent, but over the years she has got enough confidence to enrol in a drawing and painting course and has joined a local group. She has even gone on to sell some of her work, think the highest price she has got so far is £15 but that covers the cost of her materials more than can be said for the likes of Van Gough who never managed to be commercial.

 

For me craft acitivities have all the benefits of serious art without the emotional content, and that in many ways is a good thing as we can be consistent with them and get regular positives from the activities you mention. I also think there is an artist in all of us and we have our own unique ways of expressing our deepest emotions through art. Artistic endevours require that emotional step further and I urge you to give it a go and combine your skills with how you feel, I am sure every cross stitcher, embroider, card maker has some wonderfull collage work inside them they just need to give it a go, it doesn't need to be for anything other than expressing yourself, drop the rules from time to time and live your emotions through your work, be they joy, love, anger, frustration, sadness whatever there are no wrongs. The last time I tried this I went around hobby craft and arrived at the counter with an odd asortment of fabrics, plaster, paints yarns etc... The girl looked at me puzzled and polietly asked what are you going to do with that lot, I am making a collage titled 'decay' was my reply, she looked more confused than ever. I really enjoyed my effort as I have been moved by the autumn we were having and wanted to express how it had felt to me.

 

food for thought and best wishes.

[darkshine]

It's funny isn't it how the word crafts can make some people sort of act in a guarded way, like its naff or something airy fairy.... I don't admit to many people the things I do, because to me I count things as 'mess around projects'.

 

I've done a bit of almost everything (apart from with wool as I can't touch it) but my main thing these days is constructing things out of sheets of MDF. However, regardless of what I do, nothing gets finished until I have a goal in mind, a purpose for completion or a adequate reason such as making a gift for someone, or making something because there is a requirement/need.

 

As such I have a hell of a lot of incomplete projects on the go, that were begun with visions of creativity with no end in mind so they inevitably get put aside

[trekster]

Hi im into many craft related projects

 

Pottery, took a GCSE at school, if it weren't for my poor pre work (tutor never explained to us what prep work was or what was expected in prep work and i didn't have the initiative to ask what she meant. Also she never checked our prep work if she had and made comments as to improvements i would have possibly got a better grade), i would have got a better grade. My pottery piece was grade B material but the poor descriptions in my prep work meant i got a D in the end :-(. i haven't done pottery since had an opportunity had i not been at southants that day.

 

X stitch, ive done many projects for about 1/2 my life my 1st was a monogram 'A' and took 3 days the only mistake being i started in the wrong place on the material. Since then i have done numerous projects including putting together 12 square designs to make a zodiac picture. Also done cards and smaller pictures.

 

Plastic canvas work, a cross between x stitch and tapestry, can make 3D designs using a variety of stitches. Haven't done much on this for a while.

 

Tapestry, currently working on a needlecase which was bought in aid of marie currie care. Lost my needle somewhere at grans so need to find another one, this is the main problem with my craftwork.

 

Done some crewel and embroidery work but this is a lot more intricate and takes more concentration than i can manage at the moment.

 

i have attempted hardanger but the counting and where to cut got too complicated so gave up. Grans tunisian crochets a jumper for me one xmas.

Edited March 5, 2012 by trekster

[LancsLad]

Guess I am trying to make the argument for art based thinking here in a way. As you highlight for me some of these craft based activities are so complex and take so much effort to complete. For this reason I can have nothing but respect for people who get to the end of such projects. I know on my sons birth we recieved a number of 'craft' presents a teddy bear rug, a height chart, samples of his name, a sant stcking etc... all with enourmous hours of input I felt really guilty about recieving them, but we treat them as special objects to use every day in the spirit in which they were lovingly made.

 

The reason I feel I can't easily engage in craft work like this is because of the structure and the demands it makes. In contrast I can do a sketch in a couple of minutes and it stands or falls on its merits as a sketch done in a couple of minutes. Because art works for me are very emotional endevours they have to be started and finished in an emotional time frame and that can't be more than a few days otherwise the driving energy disipates.

 

I think a big problem trekster raises is the effect of turning art into a school subject has on our psyche. I for one am so glad I droped art at the first opportunity at school because I hated it as a subject. At 14 whilst my mates were drawing pictures of flowers in vases a choice of the teacher I was paying to go to still life nude sessions in my local art college, I am for ever grateful to the elderly models who sat for us and didn't see me as a perverted teenage kid rather as someone who tried his very best to reflect their strong personalities in my work, which is more than can be said of my parents who burned my work when they found it hidden in my bedroom, have never forgiven them for it.

 

Because so much of school based art is without emotion I think we grow up missunderstanding the positive influence it can play in our lives. For sure some individuals might be a bit more artistic than others at comunicating emotion on technically a slightly higher level, but the important thing is the relationship between our own feelings and our own work. If we choose to let others into that relationship by letting them see it then that is up to us, there should be no compulsion to do so.

 

Crafts can be so very complex and art so very simple. My picture on my profile is not by me, it was drawn by my son when he was about 2 and is from a spontaneous family portrait together with his imaginary friend who is in a different colour from his mum, me and himself. In the picture there are big smiles on his and my partners face mine is a lot shallower and my head is closed their's are open, we are differentiated by our body height defined by a vertical line. The picture took less than a couple of minutes to do and yet there is so much meaning in it, as such it is displayed in a very important position in my office over my computer and I reflect on it many times a day. For me this is the joy that art can bring, I agree craft can create some beuatiful objects and provide a real sense of satisfaction but can they bring joy, wonder what your thoughts are?

 

best wishes.

[darkshine]

The picture took less than a couple of minutes to do and yet there is so much meaning in it, as such it is displayed in a very important position in my office over my computer and I reflect on it many times a day. For me this is the joy that art can bring, I agree craft can create some beuatiful objects and provide a real sense of satisfaction but can they bring joy, wonder what your thoughts are?

 

 

I think some crafts can bring about a similar reaction as art, my neighbour likes working with miniature things and created a large scene encased in a deep picture frame using painted areas, scrap materials and miniature items showing a man in an antique shop, it was incredible how I could see her personality in the work, and if this item had been a gift to me I could have stared at it for hours wondering what made her do a certain thing, she can hide detail so well that you are forever looking for and finding hidden things each time you look.

 

On a simpler note, I once I made a chess set from clay, painted and detailed with silver and black, the pieces were made from a different type of clay and again, each painted silver or black with red band around the bases. The board was fixed into a simply decorated wooden box, painted midnight blue, with silver detail work and tiny mirrored squares discretely used to enhance the appearance of the lid and the drawer front, you lifted the lid to expose the board. There was also a little drawer underneath that held all the pieces. Now it wasn't necessarily a work of art - but you can definitely see what I added to it through expression and personality. I made it as a gift for someone, and whenever that person decides to show people they just stare at it for ages looking at all the detail, then they start asking questions, and seem amazed that I made it.

 

I am by no means a master crafts-person or wood-worker, but I like to add elements of joy and wonder to my work by firmly putting me and my personality into my work. My work is never perfect, I do not have that degree of skill - but as you illustrated - some works do not need to be "perfect" in quality, structure or any of the arty terms in order to be "perfect" and have meaning to the beholder.

 

Granted - this particular project took a while, the clay board took some days to dry as it was air drying clay, and of course it had to be perfectly flat and square, and it was no mean feat to create the chess pieces especially when they are so small and to keep them uniform when working by hand is hard (another expression of personality as I designed the pieces according to my own design - not easy when they still have to be recognisable as being a certain piece).

 

The wood work didn't take too long - but the painting did.

 

So time for time - a lot longer than a 2 minute sketch, but just as lasting, and with a functional use too.

 

Pictures are nice momento's, they can be just as you describe, but something that is made can hold just as much meaning, sometimes for the very reason that it took time, and I think that there's just something special about holding an item in your hand and feeling the effort and the concentration and sometimes even the love involved in making it - sometimes more so than a picture because sometimes a lot more thought was involved. Its why I like wood, if someone knows a little about what they are doing, so much can be involved in creating items from wood - each wood has its own weight, feel, its own grain, and I get this feeling that some items (including other materials such as plaster, pot, metal etc) can hold an essence of the creator as sometimes its like they put their self into the item in some way, some of their personality maybe.

 

Like when some people work with drift wood for example, and they create things out of the shape of the wood - this is most commonly animal or bird shapes, but I've seen other things over the years - and its incredible that they can 'see' something in that wood before they even start to carve.

 

Having said all that I don't think it's a competition or anything - just want to express why I think some craft items may be just as evocative and full of wonder and joy as a piece of artwork - purely because some crafts are works of art in themselves.

[LancsLad]

Darkshine what you describe I would definatly call art, and this is what I think this is where the problem lies school creates this perception that art is painting and drawing and all very serious stuff. As you rightly describe anything into which we can start to attribute meaning and try and explore the emotions of the creator is art.

 

I am a trained garden designer and my favorite garden of all time is that at Prospect Cottage at Dungeness. If you are not familaiar with it, its a shack on the shale banks where Derek Jarman a film director spent his last years as he died from aids. It is a beautiful eclectic garden with much of the plants collected from around the area and points of interest created by arragements of items which have washed up on the shoreline, it really is a magical and very emotional place and a great testement to Jarman's talents for me it goes beyond the notion of a garden and is a real piece of conceptual art.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/angusf/27240100/in/set-656542/

 

I would say that this is a place which was crafted over a period of time, when the concept of craft is about an understanding of a material and its relationships with others. I am not sure this is the same as painting by numbers or following a knitting pattern which I would relate to as craft skills rather than craft work. One of my prize possesions is a genuine silk rug I bought in Turkey which is a copy of a Kandinsky painting one of my favorite artists. This is certainly 'high craft' it took 3 months for an individual to make with incredible skill and this was reflected in the price I was happy to pay for it. It is certainly very evocative and leaves me in awe every time I look at it but is it art, the origonal painting is? I personally think that anytime someone creates anything original then I would call that art and we all have the potential to create amazing things.

 

In my teaching career I was very fortunate to be a member of staff at the school in St Helens with which the artist Anthony Gormley worked in creating 'The Field'.

 

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/gormley/

 

I along with many kids and their familes made the little clay figures with material donated from the local brickworks. To see it grow on a daily basis was impressive, to see it for the first time in an art gallery space was amazing. It is a great example that the simplest of things created by anyone can have an imense emotional draw and that art need not be a complex undertaking but rather an emotion expressed in a meaningful way.

[darkshine]

I hadn't heard of it - the pictures are great, really like the mix of metal and stone in a natural way, very clean looking but still maintains a sort of balance between man made stuff and the environment - I could describe this so much better but I fear it is too late and my mind is tired .

 

I think defining crafts and arts is not a simple matter... some crafts are a work of art, and some arts require high craftsmanship... is it so easy to draw a line? I'm not sure that it is.

 

I'd agree that paint by numbers, and pre-bought craft packs such as needlework, knitting, x-stitch, airfix models etc are not necessarily art in themselves, but some of these projects require much skill and time to complete.

 

The figures and work involved in "the field" reminds me of a modern version of those Chinese statues (I think they were Chinese) like an army of them - but done in a different way and with different meanings (tired - cannot find the words again).

 

What struck me was what you said in a previous reply about your parents burning your work - it made me wonder what I would do if I was a parent and found such material in my teenager's bedroom... I don't actually know, but listening to your explanation makes me think that I would have encouraged the ability and not trampled it by destroying the work.

 

As for crafts... works of art or not, I feel they add value to life, they allow a sharing of interests and even heritage sometimes (such as local specific crafts) they are trinkets people give, some have meaning, some are just objects in themselves that some people may like, and who knows whether some of them will become artefacts that survive to show future generations the things we could do.

[SidiousUK]

I'll try anything once but problem is I soon get bored. I direct my creative side to my work and will sometime write a computer program just for the hell of it

 

Sidious

[LancsLad]

Darkshine you have used the word heritage, I would describe this as cultural language which is displayed in so many ways.

 

So much of this cultutral language has in my opinion been created and developed in the main by individuals who today would be deemed to be on the autistic spectrum. The fact that we are drawn to craft activities or art, to be honest these are simple definitions and not that important, is in my mind a natural progression of that historical culture.

 

A society which moves to supress autistic behaviour is also one which subconciosly sets out to destroy its own culture.

[Lyndalou]

I've only just skimmed the above so forgive me if I repeat anything...

 

I have come to the conclusion that art is entirely subjective. I have no time at all for the type of art world thinking that exists today which says that the only art of 'value' is that which sells for ridiculous sums and people kill for.

 

Going to Art College put me completely off 'art' because what was taught was that you could not be a serious 'artist' unless you walked, talked and breathed it, hung around in the 'right' art-farty circles and brown-nosed the 'right' people. In my final year I was given a dressing down by one of my tutors because I mentioned I was considering art therapy as a career and since I left 18 yrs ago I still see the same stale repetitive work produced by the tutors I had back then described as 'innovative', 'sensitive', 'forward-thinking' and all that blah-de-blah South Bank Show malarkey.

 

My dissertation was about North American Folk Art. My tutors couldn't have cared less about my subject matter and I got no assistance at all because it wasn't about 'real' art like Expressionism or some-such. It probably didn't help that it was a paper on how American patriotism was expressed in Folk Art too, lol.

 

I worked as a Workshop Co-ordinator for a charity for a while producing paper products for sale a number of years ago. Although it was very idealistic to think that all that was produced was going to be of saleable standard (which was the ultimate goal) along the way the people I worked with learned new skills and many had some very good ideas and abilities. It was good to be part of helping people express themselves in ways they hadn't thought of doing so before and to feel good about producing something themselves from scratch.

[matzoball]

I'm going to side-step the whole debate and answer the OP!

 

I do quite a lot of crafts - knitting, felting, amirigumi, papercraft and I bake!

 

It's amazing the amount of accomplishment you feel when you do something you truly have a passion for

[darkshine]

Darkshine you have used the word heritage, I would describe this as cultural language which is displayed in so many ways.

 

So much of this cultutral language has in my opinion been created and developed in the main by individuals who today would be deemed to be on the autistic spectrum. The fact that we are drawn to craft activities or art, to be honest these are simple definitions and not that important, is in my mind a natural progression of that historical culture.

 

A society which moves to supress autistic behaviour is also one which subconciosly sets out to destroy its own culture.

I was merely illustrating that crafts have their own value we'd sort of gone off on a tangent about art and I figured it only fair to highlight some of the importance that crafts hold - maybe the word heritage was inaccurate - but close enough to get the gist of my point maybe?

[trekster]

I've done a bit of almost everything (apart from with wool as I can't touch it) but my main thing these days is constructing things out of sheets of MDF. However, regardless of what I do, nothing gets finished until I have a goal in mind, a purpose for completion or a adequate reason such as making a gift for someone, or making something because there is a requirement/need.

 

As such I have a hell of a lot of incomplete projects on the go, that were begun with visions of creativity with no end in mind so they inevitably get put aside

 

I'm the same with my stitching many incomplete projects on the go some because of the simple reason that the chart is missing or the needle is missing. Normally the UFOs (unfinished objects) end up being mixed up with other items in my flat. One item went missing for over 5 years and when i found it i added in the metallic thread stitching and got it framed :-)

 

Can you post pictures on here? it would be great to have a gallery of our craft work.

[trekster]

Matzoball what's amirigumi? is it the same as origami?

[Tanya52]

Hi Angela,

 

I'm doing an MA in English. It’s all around communication and I do need to fix my performance.

 

X

 

[matzoball]

Matzoball what's amirigumi? is it the same as origami?

 

Well, it is Japanese, but it's crochet! Tends to be wee cute things Here's a great site that will show you a lot of it

 

http://www.amigurumikingdom.com/

[trekster]

Well, it is Japanese, but it's crochet! Tends to be wee cute things Here's a great site that will show you a lot of it

 

http://www.amigurumikingdom.com/

 

They are cute things, thanks for the link.

[darkshine]

I'm the same with my stitching many incomplete projects on the go some because of the simple reason that the chart is missing or the needle is missing. Normally the UFOs (unfinished objects) end up being mixed up with other items in my flat. One item went missing for over 5 years and when i found it i added in the metallic thread stitching and got it framed :-)

 

Can you post pictures on here? it would be great to have a gallery of our craft work.

Hmm, I bet lots of unfinished needlework can get pretty messy (mixed threads and tangles) if not abandoned carefully - I know paint and wood certainly can be messy - and difficult to find what I'm looking for!!

 

I haven't tried posting a picture on here yet so can't provide instructions - but I've seen someone post an image somewhere... maybe butterfly73 - I think she did a poster somewhere - but not certain. And I've seen links to photobucket, tumblr and flickr accounts so you could do that if you wanted (create an account with a photo sharing site and then just link to relevant pictures).

 

If anyone does know about image posting on this forum - I wouldn't mind being told how to do it

Edited March 8, 2012 by darkshine

[trekster]

hi darkshine

 

My stitching tends to get a bit disorganised rather than messy. By that I mean that the chart

is in a different place to the picture and also to the material with the stitches on them.

 

i find it difficult to work out the difference between 'light beige' and 'very light beige' for example

even with a colour chart, same with my stamp collection.

[Angela Knight]

does any one know of any groups in and around surrey redhill area x

[darkshine]

hi darkshine

 

My stitching tends to get a bit disorganised rather than messy. By that I mean that the chart

is in a different place to the picture and also to the material with the stitches on them.

 

i find it difficult to work out the difference between 'light beige' and 'very light beige' for example

even with a colour chart, same with my stamp collection.

Ah, I'm a full blown chaos kinda person

 

Colours can be hard to differentiate from when there is only a subtle difference, I've been having a similar issue with paints - I'm after a light sandstone kinda shade - paint is annoying though because the label, the wet paint, and the dry paint on different surfaces can all be different shades - which is just annoying (this is ignoring light quality too)

 

I tried stamp collecting - in the collecting part I succeeded - I failed when it came to organising them as I cannot decide the method to do so, which is also pretty annoying so I pretty much gave up on it (still got the stamps though, just in case).

[trekster]

You can get stamp albums that are organised via country with spaces to put in the stamps. Davo and Stanley Gibbons do some with glassines or no glassines depending on your budget. i tend to get my albums online. Vera Trinder (sp for 2nd name unsure) is where i get mine or ebay.

[darkshine]

I tried that (by country) but then I got stressed because a lot of the stamps have different pictures on them and they are all different colours - plus some have symbols, animals, people, buildings, insects or vehicles on them - and of course they are slightly different sizes and occasionally shapes... And because I have yet to come up with a method of taking all that into account (plus whatever I've left off the list of variations) it gets kinda unrealistically complicated

 

As a hobby or past-time, I don't really know much about it - collecting I can do - but discriminating gets somewhat vague.

 

Maybe I should stick to wood, where I don't mind the variation so much

[trekster]

i would have suggested buying a catalogue but it costs a lot of money. There is an online version for about £30 a year.

Stamps are issued by date and in sets so i try and keep sets together or regins together.

[darkshine]

Thanks

 

To be honest I'll probably never sort them out, and because I haven't touched them in a while I can't remember all the stamps I have (I could probably recall maybe half if presented with identical ones).

 

It's weird really because I have the ability to sort them, I could devise a system, so technically I could sort them, its just all this other "stuff" from in my head stops me and it all becomes a really big issue - like all the factors I listed earlier - it isn't possible to organise the whole lot by colour and then by date, or by country and then by content (of the stamp's picture). Somewhere there has to be compromise - and because the devising of the system would require so much effort to make myself agree how I would do it, and allow myself to ignore certain factors, I end up not bothering...

 

Out of interest - would this be AS, OCD, perfectionism, unrealistic attainment or just damn awkwardness or "other"

 

 

 

Does anyone do anything that is a little different? I tried that wood burning thing once, that was cool (is it pyrography?)

Edited March 19, 2012 by darkshine