GETTING CRAFTY / HOW ART HAS TRANSFORMED MY FREE TIME

I am happy and proud to profess that I have always been a fairly crafty person. Besides the terrible decision, I made to take an Art GCSE (which I complained throughout the entirety of, and that grade has now become the black mark on my fairly perfect, nerdy school record), I have always enjoyed making things.

When I'm being creative I can make decisions that I want to, and see them out how I want to. I like the sense of freedom that arts and crafts give me, as there are no rules and no hierarchy. unlike team sports or music lessons, I can dabble in the creative arts when I feel like it, for however long I'd like to, and without anyone telling me exactly what to do or how to do it. Potentially, this conclusion has made me believe I need to participate in more collaborative things...

My favourite craft to do at the moment is watercolour. For my birthday, a friend gave me my present with a hand-painted little card of a forest and I liked it so much I ordered myself a set of watercolours that night. what I love about doing a watercolour is that I can search the whole internet and I will never run out of inspiration. I have a process that I go through, to create my favourite paintings. I like to choose something to copy - despite loving arts and crafts and being creative, I'm not terribly gifted at drawing so I like to copy ideas I have found online and change the colours or smaller elements. My favourite type of paintings are those with doodle style images which have been outlined with a pen, so this is what I look for. I like to get myself set up with music or a podcast, sometimes a show and start painting. if you're a bit of a perfectionist, starting with a pencil first is helpful - remember, its meant to be relaxing, not stressful.

As well as watercolour, I am experimenting with embroidery still, I'm doing a lot more baking and I am quite interested in macrame and ink art. I can truly say Pinterest has become my best friend and partner in crime in these endeavours. with every saved pin, I find more inspiration - it leads me down a rabbit hole, but instead of it being a negative weird stalker rabbit hole like on other forms of social media, Pinterest seems to be this endless fountain of ideas.

My obsession with Pinterest aside, being able to enjoy arts and crafting and baking again is something I am really thankful for. It teaches me that I can create things I can be proud of, and it shows me that if I make mistakes I can fix them or remember what not to do for next time.