Xenos, Action, Fimo-Shop, Etc.: Shopping for Craft Supplies #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter X post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today I want to talk about shopping for supplies related to my creative hobbies. I am cheating a little as, while Xenos is a store that does sell craft supplies among other things, I haven’t ordered anything there in years and the last thing I bought there wasn’t craft-related. It was a wax melt burner. So, that’s all I’ll say about Xenos for this post, but I needed something for the letter X. I guess a lot of people cheat with this letter, so it’s okay. And even if it isn’t, I don’t care.

Action, much like Xenos, is another store that sells lots of things. Also like Xenos, its prices are usually lower than those in other stores, as Action usually sells imitation premium brand products. I did in fact buy a lot of my crafting supplies there. I refuse to buy polymer clay at Action, but I did buy my acrylic paints, my glitters, my brushes that I use for applying the acrylic paints or glitters or Fimo liquid, etc., and many other supplies there.

My polymer clay, I usually buy online. There is a craft store here in town, but they only sell like five different colors of Fimo at a time. One of my favorite shops is Fimo-Shop.nl. That store usually has the entire Fimo collection in stock.

Sculpey and Cernit are brands of polymer clay that aren’t that commonplace in the Netherlands. I haven’t used their clay, but if I need something from that brand (such as one day I needed a Sculpey glaze), I order from HappyThings.eu.

I buy my color recipes on Etsy. So far, I’ve ordered from DewDropInc and PolymerClayLoves.

I order from other stores too, but these are the ones I’m happiest about. For example, I once ordered my polymer clay letter stamp set from an online art store that happens to sell polymer clay supplies too (won’t name the store because this’d be a negative review) and, not only did the description of the stamp set not match what I got (it was fine, but still), the polymer clay I’d also ordered was extremely hard and crumbly. This is one reason I usually order my clay at specialized polymer clay stores now.

Excitement: Things I Enjoy About My Creative Work #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter E post in the #AtoZChallenge. There are many E words related to creativity, but I decided to share the things I enjoy about being creative. I chose the word “Excitement” for my post title, because that was the title of the prompt in The Year of You for Creatives that inspired this idea. Now, of course, I can no longer cheat and use another “Ex” word for the letter X, but I try to avoid that at all cost anyway. Tomorrow, if I don’t make up my mind before then, I’m going to share about my creativity-related frustrations.

The first thing I enjoy about being a creative, is learning about other artists’ creative process. I love watching and reading tutorials on the various crafts I enjoy and they truly inspire me. This is more of a recent development, since doing soap making in 2016. Before then, I’d just create what I wanted without any sort of tutorial. This, however, often led to disastrous results.

Another thing I love about my creative work, is shopping for new supplies. Either that or just looking for supplies online without actually buying them. I have a huge wishlist of things I want to buy someday. About a month ago, I decided to put some of them on my online birthday wishlist rather than buying them myself. My birthday isn’t until the end of June, so this is quite the exercise in patience.

A thing I especially love about all of my creative endeavors, is being able to share them online. I am in groups on Facebook for pretty much every craft I dabble in currently (and maybe even some I don’t anymore). I cannot really imagine being creative without sharing my work at all.

Lastly, something I am currently very excited about is finding new techniques to try with my crafts. For instance, today I tried to mix a color with polymer clay using my precision kitchen scale (yay, I finally bought one!). Knowing it turned out as I wanted to (for which, in the case of a color, I of course rely on my staff) is pure delight.

Lovin’ Lately (February 11, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this cold Friday evening. It’s near freezing point here, but it’s also been sunny out today. Today, I’m going to share some things I’ve loved lately. Here goes.

1. Chalk pastels. I really wanted to buy these at Action (the budget store) last week when going there with my staff, but they didn’t have them. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have been good quality either, so I eventually decided to buy a set of 36 chalk pastels off Bol.com. The below heart, I did with polymer clay and colored with red and purple chalk pastels.

2. Paint brushes. I did get those at Action and they’re pretty good. I can use them for applying acrylic paint (which I also bought), Fimo liquid, varnish, etc. to my polymer clay.

3. New colors of polymer clay. I ordered five packets of polymer clay at my favorite Fimo shop, three of which I already had a little of. The new-to-me colors were Chocolate and Jade. I particularly think I love the color Jade. Of course, being that I am totally blind now, I may remember the color all wrong from the days I owned a piece of jade and the color of polymer clay may not look like the gemstone at all. However, I like to let my imagination run wild.

4. Tuna. Last week, my husband couldn’t visit me due to the storm. This meant we wouldn’t be going to Subway to get lunch either. To give me something to make up for it, my assigned staff ordered canned tuna from the supermarket to be delivered on Tuesday. I ate half the can on my bread on Wednesday and the other half on Thursday. At first, I thought I was going way overboard with my food plan, but the dietitian today reassured me that I wasn’t especially since it was tuna in water, not olive oil or the like.

5. Quick and hassle-free delivery of all my recent orders. I ordered the chalk pastels on Saturday and, thanks to being a Select member to Bol.com, got free next-day delivery, including on Sundays. I ordered the polymer clays on Monday late afternoon and received them Tuesday. I also ordered a varnish for my polymer clay with a new-to-me store, which also delivered the next day.

One thing I’m still waiting for, is a CD I ordered for my father’s birthday back last month. It had to come out of the UK and I just got confirmation yesterday that it’d arrived in the Netherlands, but I had to pay a customs clearance fee. Thankfully, the process of paying this fee was very doable via the postal service website.

What are some things you’ve loved lately?

I’m linking up with Link-Up on the Edge #282.

Hyper #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I haven’t felt like writing over the past few days because I’ve been perseverating on polymer clay. Today, I thought I’d write a post after all to sum up my week and my word for this week is “Hyper”. After all, I’ve not just been perseverating on a special interest, but it’s been costing me my sleep too. I was almost going to choose “Manic”, but that would be appropriating the bipolar community, as I doubt my episodes are bad enough to qualify even as hypomanic. They’re more like autistic or ADHD (not that I have that last diagnosis either) hyperfocus. So yeah, hyper.

I’ve been literally working with polymer clay for hours everyday except today for the past week. I’m improving, but not as fast as I’d like.

And it’s not even that I’ve created anything worth mentioning really. I mean, yesterday I decided to bake a project, but it didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped.

Multi-Layered Polymer Clay Star

Okay, I did create a purple cat on Wednesday, because my husband had been asking for it everyday for a week. Purple because it’s the least ugly color for a cat out of the ones I currently own. My husband said it was pretty well-proportioned except for its whiskers, but then again that’d be practically impossible to do with actual polymer clay. I didn’t bake this figurine though.

Purple Polymer Clay Cat

Yesterday, like I said, I did bake something, but I was quite disappointed in its outcome. For this reason, I was up late ruminating about how to prevent it from getting ugly again. As you might see, it is a multi-layered star, so I figured if I baked the bottom layer first and then attached the unbaked second layer, baked again and so forth, it should work. I also figured I’d create my piece directly on the baking surface as to not have to move it too much. Well, there I made a mistake, because the baking surface I normally use is an oven dish normally also used for food. I until now figured it wouldn’t be a problem since I lay parchment paper under my polymer clay. Until today, that is. So now I promised my staff a new oven dish.

After this happened, I decided to give up polymer clay until I can go to the hardware store to get myself a tile to bake on.

In addition to hyperfocusing, I’ve also been spending more money than may be considered sensible. I mean, like I said a few times before, I won’t go broke anytime soon with my current spending habits, but with the fact that my special interests tend to be short-lived, it may not have been wise. On Thursday, I ordered some cookie cutters and an alphabet clay stamp set at an online store, only to be told yesterday that not everything is in stock and hence my order would probably be processed a week later. Then in the evening, I impulsively bought a whole lot of polymer clay supplies, including cookie cutters, from someone on Facebook. It seems to have gone alright, both the paying and the actual supplies being on their way. I decided to cancel my store order that evening. I might order the stamp set separately later.

Overall, though my perseverating might be a little worrisome, I’m trying to reason that I’m not getting into trouble yet and won’t in the foreseeable future even if my state of hyperfocus continues for a while. And it most likely won’t. The only thing I can hope for is that I won’t give up on the craft entirely then.

Word of the Week linky

Online Window Shopping #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi again everyone. Today I’m joining Word of the Week. The idea is to sum up your week in a word or phrase. Today’s phrase of the week is: online window shopping.

You see, like I mentioned last week, I had resolved not to spend any more unnecessary money until my benefits arrived on the 23rd (last Friday). I actually kept this promise to myself and didn’t buy anything, but over the week, I did have a lot of ideas of what I wanted to buy once my benefits arrived. Then when they did, it was almost the weekend, so I decided not to spend my money yet because my packages wouldn’t be sent out till after the weekend anyway.

Most of my online window shopping involved crafty stuff. Like I mentioned yesterday, I got it in my head that I wanted to try latch hooking again. Thankfully, my day activities staff remembered that a client at my pre-COVID group at the day center used to do this but no longer did. She went looking for the supplies and, on Thursday, I had a bit of canvas, a latch hook and a whole lot of yarn. The yarn was cut too short for me to work with right now, but I had some yarn and lace in my room too. Learning the craft again was hard, but I eventually managed to make some knots.

I also found a really cool polymer clay ornament while browsing some other blogs and this got me thinking of restarting polymer clay. Like jewelry-making and latch hooking, I did this in the past but threw my supplies away because I couldn’t manage the craft fully independently. Now that I let go of that ambition and actually have the one-on-one support I need, I am really thinking of restarting the craft. This blogger used an embossing folder and glitter glue to decorate her ornament, which had me looking at card making stores again too. I’m pretty sure that’s the only craft I’ll never pick up again.

I also did some online window shopping that didn’t involve crafts. Like, on Thursday I found out that NVDA, a free screen reader I occasionally use on my PC, now works with the Vocalizer voices I’m used to with JAWS and VoiceOver (my regular PC and iPhone screen readers). I immediately downloaded the add-on, only to realize that of course I’ll need a license. I mean, NVDA may be free, but the Vocalizer voices are not. A license costs €99. I’m still undecided as to whether I want to invest in it or wait for JAWS to fix the one major bug that leads me to using NVDA, that is, the inability to use the WordPress block editor with it.

Lastly, on Friday, I got talking to my assigned home staff about stim toys. Specifically, chewable jewelry. I initially thought that only U.S.-based sites sold them, but it turns out several of my fellow clients use them. I looked up chewable jewelry and found several online stores in the Netherlands that sell them. Of course, they’re marketing them mostly for children, so I may need one for heavier chewers. I haven’t yet decided on buying it though.

How would you sum up your week?

Word of the Week linky