Motivational Monday--Acorn Crafts!

I made time for some crafting over the weekend, and it was satisfying to get 0ne project finished and another started. However, on Monday I woke up feeling a tad bit discouraged about what I had created (or maybe it was the six loads of laundry that could no longer wait to be folded that did it).

I sewed these reversible fleece slippers for my youngest, who needs them to wear at his new preschool starting this week. I made some size adjustments to this Baby Shoes Tutorial from Maked to sew the slippers.

I'm pleased that I was able to finish the pair (my first try, in cotton, was too small, and I only made one of that set). However, the seams are a little wonky, and I'm really wondering when my sewing skills are going to improve. I am definitely ripping out seams when they are not right. But I feel a constant tension between getting things done quickly and getting them done well--I just don't seem to have the time to accomplish both.

So, after a morning of folding laundry and cleaning up messes made by a bored preschooler-to-be, I luckily ended up checking out my favorite blogs early this afternoon. To my delight, I found the perfect post from Smoothpebble. Her photographs totally wow and inspire me, but she feels that she's not where she wants to be with the photos. (That's not the delightful part--it makes me sad that she doesn't realize just how talented she is.) The delightful part was this video from my fave radio star Ira Glass, host of the brilliant and often hilarious "This American Life," who talks about the gap between what you want to create and what you're able to create. Please check it out:

His advice to just keep generating tasks for yourself and keep completing them no matter how sucky they turn out is just the motivation I need at this point in my creative life.

This blog has made me more accountable for taking on and completing projects, so here are some projects that I have in the works and that I won't abandon. I'll keep at them and develop the ideas that are in my head, even if they don't quite get where I want them to be right away.

Here's a little wooden doll, inspired by the earlier ones I made and by Japanese Kokeshi dolls, that I made late last week.

Snippety Gibbet's post about Hina Aoyama's delicate papercuts (find more of her cuts on Youtube here and here) inspired me to try to do a very lace-like papercut, with the thinnest lines that I was able to cut. This little vine emerged, and I wondered if it might fit on one of the little wooden doll forms. It twines around the figure so nicely, but I'm not sure where it should go from here. I'm thinking that it might become "Sakura-chan" (Cherry Blossom Kid). And I want to have the papercut tell a little story about the figure. The beauty of the finest kokeshi dolls is the simplicity of the carving, so I'd like to capture that as well.

Lil Fish Studio's "A Bowl of Autumn"

Following the same path of combining multiple inspirations, here's another project that I'm thinking might improve my skills and be a fun, quick autumn project. You probably know Lisa from Lil Fish Studios for her beautiful, inspired button bouquets.

Well, she also does these lovely wet-felted acorns (shown above). When I saw the soft autumn colors of the acorns on my Flickr contacts, I knew immediately what I wanted to do with the acorn caps that we have been collecting all summer (see first photo, above).

Lisa wet-felts the wool roving into the acorn bottoms and then glues the felt balls into the caps (see another Flickr photo of Lisa's acorns here). So far I have soaked my acorn tops in a diluted-bleach solution. Now they are dry and ready for the felting stage.

I wanted to mention Lisa specifically in this Motivational Monday post because her recent craft self-challenge fits in very well with Ira Glass's advice. She challenged herself to make six felt hearts a day for one week. She exceeded her goal (Go, Lisa!), and you can see the gorgeous results here. I hope that Lisa will consider offering the felted acorns and wool hearts through her Etsy shop!

Motivational Monday wouldn't be complete without the prodigious productivity of Resurrection Fern. She recently completed her entry for Plush You 2008 in LESS THAN a week, and the results are beautiful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.

I read Margie's blog every day, and I come away completely inspired by her work and her very generous tutorials. She also astounds me with her productivity (she's a full-time M.D.). In addition to getting up early and going to bed very late (I just recently "caught" her commenting on my 2 a.m. Flickr upload, so shame on both of us!), her secret to getting projects completed seems to be devoting time every day (even on vacation!) to her craftwork.

So, with that motivation, here's my next project that I'd like to work on. This one also uses acorns and is a perfect keepsake of summer. Margie crochets these delicate basket necklaces for acorns, and here is her tutorial to create one of your own.

Resurrection Fern's Crocheted Acorn Necklaces

I recently scored a lovely box full of fine-gauge crochet cotton at an antique mall, so no longer do I have the excuse of not having the proper materials to tackle this project.

O.K., one last bit of motivation (sorry to go on so long!). Jane Brocket, author of The Gentle Art of Domesticity, and creator of the knitting-and-everything blog yarnstorm, recently went on holiday from her blog. She returned with a renewed appreciation for blogging:

When I [was] younger I was really only good at seeing out, which is why those essays [back-to-school "What I Did This Summer"] were such a torture. But writing this blog has changed the way I look at things, and even though I was on a break, I often found myself reviewing what I'd observed or made or read and composing posts in my mind. And it was amazing how much this practice of trying to look from a different perspective, articulating my thoughts, finding words, capturing moments, made all sorts of little events and pleasures so much more significant and meaningful.

Don't you love her lyrical writing? I feel the same way about blogging, and I just have to keep remembering that the effort I am putting into my crafting and my blog are improving my skills and leading to something that I hope will be fulfilling and exciting.

Happy (late) Motivational Monday, and I hope you share with me some of the things that are motivating you at the moment.