My lockdown crafting projects

Our abrupt end to school in mid-March was followed by several weeks of high anxiety, trying to juggle homeschooling with work, and getting used to all the worry inducing changes around us. But over the last couple of weeks I've finally managed to calm myself down a bit and I've been trying to make the most of spending more time at home and having a bit more time to devote to my crafting and hobbies.

My goal for this year was to complete one unfinished craft project each month, and I'm already ahead of myself with April's craft completed. So to fill my time I've been working on a couple of longer term craft projects that I like to keep up in the background, and I thought I'd share them here.

My first is the cross stitch map (affiliate link) which I've been working on for couple of years now. I quickly stitched in the countries that I've visited, then discovered that there was a huge amount of white space left around the map which looked a bit bare and empty. So I decided to fill in the gaps with smaller pictures that represent things that I've seen on my travels with a sort of patchwork effect, partially inspired by the wall of postcards at my doctor's surgery! I'm very much making it up as I go along, but I'm pretty pleased with the effect so far.

I've already shared a couple of my smaller designs over here on the blog - the cross stitch cruise ship and the cross stitch Disney inspired castle. It's a bit of a mish mash but hopefully it will become a bit more cohesive as I add in more and more pictures. I have the next design drawn out for an anchor and some waves, and next I'm going to start filling in some of the smaller areas of sea with different shades of blue, as well as adding in some more of the borders. I'm intending for the whole piece to be fully stitched apart from the countries that I have yet to visit, so there's plenty of work to do yet!

I've also made a start on my new diamond painting kit. This kit is Van Goghs Starry Night by Diamond Dotz (affiliate link). I bought it on holiday in the US last year, but it is readily available over here from Amazon and Hobbycraft. It's a large kit, about 50cm by 40cm, and as you can see I've still got plenty left to do. I enjoy diamond painting, it's very easy and relaxing. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the finished picture when it's done but it will be lovely and sparkly and I love the colours, all different shades of blue and purple.

Finally, one of my ten things to do in 2020 was to complete one hundred days of something, and this seemed like a good opportunity to find the time without interruptions from holidays or days out. I was inspired by the official 100 Day Project, although I'm a couple of days ahead of everyone else this year as I was so keen to get started! 

I decided that I wanted to try drawing and painting. I started off with some pencil sketches but they were very bad, so I started adding colour using a box of old but good quality watercolours that I bought a long time ago. I never learned how to use them properly at the time, so I've been watching a few tutorials and just getting used to them and how they work.

Here are my latest two pages, I don't pretend that they are any good whatsoever but I'm only nine days in so there is plenty of time to improve! I'm finding the colour mixing and the actual painting really relaxing, and it has felt good to carve out half an hour or so for myself every day to work on it.

I just hope that I'll still have plenty of time to devote to my crafting when the homeschooling starts back up next week!