Trying Out New Creative Hobbies

A while back, in my '2017 Blogging Resolutions' post (click here to read) I said that I wanted to introduce a few new topics such as bullet journalling and calligraphy. As of yet, I haven't posted about these topics yet. That's why today I wanted to show you three new creative hobbies that I have tried out recently: calligraphy, scrapbooking and bullet journalling.

#1:Calligraphy: Recently I've been trying out my Winsor and Newton calligraphy set that I got for Christmas. I've only had a few little goes at it so far but I've enjoyed trying out the little tutorial for a simple font. Here you can see my attempt at writing a phrase. The first time round didn't go so well because as you can see, the capital letters and lower case letters aren't in proportion to one another. I was practising for a title in my school art sketchbook. That's one of the main reasons why I asked for a calligraphy set for Christmas, so I could create interesting titles for my sketchbook. I'll have to practise a lot more to become skilled at calligraphy, but I'm already enjoying experimenting with all the inks.

 #2:Scrapbooking: I have a lot of cute crafting supplies so I thought I'd try out scrapbooking so I can use some of my supplies. Here's the first page in my scrapbook, it's an Easter page so I used lots of pastels and Spring animals to decorate the pages. I'm really looking forward to decorating more pages because it will mean that I'll have to take more photos of everything I've been up to. I think that will be great for me since normally I only take photos for this blog, but with a scrapbook I'll try to keep memories with my photos. 

#3:Bullet Journalling: I've been seeing lots of bullet journalling on pinterest and YouTube over the past year so I thought I'd give it a go myself. I asked for a dotted moleskine notebook for Christmas so I've been using this lovely notebook to start my own bullet journal. I've not been doing daily or weekly spreads, only a monthly tracker and a few other random pages (e.g. books to read). I've only done simple designs so far to see what it's like to be a bullet journaller. It may look like I've not done well at the goals I've set myself, since there's lots of blank spaces but I'm actually happy with what I've achieved. These aren't necessarily goals that I have to do every day, I just want to see how often I do things like colour or practise calligraphy so I can decide whether I should do it more often or not. I keep a bullet journal to motivate me to do creative things regularly and it seems to be working for me. I think it's something I'll improve on over time as well. By the way I haven't fully filled in everything yet and some rows don't even have a goal on since I ran out of ideas hehe.

I hope you've enjoyed today's quick post. I'll be writing about these topics again once I've practised a few more times and have some more creative things to show you.

Over to you...
Have you ever tried out these hobbies? Let me know about your experience in the comments! Also, have you been trying any other new things recently? 

Creative Guide to Gift Giving

Hello everyone! Sorry that it's been more than two weeks since I last posted but I'm back with something a little different. Today I wanted to share with you something that I enjoy doing every now and then, being creative with gift giving. There have been several friends that have had birthdays in the last two months so I have lots of ideas for you.

This first set of gifts has a bit of a theme. I tried to use lots of pastel colours and a few metallics so the gifts would tie in well together. I handmade some bookmarks that looked like some of my friend's favourite cartoon characters. One of my tips for gift giving is to make some gifts yourself. This means that you can really personalise the gifts and it's fun to see what you can create.

This next set of gifts doesn't really have a theme but there's a few fun gifts here. My next tip for gift giving is to ask a few questions to the person you're giving gifts to. A few weeks before their birthdays, I asked my friends a few things about what their favourite things are. Things like their: favourite sweets, favourite TV shows/programs, favourite accessories and things that they can't get enough of/collect. This helped to inspire me with possible themes or just the sort of gifts they might like. In the jewellery box in the photo, are some handmade earrings. This friend told me they liked Harry Potter and Stranger Things and their favourite accessories were earrings. So I made waffle stud earrings (apparently waffles are a Stranger Things reference) and golden snitch inspired dangly earrings (a Harry Potter reference).

Again, this next set of gifts doesn't have a theme but I used the questions about their favourite things to come up with these gifts. My next tip for gift giving is to try to give different types of presents. What I mean by this is you should try not to give just food or just jewellery or just stationery, etc but instead to give a mix of all of these things. The reason I say this is because everything lasts for different amount of times. Food lasts for a very short amount of time, depending on how tasty it is tee-hee. Stationery lasts for much longer but can eventually be used up. Then jewellery could last for a very long time. BY the way the handmade items here are: the notebook, the bookmarks and the earrings inside the jewellery box. 

 This final set of gifts does have a theme, jaffa cakes. It's a bit of an unusual theme but fun. That's why my last tip is to think outside of the box. Just think, who else is going to give these gifts? I don't think anyone else would (that could either be a good or bad thing, you decide hehe). I used two of the things that they said were their favourite things: jaffa cakes and bath bombs, to inspire me. This was actually quite difficult to put together because there weren't many jaffa cake items in the shops. So I actually bought chocolate orange items from the shops:chocolate orange bath bomb and chocolate orange lollipops. I made the notebook myself and the keyring was handmade too, but not by me. It was made by Heartfelty (see their facebook page here).

I hope that I've inspired you to get creative with your gift giving, it's such a fun thing to do for your friends and family! Just to recap, here's my four tips for creative giftgiving:

1. Hand make some gifts-this can really personalise the gifts
2. Ask the recipient a few questions about their favourite things-again this helps you to personalise their gifts
3. Try to give a few different types of gifts-this means the recipient can enjoy their gifts in different ways for different amounts of time
4. Think outside the box-this makes the gifts fun and unique

So that's all for today's post, remember you don't have to spend a lot of money to give gifts that your friends will enjoy, I just thought I'd share a few creative ideas to inspire you.

Over to you..

Have you given any gifts recently? Or have you been doing anything else creative? Let me know in the comments. Also, what has been your best gift you've ever received?