DIY: Button Magnets

I bought a bag of cheap plastic black and white buttons and thought I could make button magnets with them. Of course if you like your button as-is then all you have to do is glue the button to the magnet; I wasn’t excited about my nondescript buttons so I wanted to dress them up a little bit with color.

Be a Realistic Packrat

I have too much stuff. I’ve become overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have because I have a tendency to want to keep everything (just in case I might need it again later). I try to be organized, and I have multiple bins with drawers to keep my supplies, yet somehow, it still doesn’t fully work.

The worst thing is buying something and then misplacing it in the mess of it all. While I was forming my clothespin magnet idea in my head, I became frustrated because I had bought magnet materials a long time ago and couldn’t remember what I had done with them (because I'd put them in a "safe" place). I tried to find them, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack—so I had to give up.

It irritated me that I had to buy a magnet strip again, and not because it was particularly expensive, but because it was just wasteful. So I need to be better about organizing my stuff, and get rid of the stuff that I don’t use (that the packrat in me thinks I’ll use again someday but the realist in me knows that I won’t). It’s just such a slow never-ending process. [Sigh.]

Goldilocks says, “It’s just right.” [Pause.] Probably.

When I started my blog in January, I posted Monday thru Friday for a month—and that burned me out. So I decided to try posting once a week on Thursdays, and I thought I’d see how that would go. It went okay—except it felt long between posts.

[Sigh.] I’m feeling a bit like Goldilocks; trying the porridge that’s too hot, the porridge that’s too cold and finally having the porridge that’s just right. I’m trying to find the posting schedule that’s just right for me.

Thus, I’ve decided to switch things up again. I’ll continue to post on Thursdays but I’ll leave the option to post on random days as well. A little bit of structure and a little bit of flexibility—I think that will probably work best for me (but once again, we’ll see).

DIY: Straw Band

This project just popped into my head, although I’m not quite sure why I was thinking about straws to begin with. (Perhaps it was just stream of consciousness?) But I thought straws would be a material that many people would likely have in their home and would be easy to use in this project.

Depending on the length of the finished band, it could be used as a larger decorative rubber band to hold items together, a napkin ring or a bracelet. If you have nice long beads, you could certainly use that instead of straws for a more mature look.

Japanese Ceramics

I don’t think I have a knack for making ceramics. I’ve taken art classes where I tried pottery but things just didn’t click; I wasn’t really into the process (and that’s a pretty essential part of doing any sort of craft). I think I have a difficult time with creative activities that involve time requirements. I like to be able to walk away from a project at any time if I’m not feeling it, and then come back to it once I’m more motivated to work—and that’s too difficult to do in pottery (with clay drying out, the messiness factor and the cleanup process).