craft supplies

"Will you make me a paper airplane?"

The folding and creasing of simple white paper has long outgrown its infancy and has fallen into the fountain of youth of many adults in their hobby room at home. Because tinkering, designing, stamping, plotting, felting, cutting or modeling is a welcome change from everyday life and a relaxing activity in which you can hardly set any limits to your imagination and creativity.

Various offshoots are hidden behind the generic term handicrafts. One of them, for example, is the design of a BULLET JOURNAL

‍ A bullet journal is an organizational system in the form of a specially designed book. It serves you as an individual calendar for your everyday life or especially as an event planner for celebrations such as weddings and birthdays through to planning social media activities, shopping or cost overviews.

In a bullet journal you can write down, illustrate, plan and design your personal issues and topics to your heart's content and you will certainly like to leaf through the past years of your organized notes.

Organizational apps for smartphones are certainly useful, but a bullet journal reflects one's individual style and creations.

Basic equipment for BULLET JOURNAL:
- An empty notebook
- Pencils
- Decorative elements such as icons, banners and frames as stickers
- Alphabets for using fonts
- Decoration with washi tape, stamps or scrapbooking elements

When we are already on the topic of designing your own notebooks, the next hobby comes to mind. HANDLETTERING

‍ There are many names for the art of beautiful writing. Brush lettering, faux calligraphy or hand lettering.

Hand lettering has its origins in calligraphy and many years ago there was a smooth transition between writing and painting.
In the age of a digital world, handmade treasures are becoming popular again and are almost experiencing a revolution. You want to live out your own individuality again and not a standard from the assembly line. For this reason, in addition to the DIY trend, hand lettering is also playing an increasingly important role in everyday creative life.

Hand lettering also goes hand in hand with deceleration. It takes some time and practice to create a work of art that you might want to use for your bullet journal or as font for your best friend's birthday card. The beautifully painted fonts are also very popular in the design of foils, which you can cut out yourself with a plotter, for example.

In summary, the written word becomes a work of art and writing itself becomes art.

Basic equipment for hand lettering:
- Pens and fineliners of any kind
- Pencil
- Eraser
- Ruler
- Brush pen
- ABT Dual Brush Pen with two tips
- Fudenosuke Brush Pen
- Permanent markers such as MONO twin

Are you still cutting or are you already plotting? Everyone loves PLOTTING

‍ Plotting is no longer an insider tip in the world of DIY artists and creative hobbyists. But what exactly is behind the trend? A hobbyist vinyl cutter is similar to a printer—but while the printer prints the specified data, the plotter transfers lines and curves from a file onto media by cutting or drawing it.
The device is controlled using a suitable app on the computer or smartphone. During the plotter process, the cutting mat is moved forwards and backwards in the device, the various knives and tools move left and right on the other axis. Unique creations are created using different materials, tools and designs.
Creating individual products with a unique character from your own ideas is an incentive that convinces many creative people. And a plotter has long been able to do much more than just cutting.
Depending on the model, the device is able to emboss, draw, fold and engrave using interchangeable tools and processes countless materials - from paper to foil and leather to thin wood. A cutting plotter is therefore a very good addition to creative hobbies such as sewing, scrapbooking or textile finishing, but even DIY beginners can implement small projects such as greeting cards or stickers in no time at all. Boring clothing, furniture or accessories are a thing of the past with the cutting plotter, because upcycling is trendy and provides a new, individual love piece in just a few steps.
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Basic equipment for plotting:
- A plotter (e.g. Silhouette Cameo 4, Brother ScanNCut, Cricut Maker)
- Plotter foils (e.g. flex foils, fluorescent foils, ORACAL Premium, flock foils)
- Plotter cutting mat
- Automatic knife
- Weeding tool
- squeegee
- tweezers

When it comes to plotting, I immediately think of the next hobby that goes hand in hand with the printed foils.

Sew

Because what is the best use of the beautifully designed appliqués and iron-on valuables?
In my opinion, on self-sewn unique pieces.

Sewing is the joining of fabrics with a seam. It is one of the oldest crafts, developed early and playing an important role throughout human history. To date, a variety of different suturing methods have been developed.

Today, DIN 61400 defines sewing as the process in which one or more threads are repeatedly guided through the material to be sewn, with the threads being intertwined with one another or with the material to be sewn. Similar techniques, such as needling in tufting or the warp knitting technique (sewing with stitch formation) are not referred to as sewing.

Two-dimensional materials can be joined by sewing, especially fabric, leather, paper and cardboard, but also foils and metal sheets, optionally in combination with one another and for many different purposes. However, by far the most important field of application for sewing processes is the clothing industry.

In a figurative sense, threadless fabric connections, such as glued seams and welded seams, also count as seams.

Basic equipment for first sewing work:
- Sewing machine (e.g. from Janome, Juki, Bernina)
- Fabric (preferably cotton for starters)
- Yarn (e.g. Amman Mettler Yarns)
-cloth scissors
- pins
- sewing pattern

For example, if you use your sewing machine or plotter to create magic for your loved ones or a great birthday present, then you are also a creative mind when it comes to packaging.

A beautifully packaged item with a personal card and dedication is the icing on the cake.

However, card making has reached a new dimension and following that is bubbling with creativity. When I was a child, a simply folded piece of paper and a kind greeting written with a normal colored pencil were enough. Today the selection of paper, paints, punches, stamps, zigzag scissors, punch pliers and various cutting and embossing machines is enormous and you can conjure up an individual greeting for every occasion and for every recipient.

The custom of sending greetings cards, which was intended to replace the usual personal visit to celebrations, goes back far beyond the sending of postcards. The first greeting card in Europe was sent out in 1415 and the first greeting card in Germany in 1493.

Before telephony became widespread, congratulations postcards were a very popular form across social classes to send congratulations to relatives and acquaintances and relatives on solemn occasions or anniversaries. Despite the dominance of electronic means of communication, greeting cards are still very important. In a study by Swiss Post, the high personal character of the postal media was given as a particular reason for this. A GfK study shows that 637 million greeting cards were sold in Germany in 2010.

In addition to the purchased cards, there are countless self-designed cards. For the first steps of card design you can use the following:

Basic equipment making cards / card design:
- Beautiful paper cardboard or cardboard
- Scissors
- Cutting machine
- rotary cutter
- Washi tape
- Pencils
- Ruler
- Punching
- Stamps / colored ink pads

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