Crafts & Hobbies #61: Craftspiration!

I enjoyed browsing through the craft sites, looking at pictures and instruction lists and videos. I have to say, though, that I am not a very crafty person and I was not inspired to go off and make something. The best I can say is that I was "almost" inspired to go off and buy something. I loved some of the earrings on Etsy. This pair was shown at madebysam's shop. The only thing that stopped me was a current aversion to extra "stuff", and our recent IHCPLNextGen posts on recession money management.



I was surprised to find a pleasant diversion down memory lane on the Craftszine site. When my son was a preschooler, he and I used to make our own play dough that looked just like what was shown here. The only downside was that it was very oily, so you had to be careful where you laid it or you would end up with unwanted greasy spots. We actually resurrected this technique later in junior high school, as the play dough was a perfect medium for making a model "ant" for an assigment.


http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/06/_making_playdough_is_almost.html



I don't think I could learn a craft from just a video, especially one with no sound. I tried watching someone crochet a ball on Craftzine, to see how the crocheted eyeballs were made, but I would not have a clue how to do it.

You can see what I mean by watching this segment at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YM3rBmtJi0&feature=player_embedded

One thing that I did learn from browsing these posts was the many creative ways used to instruct people how to do things, from lists, to series of pictures, to simple videos. I think HCPL could make use of some of these techniques to teach people how to place holds, search databases, etc.

Maybe we could have a contest using a Flickr site (pictures, sheesh!) where customers could load pictures of themselves in our library, or enjoying one of our books outside the library, or showing a project they accomplished using a DIY book or a cookbook or a craft book from the library.