Thursday, July 20, 2006

Changing face of crafting

Yesterday I spent most of the day sorting through a decade of craft magazines. I needed more space and decided to only keep the mags with quilling in seeing as thats what I do most of the time.
When I first started buying craft magazines, here in the UK, in about 1988, there was really only one, called Popular Crafts. It was a magazine that was for all crafts and there were loads of crafts in it, from decoupage to thatching the roof of your cottage. I came across knitting, crocheting, tatting, painting, porcelain dolls, mohair teddy bears, dolls houses, making jewellery... Actually, just about any craft you can think of except making greetings cards.

In about 1990 two other magazines became available Crafts Beautiful and Practical Crafts, and it stayed that way with just three magazines until about 3 years ago when tons of new magazines became available, these are all card magazines and basically they are pretty boring in my opinion.
They all have the same thing, how to make cards as quick as you can, only occasionally do they have something that will appeal to the more advanced card maker and then there is still nothing for the advanced crafter. Even Crafts Beautiful has gone the card making way and Practical Crafts has now changed its name to Practical Crafts and Card Making. I will be so glad when the card making obsession is over and we can get back to having the 'proper' crafts back.

Thankfully quilling will always be on the negative side of popular, people think its too difficult, too time consuming, too fiddly. Only the artists who do it know that it's all those things, but the finished object and the contentment of rolling strips of paper hugely outweighs those niggling feelings.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a lovely piece - so beautifully symmetrical!

Anonymous said...

This is such a beautiful piece. I am just a new quiller and know how difficult it is to create such a delicate piece of art. Thanks a million for sharing it.

Helen said...

Your work are really stunning!