Crafting Ideas Using Very Basic Items -#VikingArtyParty

Last weekend I spent a sunny Saturday afternoon getting crafty at the #VikingArtyParty in the gorgeous King Street Townhouse hotel in Manchester. Now, Viking are generally known for their office supplies, but as this event showed me, it is very possible to get crafty with some very basic and low-cost items and I came away feeling inspired and creative!

First up I was introduced to some exclusive new calligraphy sets that are due to released, and we tried our hand at Modern Calligraphy with Joyce from Artsynibs. I’d previously attended one of her brush calligraphy workshops, and after developing those skills over the past year I loved learning this new style with a dip pen.

Then I moved onto notebook customisation with Chloe from The Crafty Hen  where we turned very basic and boring-looking exercise books into something unique and pretty using different papers and trimmings.

And then I finished up block printing with Stacey from The Crafty Hen,  where we used lino cutting techniques to turn a plain Staedtler eraser into a rubber stamp (who knew?!), and block printed the design onto plain white magazine files.

Although I wasn’t 100% happy with how my pineapple-printed magazine file turned out, I did go on to use the same rubber stamp that I’d made to add extra touches to my customised notebook, and I even added a calligraphy label to it too, so as you can see I combined all three skills into one project that I love!

It’s amazing how many basic items can be turned into interesting craft projects, and here is another example; in my goody bag from the event I found a plain white mug and some oil-based Sharpie pens, and just 5 minutes on Pinterest showed me that this is a crafting craze right now! I got busy right away and created my own version of a Sharpie mug!

I’m definitely feeling creative after all of this, and I hope it inspires you to see the crafting potential in some otherwise uninspiring items!

You can also read Viking’s blog post about the day here.

 

If you liked this, try these:

6 Ways That Being Creative Will Help You Feel Great

Getting Crafty with Paperchase’s Crafting Workshops

Learning a New Skill: Brush Calligraphy

 

Follow me on Bloglovin to keep up to date with my posts