Autumn Zebra

Although I had fully intended to start doing more crafts, I have been focusing a lot on tidying my house. I have sorted and got rid of dozens of boxes of assorted things, and there's lots more to go. So I haven't had much time to craft things, but I have done a few small things which relate to the house and the objects in it. Things that care for them. So that is satisfying, and resolves some of those little jobs that sit around for ages undone. Along with the two things below, I have shortened two pairs of jeans so they no longer drag on the ground. I have patched a pair of jeans for G. I have sewn buttons back on things I am giving away to the op-shops. I've unblocked the sink and tried to fix a leak. I have a really good umbrella, which doesn't turn inside out in the wind, but I always worry it will blow out of my hand. So I used my new power drill to drill a hole through the handle, and put a cord through. This cord can go round my wrist, and I don't need to...

I hesitate to exactly call these a craft, since there is a minimal amount of work in making them. However, I want to start actually using more of the things that I have saved for future use, so these are the first - something very simple to get started. Gift tags cut from Xmas and birthday cards, with holes punched in them. Now I no longer have these old Christmas cards sitting around, I have new gift tags for next Christmas (as I was down to two), and I can recycle all the off-cuts. I saw a "how-to" on a craft blog, and theirs were super fancy - they had a special cutter to cut them into a nice shape, presumably a normal hole punch whereas I think mine is a leather punch, fancy string to tie through the hole, and old cards which produced a much more hipster-crafty kind of result. So even gift tags cut from old cards don't look as pretty as the ones you see on the internet, but I still think they're quite nice and more than functional. It is quite fun working out...