Do you have enough hours in your day?
I find the days insufficient especially round Miniatura. I suspend all other creative activities to get ready then to tidy up. But I’ve suspended the tidying up to get back to the previously suspended creativity, although I know I’ll have to stop that to sort out the show boxes, make up the holes where things were sold and start on the new ideas.
It was Terry Curran who asked me: Now you’ve turned your hobby into a job, what are you going to do for a hobby?
Good question. The answer seemed to be making cards, which had started at the same time as miniaturising and took a huge boost when I bought a die cutting machine to see if I would like it.
I did, then die cutting became a hobby in its own right that really takes over if you don’t watch it. The first paper crafting to make 3D scenes that I remember, was a Yogi Bear cut out, fold, and stick book that made a cabin in the woods. I may have been six or seven but I was hooked instantly. Turning a flat piece of paper into 3D art is never ending fascination, as far as I’m concerned. I was bought a lovely book called: One Piece of Paper which introduced me to paper sculpture from scratch. I was about seven I think when I made a paper sculpture head of my friend and sent it to Tony Hart’s television programme.
I think my interest in 3D work had a lot to do with my short sight; I found flat drawing quite difficult and thought there must be tricks that other people knew but that stupid me did not. I had no idea I was short sighted but loved my father’s book of Impressionist paintings, which depicted the world accurately as far as I was concerned. You don’t have to see 3D, you can feel it. I was a cert for miniatures too, anything tiny an inch from my nose was also the world according to me.
I have, of course also, done dress making (quite a lot when we were young and poor and couldn’t afford new clothes), decorating (the house, for the same reason, including wallpapering and painting), gardening (if you can’t afford a lot to eat, seeds are very cheap), cookery of various sorts, including some very fancy fancies to get my mother to eat, and writing, which you may have noticed.
Then there were miniatures including everything: woodwork, electrics, furniture making, porcelain, of course and all the things that go to make a fully furnished inhabited house, including all the history, which I loved.
But the die cutting took me right back to Yogi Bear’s house. The fascination of having intricately cut pieces of paper to play with simply by rolling it through a mangle is endless. I have become quite good at it, so that friends feel utterly insulted if I buy them a birthday card from a stationer.
It does, however take time. I am currently making Easter cards to send to the family in a big box of chocolate, but, as it’s me, they are tending to be shops you can play with that fold flat. There is a time limit; the post seems slow currently, so I reckon I need to get them in the post tomorrow at the latest.
When I have finished the Easter cards I need to top up the birthday card box, which got very depleted during the run up to the show and once it’s Easter, it’s gardening.
And you do have to sleep. You have to sleep to wake up in the morning with your head full of ideas for things to make and then you have to do your work out for an hour or two and then get busy.
24 hours in a day is utterly insufficient. Long may it continue to be so.
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