But spring has finally arrived! The renewal in nature can renew our spirits as well. Drink it in. Enjoy the beauty around you and be inspired.

If you would like to see what’s going on at The Artful Crafter more frequently than this monthly newsletter allows, please visit The Artful Crafter blog and mark it as one of your favorites.

As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

Eileen

Inspiration is Everywhere

There is no way to force inspiration. It either comes or it doesn’t. However what the artist can do is create the optimal conditions for the creative juices to start flowing again.

You have to recognize that every artist goes through dry periods. We all sometimes feel burned out and out of ideas. You may feel like you’ve done it all; or even that you don’t ever want to pick up a beading tool or boot up Photoshop again.

If you feel like that, it’s time to give yourself a break – both literally and figuratively.

You need time away from your art. You need to be kind to yourself and go searching for new inspiration. That may be hard to do if you are crafting for profit. If that’s the case, think about other parts of your business that could use attention while your artistic self refreshes itself.

When you’re feeling more your artistic self again, here are a few pages and links that may inspire you: The Artful Crafter Jewelry Ideas Index; Scrap Girls; and Wire Sculptor.

Preston Reuther has free on-demand instructional wire sculpture videos that may give you some new ideas. I like the way he teaches. As he progresses with each lesson, he frequently comments on alternatives in style or materials.

Depending on your craft, you can visit galleries and shops, go out into nature, leaf through catalogues and magazines, browse through your craft supply stores or brainstorm with your circle of friends. Each of these has worked for me at one time or another.

Craft Repairs as a Business or Just to DIY

We’ve put up a whole bunch of new articles on how to repair various craft items from unfired clay to ceramics to remaking and reinforcing damaged jewelry.

Also here’s an article on how to repair wallpaper when the pattern is no longer available.

There are some techniques and materials used that may surprise you!

Reader Letter of the Month

I am very confused on the sizing for long darning needles. I need a heavy darning needle with a large eye.

Which is larger size 14 or 18?

Nancy

Great question … this is one that confuses almost everyone. From beaders to wire sculptors to darners. [Is that people who say “darn” too much? I guess I could qualify.]

The short answer is that a size 14 darning needle is probably larger than a size 18. I say “probably” because I don’t know where you live and what scale has been used to label the needles you are considering. But here’s the bottom line: every wire gauge system I am aware of uses an inverse scaling system. That means as the gauge numbers go up, the diameter of the wire goes down.

So a size 18 needle would be thinner than a size 14.

I know this inverse relationship thing is quite confusing, so here’s a tip to help you remember why wire diameter goes down as the gauge numbers go up. The first person to create a scale for wire thickness did so by counting how many times a strip of metal was drawn through successively narrower holes (or dies) to stretch (and thin) it out. A thinner wire required more draws to thin it.

This man shall be darned forever! Learn more about wire gauges here.

P.S. Some manufacturers of knitting and crochet needles have opted out of the inverse wire gauge scales and so their needles’ diameters increase as the numbers go up. These are simply numbers like clothing sizes; not mathematically precise gauges.