Looking back at 2024

Well we reached the final day of the year and what a year it has been. Certainly plenty I am grateful for. So I thought I would do a little round up post here to look back on my notable creative parts of 2024! Enjoy!

Design teams

Well I had to start with this – getting to work with Kingston Crafts and seeing my makes on the TV is absolutely one of my highlights of the year (in full not just creatively).

I can’t begin to describe how excited I was seeing things I had created on the tv – but also the stress and the anxiety prior to this point had also been very real. There was a total crash in confidence in my ability to make stuff that happened half way through making, then the box took longer to be delivered than expected so I thought it had got lost and I would have to start again with less time! I have to give a big shout out to Martin who was fabulously supportive and helped me feel less anxious and of course for putting my name forward to Kingston Crafts in the first place. Thank you Martin.

I also wanted to mention here that I am still loving doing Design team work for the challenge blogs – Creative Knockouts and Addicted to Stamps and More. It gives me that bit of focus and keeps me blogging. I know blogging is not the way the world is going in terms of marketing but I don’t care. I love blog hopping for those challenges as I get to visit people’s creative spaces across the world and get ideas for my creativity too.

Scrapping again

2024 saw the return of the scrapbooking! It started with a page I made for a small frame in my craft room to celebrate a trip to see Hamilton and it spiralled from there!

It had been so long since I had done any scrapping but I have done so many pages since this and really enjoyed making them.

This also brought me back to in person events with attending the Warrington crop. It’s been great to get to see my crafty friends in person and meet new friends. Unfortunately I missed the last one as I was ill but looking forward to more crops in 2025 and more scrapping!

All the 18th’s

This started in 2023 but continued through to the summer of 2024 as my daughter and her friends all turned 18 – so I made a lot of 18th birthday cards for the girls. It has been a pleasure to see them all become adults and now off to ventures new! What has been wonderful though is despite moving to different places or off on different adventures, they have remained close and I often get my FaceTime declined because she is on another call with one or two of the other girls. ❤️

Patterned paper

I have continued my quest to use up patterned paper at the start of the month but I must admit it has been more challenging as I didn’t have that focus I did for 2023 in using a cut apart piece of paper as the starting point – but as I still have so much paper hanging around I think I will keep going on trying to work my way through it! I just need a plan to make it easier – I have some ideas so watch this space to see how it works out.

I think these were my favourite cards coming from the patterned paper challenge in 2024.

I made them from the paper pack I was gifted and using a pattern from Cards by Kendra. Love these delicate colours and the pretty roses.

Mojo finding sessions

I discovered during 2024 that I could find my mojo by having sessions where I just die cut scraps or made lots of backgrounds with no focus on the outcome or what I would use them for. It’s been a freeing experience. Sit and create something – but not actually finish anything or feel the pressure to put stuff together. Usually it leads to an idea and the mojo comes back – but even if it doesn’t it gives you a pouch of bits you can use at another point in time!

So I regularly now sit and die cut scraps, stamp sentiments or make random backgrounds that then get put aside and then can easily be grabbed to use when making something. I think these backgrounds that I then added rub ons to are some of my favourites this year and I can’t tell you how fab it is to just go to a pouch for a sentiment than always having to stamp and die cut when the rest of the card is done!

DYICAD2024

I joined in with #dyicad again and finished it! I think that is a pretty cool achievement to actually get 61 days of index cards done – and this time I chose to mainly collage using up bits that have been in a box for years! I enjoyed the simplicity of just sticking things down and doodling in the main and felt productive to get old stash used. I ended up with a theme of old postage stamps, circles and raffle tickets being on almost all cards but mainly it was just the fact I spent around 15 mins daily putting something together that really didn’t matter what the end product looked like. Imperfection was embraced! And I significantly reduced the stuff in my bits box!

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There are plenty of other things I could also write about that I’ve made that make me happy but I think this is already a long post so I’m going to finish with this …

Queen of Christmas

I’ve been anointed the Queen of Christmas by Martin (on tv nonetheless!) so I have to of course talk about Christmas crafting!

So throughout the year I’ve been doing my Festive Fridays so made a Christmas based project every single week.

Then I decided to take on Christmas in July – not just on my blog but also on my YouTube and I shared a Christmas project every day in July. My goodness that was an undertaking! My YouTube channel went a little berserk for a while with significant numbers of hits and new followers!

Then I did join in with most (but not all) of Martin’s 30 days Christmas card making challenge in November.

So I guess this does make me the Queen of Christmas! I just love making Christmas themed cards – they make me happy. I certainly don’t need to make the numbers that I do – I end up gifting quite a few to charity shops and friends for selling at charity fairs – but I love making them.

I don’t think I can choose just one favourite card for this year so instead I have a selected a few that jumped out at me as ones that make me particularly happy!

So I think that pretty much covers 2024.

Thank you dear blog readers who pop by to see my little patch of the internet – it is really appreciated. Hope to see you next year for more creative adventures!

Wishing you health and happiness and of course creativity!

Happy crafting!

Catherine