Hi, I’m Kim, nice to meet you!
My crafty venture has gone through so many transformations over the past 10 years and even at times I’ve started all over again LOL! But, now I really LOVE the direction The Lord Jesus has me going. I started crafting when I was 12 when I attended a local crochet class. We learned how to make shawls (triangle pattern) and for years that’s all I knew how to make but I still loved it.
Off and on through the years I kept making shawls, but things really turned around when my husband and I left Florida for Oregon and we joined a church. The Women’s ministry had weekly crafting classes and I attended. The sisters were making all kinds of things from crochet, knitting, cardmaking, plastic canvas, home decor, toys and even baking. It was so much fun and it’s where I learned to read crochet patterns and make other items like hats, scarves, accessories, home decor and even garments.
To raise funds for our women’s ministry, we would make hundreds of items and sell them at the Christmas bazaar. I even would auction off a piece of garment that I made each year. And I really felt that I had found my voice. I wanted to expand my journey into knitting so I started with loom knitting and boy was that fun.
From loom knitting, I learned to arm knit with super chunky yarns and then I took a final leap to needle knitting and I was able to make quite a few things out of all 3 knitting methods
Things Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Thought
Life sometimes happens at the most inopportune times. I injured my right shoulder/arm and hand and it took 9 months to heal. During that time, I couldn’t crochet or knit. It was hard time for me and I didn’t know where to go with my crafting. I ended up giving up yarning.
The Director of the Women’s Ministry approached me about making cards instead. I didn’t know anything about paper crafting but after praying, I took the challenge. I started making cards on my computer but soon after I learned how to handmake all my cards. You can visit my blog, Kim’s Handcrafted Cards.
A New Journey
A few months ago, still with the urge to pick up the crochet hooks, I decided to try again but with a few changes. Just prior to this, I had donated all my yarns, crochet hooks and most of my knitting needles and my notions too like my huge button collection. Well, I re-purchased crochet hooks and bought some yarn from my local Dollar Tree.
I thought I’d try to crochet scarves for my plushies, I love to collect stuffed animals. However to do this, I also bought a hand brace and my hubby purchased some foam grip tubes that fit over my crochet hook. I typically use the J size because I like working with chunky yarns. It helped so much and for the first time, I could crochet without pain. Sometimes a journey takes many turns only to return!
Adding a New Hobby
Another love of mine is stitching. I’ve stitched on cardstock for cards before and now I’m so happy to introduce felt stitching to my crafty journey! Stitching is therapeutic as crochet is and I enjoy working with felt. I like to use 100% Merino Wool and sometimes wool blends to make 3D ornaments as well as embellishments for gift boxes and cards. This year I challenged myself to make felt mittens and snowflakes to adorn our Christmas tree!
About BellaArt Creatives
You may wonder how I came up with the name for this blog and even why I created it. I had all my crafty loves on Kim’s Handcrafted Cards but I decided I’d rather have a separate place to showcase and share my fiber and fabric crafting projects. I really like the name “Bella” and Art just seemed to go with it. The Creatives part came about because there wasn’t another word I could use that hadn’t been taken! 😀 LOL!
So, what you’ll find here are project shares, recommended products and a little bit of the story behind the projects. So, note the opinions here are my own and I only write and recommend products I own/use and love.
Also, I purchase 100% of all my fabric and fiber art supplies. Although I am an affiliate of a few brands, I don’t work for any of these companies nor do they send me free products. I’m also not on any design teams.
So you’ll see links to products on some of my blog posts and if you click to shop using these links, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I appreciate your support as it helps me keep this blog afloat, thank you! More info in my Affiliate Disclosure Statement here.
I hope you’ll enjoy coming along this journey with me and browsing through pictures of projects I made, it’s incredible to me to look back and see how far I came from when I was a little girl until now! If you’ve made to the end of this posting, WOW!, Thanks for reading!
Blessings!
Kim
