Share your craft projects on Instagram with the August hashtag

The weather has remained scorching hot here in the UK throughout July. We are officially in the midst of a heatwave. I have to admit the hot weather has put me off making my chunky wool crochet blanket, but I'm still stitching. Do you have any creative projects planned for August? Join our creative community and share your craft projects on Instagram with the August hashtag #craftingismytherapy_august

Looking back over the previous month, #craftingismytherapy_july turned out to be our busiest month yet. We welcomed a number of new contributors, which is always nice to see.

I always enjoy seeing the wide variety of crafts tagged. I love being part of this creative community and thank you to everyone who joins in each month. If you would like to find out more about the hashtag and see the story behind it, please follow this link.

What are your creative plans for August? I would love to see your images added to the feed. Simply add the #craftingismytherapy_august tag over on Instagram to your creative posts. All crafts more than welcome and you can tag as many images as you like.

At the end of the month, I will choose a selection of images that have caught my eye and put together a round-up post over on Instagram and here on my blog. You can find my Instagram here. I also share as many of your images in my Insta stories as I can throughout August.

Last month we welcomed Lucy from @lucyludreams as guest co-host. She did a fantastic job and I loved seeing her favourite makes popping up in her stories. Lucy has kindly written a #craftingismytherapy_july round-up post over on her blog, click here to head over and have a read....

Above is a small selection of the creative images tagged throughout July. Aren't they beautiful? There are so many talented makers out there. It gets harder and harder to choose just nine images in my monthly round-up grids. This image represents a small snapshot of the creative projects shared, please visit the July feed to see everyone’s contributions to the hashtag.

You can find out who the makers are behind the images by following this link

– Please share the love and comment on images added to the #craftingismytherapy_august feed.
– If you tag your images and use the hashtag #craftingismytherapy_august on any social media channels that would be great. This will help me to grow the community. I will retweet all your posts via Twitter if you mention me @pouchvintage
– And finally, if you would like to follow me on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, you’re more than welcome!

Follow me on Pinterest to see blog posts, tutorials and much more...

UK Handmade Magazine: Winter Issue

The Spring Issue of UK Handmade magazine is due out shortly. However, there's still time to catch the Winter Issue. Packed with interesting reviews, business advice and the latest handmade events happening across the United Kingdom.

There are also interviews with designer-makers such as knitted textile designer Hannah Watson, ceramicist Elaine Bolt and my piece on Jennifer Collier.

If you turn to page 16 you can read more about Jennifer's innovative techniques working with upcycled paper to create beautiful 3-D pieces. Here is a snippet of the introduction I wrote for this interview:

"Jennifer Collier creates contemporary craft with a vast array of repurposed paper. Trained in textiles, she began to experiment with unusual materials at university to see how far she could push traditional sewing and weaving methods. Today, she uses a self-taught technique of bonding, waxing, trapping and stitching to produce unusual paper ‘fabrics’. She then uses these papers as if they were cloth. Jennifer’s main aim is to give a contemporary twist on traditional textiles."

UK Handmade Magazine is a quarterly digital magazine that celebrates the best designers and makers across the UK. I have been a features writer for the magazine since 2008 and have been fortunate enough to meet some amazing craftspeople, organisations and collectives. You can see a selection of my writing here.

To see all the past issues, please visit our website.