iHanna’s List of Creative Achievements 2012

Wow! We are way into the first month of the year and now, finally, I’ve compiled a celebratory list of 2012 – listing as many creative happenings from my life as I could remember!

Creative Achievements

So, without further ado, a year’s worth of Creative Achievements:

1. Participated in A Day in the World photo project where I, with my smart phone, documented the 15th of May 2012. Later I also went to the exhibition at Kulturhuset, and loved it!
2. Decided to participate in TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday) where we learned a new stitch every week! I came all the way to week 44 or 45 with my sampler I think, then I got sidetracked by other things (I might finish the last stitches this year)
3. Started to blog in series of posts, and assigned each idea a tag of their own, most used are weekly inspiration (links, videos and inspiration) and art journal peek (a detailed look into my books)
4. Participated in a machine embroidery workshop that was very inspiring & fun
5. I moved the iHanna Newsletter from yahoo lists to the mailinglist provider Mailchimp (recommended!) and grew my subscriber list quite a bit
6. Planned to send out newsletters monthly but did only get it out 3 times during 2012 (still better than 2011)
7. Bound a watercolour art journal for myself, with a free-form machine embroidered & painted cover (it’s still only half full)
8. Arranged the DIY Postcard Swap for the third year in a row and took the big step to charge a fee from the participants. Taking care of the details of this big swap proved to be something that many of you happily payed me to do. This made me proud to dare it, and gave me a taste of being “a business woman”. I’m for ever grateful to all participants!
9. Made +10 handmade Meta Postcards filled with pretty postal stamps
10. Took the time to install a new plug-in that creates a nice looking archive
11. Tried to draw what I wore in my diary (fun, fun, fun!)
12. Recycled an old book to make an awesome postcard ring binder to store all the beautiful handmade mail art I get
13. Finished a lacy and vintage looking messenger bag for myself
14. Blogged about upcycled thrifted finds, like the spray painted pedestal and needle holder thing
15. Embroidered a handkerchief for Danish artist Hanne Bang’s project In a war someone has to die
16. Embroidered a small message of rainbow love, sent as a contribution for the Gay movement in Russia
17. Made a little Easter wall hanging in Jane Bolton style that I really like a lot
18. Sewed a little and made my first apron, a gift for my sweet cousin
19. Participated in Ali Edward’s big photo project A week in the Life in April and took a lot more photos than usual
20. Started to make a photo book about the above project, but didn’t finish it. Now it’s almost ready to send to the Blurb printer and then I will share some pages!
21. Painted the cover of a leather owl journal and used it as my diary. It’s a notebook that is very heavy (and too thick) – but now filled to the brim with my words
22. Baked a chocolate cake for my brothers 20th birthday
23. Made warm-up exercises in a Quick Collage Notebook, trying to be more minimalistic
24. Celebrated 8 years of blogging with one of many giveaways this year
25. Pictured my Inner Critic and made her into a paper doll
26. Wrote my first Summer Manifesto and fell in love with the idea of that beautiful summer…
27. Crocheted hexagons!
28. Got myself an instagram account (look me up, I’m ihannas!) this summer and have been enjoying all the pretty there is + posting at least one picture almost every day
29. Continued to create embroidered Artist Trading Cards, like the ATC trees and the ATC sunshine series
30. Put my Meditation Cushions in new fabric – love this look!
31. Made four square smart journals (to sell) and two for myself – all with yummy book covers and awesome inside papers!
32. Knitted Checkered Wrist Warmers, using a new-to-me technique
33. Got a small handmade notebook from Tammy and did the List Journal Project, where we each wrote lists, posting them as prompts each week the entire autumn (all list prompts here)!
34. Listed a few smart journals and sold some (!) through my Etsy Shop
35. Went to several inspiring and beautiful exhibitions, among my favorites a first visit to Fotografiska, Vårsalongen and Alla träd (celebrating Hemslöjden 100 years) at Liljevalchs, Lili & the prince at Waldemarsudde, and Slow Craft at Nationalmuseum.
36. Posted random photos that inspires me and makes me happy in the new series Eye Candy, something I hope to do more of in 2013!
37. Made myself a new ATC backing layout, again in pink but with more room to write title + sign each card
38. I said yes to several learning opportunities throughout the year, both off- and online
39. I went to Broderiforum’s classes at Bergby gård, where I took two classes during the week. The first one was about African textiles with Mary Sleigh and the second one storytelling through embroidery with Carina Marklund. Both great teachers!
40. Attended a day workshop with my embroidery group where we altered our materials using heat, paint, stamps and other cool things
41. Attended an evening class about mosaic crocheting together with my friend Inger
42. Took a one day Wool Embroidery Class with Gunilla Wänn in December
43. Crafted a bouquet of roses from autumn maple leafs
44. Created my first Art Journal Card in a quick swap with April
45. Made a hand bound art journal called the Journal of Scraps and sold it
46. Affected by the discussion on free and sustainability I decided to pay a few favorite bloggers for their awesome (extended) content. These have since long inspired me and are much loved content happiness providers. First I took a payed subscription to Diane’s Craftypod, a show I’ve listened to and loved for seven years! It makes me sad that we now are saying good bye to this show! Oh how I will miss the Craftypod podcast in 2013!
47. Also payed for and followed Jude Hill’s embroidery experiments (still ongoing) in her 6 months long Spirit Cloth Diaries (not a class but more a extensive blog with video, images + talks a few times a week) and also her Whispering Hearts which really inspired me a lot
48. Payed and followed along in Mary Ann Moss’ class Ticket to Venice where she teaches a way of binding your travel journal and showed glimpses of her own travel sightings, journaling and memory collecting (this is both a book binding class and travel-on-your-own inspiration)
49. Created a themed post with photos for the first time (of floors) and decided to come back to this idea in 2013 and invite you to participate
50. Got invited to become a book blogger at The Literary Magazine but declined because they wanted me to write without payment
51. Doodled a lot, mostly flower garlands and mandala experiments using a black pen
52. Finished seven tiny cats, some still listed in the shop
53. Was interviewed in Sister Diane’s image only interview series (first out)
54. Was interviewed by Eden, at her blog Draw Doodle Decorate
55. Was invited to a weekend away with a wool theme. With a few other ladies I sat in the sun knitting, listening, and doing embroidery for three days. Very nice!
56. Visited a Swedish spinning mill
57. Embraced the chance to finally go to Bokmässan in Gothenburg! I visited the book fair two days in a row and totally loved being there!
58. Traveled domestically several times and visited Gothenburg, UmeÃ¥, Helsingborg, Nyköping, Borlänge – and Östersund!
59. Attended three different TEDxStockholm events and wrote about them for work
60. Arranged a second Postcard Swap and decided for the first time to set a theme (empowerment!). It was a 5 for 5 postcard swap during late Autumn/Winter.
61. Created five painted postcards with fun, cartoony lettering
62. Was asked to post at the Swedish blog 365 saker du kan slöjda (365 things you can craft), where you can find my altered book tutorial in Swedish called #874 Gör en konstnärlig skissbok av gammal volym
63. Started the blog post series of creative everyday photos from my week, mostly showing recent photos taken at home. It’s called Creative Snapshots – probably my favorite series, because it reminds me of when I used to have a photo diary!
64. Participated in the big and awesome embroidery exhibition Långsamhetens lov where 14 artists (and our small embroidery group!) showed art on the wall of Luna Konsthall – for three months! A huge thing I haven’t even had time to blog about…
65. Embroidered a Sun Flower inspired by Vincent van Gogh
66. Embroidered a wool bracelet, much inspired by Britt (who gave me the material for it)
67. Had many awesome crafternoons with mom; sewing, embroidering and learning
68. Inspired my creative mom to try wool embroidery, to get a instagram account, to become obsessed with book making and to take classes with me! Yay mom!
69. Made a small mat by Weaving Book Spines, a blog post picked up by Make: Craft
70. Continued the third year as board member and editor at Broderiakademin, Sweden’s Embroidery Guild, where I write articles for Broderiakademin’s member magazine, etc.
71. Finished an embroidery on the theme “in between” and participated in our yearly contest Guldnålen, exhibited at our Annual Meeting (this year in Östersund)
72. Continued to run the site Broderiakademin.nu with weekly content (articles, images in the gallery, answering emails etc) throughout the year
73. Celebrated World Embroidery Day on July 30th by sitting at a café in town with my ladies and doing embroidery “out in the open”, plus I created printable pennants etc
74. Met DesignMadde and found a new awesome soulmate/friend (that unfortunately lives too far away from me)
75. Published in an interview as featured Blogger, in Featured issue 3
76. Compiled a list of previous Christmas Craft Ideas at the end of the year (love lists!)
77. Contributed to &Stitches e-zine – twice! First I wrote an article for issue 2 and then shared my embroidered manadala with sisha mirror in the middle in issue 3. Sweet Carina also included me in her December Blog Love Fest
78. I read 40 books, but unlike Kim I haven’t had time to look back or like Tammy plan ahead, even though I love book lists too!
79. Was invited to tweet as @sweden during the last week of the year, and hence was pushed to communicate a lot and learn a new way to use twitter (more as a chat than as my rss-feed).
80. Wrote +206 blog posts! Posts for this blog also always include around three to five photos, edited, uploaded and tagged on flickr!

What a year huh? On top of my own projects I worked almost-full time office hours for 10 months (at work I write research articles, blog posts, edited documents, and do database updates, plus sometimes attended (really interesting) events).

The Year 2012 was a huge and deep year in many ways. As I wrote this list I noticed that there are many, many events and inspirational things, photos and projects that I have not blogged about. I miss those unwritten posts/texts more than you do I guess, but I haven’t had time or energy for them. This is because, unlike in 2010 and 2011 I have commuted to a real job with wonderful coworkers instead of staying at home all the time.

I hope you had a good year too, because I wish lots of creative energy and joy for you guys!

And now, on with 2013!