Well, as some of you will know who follow my blog etc, I decided to do a massive clear out.
To fill those who do not know in: My mother (LizG on DC) passed away in 2011, she was one of the main known people on the forum and her cards were amazing!
She had so much stuff it was crazy. When she passed I took most of it not wanting to part with it as it was our hobby together. I have moved twice since then and it has been a nightmare due to the craft stash!
I have sold stuff off in droves previously but have kept a hold of a lot of things just out of not wanting to let them go.
Well, this week with finally finishing college and graduating and getting a new job, I decided it was time.
So I started clearing out.
Today was a massive day for me.
Overnight I had gotten 37 orders for things to send out to people and some of the stuff that was going was very hard to let go of, but I would never have used it!
If I hadn't touched it in almost four years then when was I going too?
Her rock-a-block set, she had her name hand written on them. I hated the damn things but she used them every day and she had written her name on them in her calligraphy handwriting...that was a sentimental thing, but they were purchased, so I let them go.
Paper stock and card stock that I was sifting through, I remembered her buying it when she was with me, remembered her laugh, the way we used to joke and everything in between. Happy but equally heart breaking at the same time.
Her punches....I kept all of the Martha Stewart punches and some basics but I let over 100 punches be sold on. Some of which were her pride and joy, but why should I have just let her pride and joy sit there and get dusty?
Her embellishment folders. Those square papermania ones with trays in them. She had 15 of them.
I looked through them, having never used anything that was in them, and decided to keep the purple folders and some of the things...that amounted to 2 folders filled.
Why should it all just be sitting there getting dusty instead of going to happy crafters to put on little girls sparkly birthday cards?
Card blanks...why on earth would someone need over 2000 card blanks of a low quality? It baffles me, but never-the-less, she had them and somehow they did not seem as though they were mine.
There were some things that categorically were never going to be sold;
The Slice machine,
The Cuttlebug,
The pro and aqua markers,
The containers of spellbinders and provocraft folders,
The ink pads,
The 20 ringbinders of stamps,
The Glittergirls boards,
All of the things i had bought since her passing to add to the masses of stuff.
All in, I have sold £500 worth of stash. Cheaply, insanely cheaply, all in all it was worth about double that second hand, but it is all now in a home that will look after it, use it, laugh while playing with it and it will even make some of the women smile on down days when they are feeling low and they decide to make a card.
I was divided about the flowersoft stuff. It was spread over two containers and I had said to two women who came to my house today to buy loads of things, that they could get a price for that too, luckily the woman said she didn't know anything about it so would leave it.
After they left with their haul, I looked at how much I had sold off in under 48 hours. It was remarkable. Panic set in.
Why was I doing this? Would Mum be mad at me? How would I feel tomorrow?
Well after about five minutes the tears set in. It was fear. Suddenly, the prized belongings of my mothers were in the hands of strangers and not together as a united group of things.
I started packing the Flowersoft stuff away and decided to look through it properly and I am so glad that I did.
As if the emotional ordeal of getting rid of some of this stuff was not enough, I come across a printed out poem my mother had written to her mother who had passed when she was ten. It was dated March 2004, I was 19 and had just left home and our relationship was rocky to say at least!
It spoke of a mother's love being unconditional and everlasting, how she missed her Mum everyday but then at the end, I broke.
"My daughter is loving....."
She was talking about me, probably sitting up late at night at the computer after surfing the DC forums and wrote this from her heart when we were not in contact and not talking to each other...
I just sobbed.
So, this evening, I sit here with my box of tissues for the tears that have refused to fall for four years since her passing, which are now overflowing.
I feel happy, sad, thankful, grateful, mournful, nostalgic and like finally, the cracks are not being paved over, but dug out and fixed!
I had spent so long clinging onto every little thing I had of hers related to crafting that I didn't realise it was suffocating me.
It surrounded me in this little blanket of security almost like she was still here, it wouldn't let me grieve.
Crafting will always be a part of my life, I will always keep a lot of it, but letting go of just over one third of it to make it more manageable physically has surprisingly lifted the emotional burden I have been unable to shift for years.
I am sure Mum will be up there smiling (but slightly annoyed that I sold and gave away some hand made embellishments of hers) knowing that my home is less cluttered....physically and emotionally!
I think I can finally call it MY craft stash.
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