Let's get blogging!

Yesterday I decided to start my very first blog without really thinking of what I was going to blog about. After much thought I've decided that this blog will be dedicated to writing about my hobbies! If you know anything about me (which you won't) I enjoy arts, crafts and cooking. These things may not sound very interesting to blog about, but it was amongst a long list of blog topics that have been circulating in my mind.

Okay, so why have I decided to blog about my hobbies? Why didn't I choose makeup, movies, travel or daily university life? I guess it's because my interest really lies in arts and craft. I try my best to fuel my creativity whenever I can and this occurs quite often. As a result, there should be plenty of content for me to write an interesting blog (or so I hope.).

So let's start with arts and crafts. When I was living in Japan, the biggest thing was DIY-anything. If you've ever been to Japan, you would know what I was talking about. People there have a high level of patience when it comes to creating something of their own. Take Bentos (packed lunch box) for example; the time and effort invested into personalising your lunch for the day has always been surprising to me. My friends in high school use to wake up at 5am just to make their bentos look super 'kawaii'. I just could never be bothered. Although I always appreciated the skill and commitment required. There is also a massive market out there for miniature objects like food, furniture and clothing. Have any of you heard of Re-Ment? They're extremely tiny and cute collectables mainly of food. Check them out at http://www.re-ment.co.jp/ and you'll understand what I mean.

Japan was craft-heaven for me. If I needed any materials or tools to make something, I could simply pop into the nearest Tokyu Hands or DAISO to get what I wanted. If you've never been to Japan, Tokyu Hands is a massive Hobbies chain with stores going up to 20 floors high and DAISO is the 100yen shop. My favourite hobby was creating clay charms of miniature food and this was a major hobby for many girls in Japan.

However, after moving to Australia I found that it became a bit of a struggle to continue my hobby. First of all, the materials and tools that you can easily get in Japan are extremely difficult to find in Australia. I went into Sydney's largest Lincraft and was told that they did not sell felting needles or paper clay. Nor did any Riot Art & Craft store have simple dotting tools or polyurethane glaze.

Second of all, everything is more expensive. I find that anything from Japan is sold at around 5x the original price in Australia *sigh*. Thank goodness they opened a DAISO here in Sydney but at $2.80 per item, you don't get the same 'Omg it's so cheap' effect as you would in Japan.

And last of all, craft materials and tools are so segregated that I have to travel to several places just to get my materials. Sometimes I find that it's just easier to buy everything online now a days. But despite these difficulties I still have much love for clay creations and so if I do continue with this blog, you'll probably see a lot of clay stories...So let's start blogging!