Happy new year! How was 2024 for you? This is the time of the year where I like to look back at my creations, tidy up the atelier, and make plans for the year coming. Fortunately this time, I was able to create a proper summary as I had at least one new piece every month! (Pretend that I did make the August post on time…)

Presenting Atelier Ilyere’s 2024 art summary!

In case you missed the respective posts:
January: Kusudama – Imperial Rose Sonobe
February: Origami dragon – Happy lunar new year 2024!
March: Small papercraft flower vase
April: Personalised baby birth photo frames
May: Paper flower birthday cards – two ways!
June: Kusudama – Sky Star Kusudama
July: Phone strap charms
August: Origami hydrangea mini plant
September: Macramé dreamcatcher, version one
October: Macramé dreamcatcher, version two
November: A crafty Christmas 2024 – Christmas-themed wreath
December: A crafty Christmas 2024 – origami baubles

In 2024, I went back to origami a lot – I like to learn a lot of new things, but paper folding will always be my favourite thing! I think I really showed off its versatility as well, from paper flowers to modular forms.
The second most used discipline was macramé – I bought a lot of rope and I was determined to use it! They made for great displays in the living room area and surprisingly took less time that I thought to complete.
The baby frames were a new one for me, I had never tried to make something so personalised for someone before, and as a gift no less.

My favourite thing I worked on was probably the small papercraft flower vase. I enjoyed making lots of different types of flowers and bundling them together in a cohesive way. I would like to scale up the sizing in the future.

Something I could have improved on is my project planning. I actually had quite a few more craft ideas in the works, but a lot of them stayed in the WIP stage – I have the bits lying around but I never fully committed to finishing them. I even have the progress photos saved on my phone somewhere! Unfortunately it ate up a lot of time starting and stopping projects constantly, so my overall output for 2024 was lower than I would have liked.

By the way, here is the workstation going into 2025! I got a lot more cardmaking-type stuff like patterned and textured papers, and there are materials stuffed in every space where possible. The massive bag of plushie stuffing needs to find a new home at some point though, it is a bit of an eyesore. I also try to keep the main area clean so that I can work on my language learning – I will be going on a big holiday in a few months’ time and am trying to learn a couple of useful phrases here and there!

I only did a small clean-up of paper cutoffs and bits this time. By paper cutoffs I mean the leftover bits when I cut into larger patterned paper sheets – it’s a bad habit of mine because I like the patterns and I thought it might be a shame to waste them, but I truly have an ever-growing stash of materials and I cannot let it outpace my creative streak!

In 2025, I think I still have the same goals as my last review – I’d like to post more mini projects and update my blog a bit more often. I want to be able to choose my favourite projects per month, rather than only having one choice when I come to review the year.

So here’s to 2025, I hope I will achieve my goals, and I hope you do too!