1. You could spend all day in Michael's or Hobby Lobby. If you're into arts & crafts, you don't need to be in the middle of a project to drive down to your local arts & crafts store. You enjoy being surrounded by countless stickers, scrapbook materials, paint, and canvases just as much as you enjoy wine or coffee while crafting up some new art (I'm a coffee person by the way). It's no secret that arts & crafts is an expensive hobby and/or business, so we are typically the ones guilty of grabbing all of the seasonal materials when they go on sale and making some unconventional use of them.
2. You are always asked to help with decorations, and you LOVE it. It doesn't really matter the occasion--baby showers, birthday parties, weddings, etc.--you will always be the friend who is asked to help with the craftier side of things. Maid of Honor? You can take care of the bridal shower's flower-filled mason jars and photo props, no problem. Best friend's daughter's first birthday? You are honored to construct and ginormous "very hungry caterpillar" wall decoration with matching table centerpieces.
3. You take full advantage of anything that needs decorating with a theme. Holiday door decorating contest? You and your co-worker successfully turn the library entrance into Platform 3 3/4 by hand-drawing bricks with chalk on red decorating paper. Relay for Life booth needs doing? You transform your group's booth into not only a rain forest, but a rain forest of hidden treasures complete with explorer costumes (you know, kind of like Indiana Jones). No matter the situation, you have full intentions of going all out with the decorations.
4. At work, you get way too excited over bulletin boards. Artsy people are good at making the smallest things super creative, and they have fun while doing it. Anything that requires a theme and some construction paper is sure to get the creative juices flowing. When we had the chance to do bulletin boards at our library, my co-worker and I decided to feed into our Harry Potter obsession. We now have a huge bulletin board at the library entrance that reads: "Need to get sorted? Use the library!" complete with a hand-drawn sorting hat, owls, potion bottles, and a huge spell book overflowing with library resources and terms.
5. If you don’t hand-make your gifts, you feel like you failed. When you're a creative type of person, making gifts for the people closest to you just seems like the right thing to do. When it's your best friend's birthday or wedding anniversary, simply buying their gifts seems way to impersonal, and frankly, not that much fun. Instead of buying something, print out some of your favorite photos with your bestie, grab the perfect embellishments, and make a cute shadow box for her to hang on the wall.
6. You can't bear to give someone a card without drawing on it. Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure most artsy people can't resist the urge to personalize letters and cards to an exceptional degree. If it's your birthday and I'm giving you a card, you can bet I'm going to throw a little personalized sketch in there, and it will likely be based on an inside joke we have. Have you ever noticed how cards always have that blank side on the left and then the cheesy message on the right? I like to cram my personal message under the card's original font so that I can have the whole left side for my artwork. Amazing.
7. Scrapbooks are the only legit photo albums in your eyes. There's nothing particularly artsy about photo albums themselves. Almost everyone has created one at some point. Creative people, however, can NOT create a photo album without turning it into a scrapbook. It's inevitable. None of the pictures in the album seem complete until they are paired with the perfect stickers, messages, and embellishments.7.
8. You make wall collages...usually by accident. Being crafty doesn't always mean you're good at decorating, but it does usually mean your walls are never empty; they are likely covered not only with your own drawings and paintings, but also letters your best friend, cute invitations, pictures from high school, movie posters (preferably a random mix like Gone with the Wind and Jaws), cut-outs from magazines, and a few store-bought decorations.
9. You have a side business or have seriously considered starting one. When people see all of the things you make, they always say: "you should your work" or "you could make money off of this stuff." Maybe you started your own website or maybe you have sold your arts and crafts at a festival or flea market. Maybe, however, you never make money off of your projects and just keep art as a hobby (but you have to confess you at least thought about making money off of it at one point).
10. All of your textbooks, novels, and notes in college were basically doodle pads. I graduated over a year ago, and all of the novels I read for my English degree were full of random doodles. It was inevitable. In one of my world literature textbooks, there is currently a woman's face sketched into a haiku. If you've already graduated and started working, you can bet your doodle habit and made it onto your planner.
