Melanie Toye's Hobbies

For those who are in business or are wanting to start creating online courses, you will appreciate my latest online course, " How to create an online course ."  You can literally create an online course about any topic or industry. You can even use this resource to create training courses for your staff to learn more about a topic. The person writing the course does need to be a subject matter expert in the topic you are creating the course on. I did complete the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and also Train the trainer course. I only create courses that I am a subject matter expert on and that of which I feel people are seeking some guidance in the area taught on. That's why I created an online course for other businesses and individuals to learn what's acceptable, how it works, it doesn't have to always be all video content either. I am a writer, so I find writing and creating courses much easier in PDF format for individual's to print. Why create...

Image by Aritha from Pixabay ^Please note, I use affiliate links in this blog post. This means I receive a percentage of the sale from the seller.  The cool thing about diamond painting is you can literally start with smaller diamond painting projects or you can start big and not just do a diamond painting kit but do a super large diamond painting kit. This blog post is going to help you find different ways to diamond paint. So personally, I have only ever completed diamond painting kits.  What is a diamond painting kit?  Well, you choose a picture you want to diamond painting kit, order it and you receive the drills (diamonds) the canvas of the picture, a diamond painting pen, wax and a tray. Sometimes you might receive a few other things in kits but this generally sums it up.  The diamond painting kits tend to start at 20x20cm and can go up quite large. My large Suzume diamond painting  was the size of a full table. So you can go quite big in size. I will sa...

What does it feel like to have a messy sticker storage box? So my stickers storage makes me nervous. Honestly, I have a box filled with stickers. Whenever I use my stickers I pull out the entire box and sort of feel overwhelmed about where to start. What stickers should I use? They are just all everywhere. I literally have so many packets (well a box full). I have this idea in my head. What if I create a box and have compartments and put themed stickers in each section together. To be honest, I didn't even know if this would work. But I had to try. I also didn't want to buy a plastic compartment box, because I just feel with the size of my sticker packets it might not work and I would need more than one plastic compartment box.  Here is a photo of my box of stickers, untouched:  Different types of cardboard boxes to use I did have a box already but the cardboard was thinner and I didn't think the sections of cardboard that I was going to create would work because of the thi...

Image by Eva Michálková from Pixabay  A writing space is so important but let me be real, your writing space can change spaces to help keep you inspired and motivated. But if you do want to set up a writing space, let me help you. So I talk about how to set-up a writing space in my fiction novel online writing course for beginners.  But today, let's talk about a writing space. The reason you should create a writing space is if you have limited time, because you may have another full time job, or study full time or part-time and/or look after children, well time is limited. So the point of creating a writing space is so when you sit down to write, your mind knows it's time to write because it has become a routine, then when you sit in this space you write.  So what can a writing space look like? Well you need a table and a comfy chair with a high back. I have outdoor chairs as my dining chair, so the chairs lean back, I have to sit up with no support on my back. So I stro...

So, you are beginner in crocheting? I was a beginner a few years ago and decided to create a book for those just starting out. This book is filled with advice and tips for beginners. I am happy to share a sample of my crocheting for beginners book below: Welcome Welcome to your new crocheting journey. Crocheting is beautiful and can be a relaxing and feel-good experience / hobby. Crocheting lets you use your hands to create and inspire. You will learn that you can crochet anywhere at anytime. Just make sure you have a crochet hook and your favourite yarn with you. I started this journey and found it very difficult to even learn how to do a basic chain stitch but I assure you, the more you practice and just practice, the more your hands will learn the ins and outs and it just becomes easy. It’s not about how fast your journey is, it is all about you starting and continuing. Crocheting can be very healing if you allow it into your life. It can also be very rewarding as you create new...

Image by Carlos Villada from Pixabay Reading... it's funny... as a writer I feel I don't read as much as I should. Bascially, I write fiction and non-fiction books ... but I rarely read fiction. I'm not sure if I should admit it? When I was a young adult, I used to read fiction. But I feel, I have so much growth and learning to do, so I lean towards non-fiction.  This is fine - this is a non-judgement space.  So whether you lean more towards reading fiction or non-fiction, that is completely fine. Do not feel guilty for reading!  Probably in the last year, I have started reading more! But as mentioned in previous blogs. I do have this dirty habit ... do you want to hear it? I go shopping at the second hand thrift stores ... it's so much fun... exploring for non-fiction books...and then, because I love craft...I make all these cool b ookmarks ...because I need more than one.  The reason I need more than one, is because I read part of one book, then place a bookmark ...

Image by Julius H. from Pixabay  I am an intermediate level crocheter. I avoid learning new stitches because I don't want to forget the stitches I know. So I avoid a lot of projects that I don't know the stitches for. But I do know a decent amount of stitches...let's see, chain, single crochet, increase, decrease and I can crochet a lot of projects using these four stitches.  Last year I posted my crochet fails , because I wanted you to see that even as experienced as I am, I still make mistakes ... mostly though I blame it on the pattern. Ha ha! I recently bought a rhino pattern off Etsy and I stuffed it up a few times but I kept going. So normally a pattern shows all the different parts of the body and I normally just choose which bit I am going to focus on and not in any order. So I started to create the body of this Rhino ... I skipped the beginning where you create the legs and arms first. Because I like to do arms and legs last, because it normally requires a few goe...

Image by Xavier Espinosa from Pixabay  t’s interesting, I am author of 10 books . Some are fiction and some are non-fiction, and then I also sell kids books.so I have quite a range of book writing experience. So when I started writing a fresh new fiction novel. I really wanted something different to my normal stories. I love to grow and upskill so why not create a story that is so wild, so imaginative and thrilling that it excites me to write it?  So I started writing my next fiction novel and do you know what happened? I wrote this super cool, just absolute imaginative scene. And then I thought … should I delete it? Now, I did hand write this down so luckily I wasn’t typing it because deleting it, it would be simply gone. I thought about the scene do a few days and this is what I concluded:  Just because the scene is so imaginative, doesn’t mean my readers will not love it! I love to write what I love. So if my imagination is that creative and I do love the scene, why w...

When you feel uninspired change up your craft space  So I haven’t been scrapbooking as much because I have a set of drawers with stickers, washi tape and other cool stationery and then I have my tub of scrapbooking paper in my cupboard.  I was thinking about what I could do to bring my scrapbooking closer. Here’s a photo of my tub of scrapbooking paper. Look how undesirable it looks. Inside I have large paper about A4 size and A3. Then I have 12x12 inch paper. Plus an ice cream tub full of scrap paper.  It just made me feel unsatisfied and what makes me excited to work on a hobby is that I can see the resources and get excited to get started. But this set-up was not empowering me. I started brainstorming about maybe making a craft space. I found a table from IKEA with draws on both sides that I could put my scrapbooking paper and accessories in as well as my diamond painting. I also found a desk backing which is like a three level high shelving that attaches to the table....