Thursday, July 28, 2011

Climbing Onto My Soapbox For a Minute


Can someone explain this to me. It concerns cherries. Cherries for us mean Christmas and we pay an exorbitant price for them, generally about $29.99 a kilo. Now these cherries are grown locally and only need to travel at the most 30-40 kilometres to get to the market. So how is it that cherries from America, which have to travel thousands of kilometres to get to us here in Australia, are selling for $9.99 a kilo. It’s a puzzle!  Ok…..I’m climbing down from my soapbox now.
Here’s two gorgeous tutorials for you. The first one is for a light fitting made with doilies and I think it’s so pretty. Gather up all your Nanna’s doilies or raid the op shops, get yourself a large balloon and some glue, the tute says wallpaper glue but I’m sure mod podge would work just as well. For the full instructions go here.

Doily Lampshade

Now the next one is a little more involved but equally gorgeous. It turns glass baubles into and amazing chandelier and it sparkles beautifully. For instructions go here.

Bubble chandelier 

I have a few more tutorials that I’ll post over the next few days. I’ve found so many amazing DIY blogs on my iPad so every so often I’ll post some of them here.

Happy doily shopping.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

More Gift Tags


This time for babies (no….. I’m not getting clucky). I was lunching with some girl friends yesterday and sold some of my other tags to a couple of ladies and the overwhelming feeling from them was that I should do some baby ones. Three of them are grandmas so I was open to their suggestions and got cooking today.

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All pastelly and baby like I think. I guess it’s a change from my usual black and white or green.

But I did do some others in bright jewel colours and I apologise for the photo quality, I was too lazy to set up the light box and the sun coming through the skylight wasn’t very strong. The colours in the these photos are not really true to life at all.

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Also I didn’t place them very well to be photographed, so they look a bit wonky.

Hopefully you get the idea.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Not Just Jewellery


I’ve had a busy time this week with work and only had today free, so I made the most of it and made things…..and not jewellery.

Little gift tags.

Tags for presents 
Sold
I think I like these…..yes…..yes I do.

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I’m so smitten I think I’ll make some more.

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What do you think?

Saturday, July 16, 2011

A Present For Me


The Postie arrived the other day with a package for me from my bloggy bestie Tish and inside were two beautiful necklaces she had made for my birthday.

I just love them and I’m always in awe of her incredible wire work.
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I love the beautiful cord she used.

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You can’t see the gorgeous little crystals she used that match the lavender cord so well but trust me they make this pendant sing and the best thing is this one happens to match an outfit I bought perfectly.  Thanks Tish for thinking of me and sending me these beautiful necklaces……your the best!

Now I know I’ve been a bit lax when it comes to posting and despite my iPad taking up a substantial amount of my time (some would call it wasting time) I have made a few things.

I mentioned in my last post that I was making buttons, well here’s a few all packaged up and ready to go.

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Most of them are about 1.5” in diameter so they can be a feature button perhaps on a cardigan or jacket. They were fun to make although not as quick and easy as I had first thought. Mainly making sure the holes lined up was the tricky bit.

Now I’m off to play research stuff on my iPad.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Is There An App For That?

Oh dear, I’ve neglected my blog, so much so, that my sister in Victoria rang me tonight to make sure I wasn’t sick because I hadn’t posted in awhile.
I blame my new iPad. I’ve been pulled into the app vortex well and truly. iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, photo apps, recipe apps, organize your life apps, you name it, there’s an app for it.
Just a few pendants I’ve made recently and testing some new stamps.
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And playing around with some bling although they aren’t that blingy in the photo.
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Also I’ve been making some buttons. Another sister belongs to a sewing guild so I’ve made a few different shapes, sizes and colours of buttons for her to take to the next meeting.

So once the app novelty wears off a bit I’ll be back!

Friday, July 1, 2011

Nature Inspired Challenge


Heather over at Humblebeads is having a challenge so I’ve decided to enter. I often see challenges and think to myself that I should participate and for some reason never get around to it. So this time I’ve given myself a swift kick in the backside (just to get myself moving) and made something and photographed it and uploaded it and now I’m feeling a bit like the cat that got the cream.

So the challenge is to make something inspired by nature and this is my piece.

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It’s polymer clay of course. White pendant with a hand stamped floral design on the left and a hand stencilled kind of Asian design on the right. I used pan pastels for the right hand side.

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The bail is also made with polymer clay and the chain is black enamel. I used a mat black lobster clasp which is ok but I think I might make a clay toggle clasp later on and exchange it for the lobster clasp.

Treat yourself and head over to the yahoo group and gaze upon some of the other beautiful pieces that have been added by very talented artists.