I'd Rather Bead than Cook

I've had a heck of time trying to do this post. Blogger has gone stupid on me and instead of normal text it keeps reverting to Html. Rage inducing stuff I have to say. Just a couple of pieces I've made over the last few days.
A large, what I think is an etched metal ribbon slide for scrapbooking that I removed from the spine of one of my art journals. I took it off because I wanted to see if my cropadile would punch holes in it (which it does) so then I added a chain and clasp.Rub n buffed some metal letters and glued them on and added several charms to the
slot at the bottom.

A gorgeous Cathy Dailey clasp.......
.....which I added to this chain. Attached some beads, mother of pearl, web jasper, and faceted cloudy quartz which has one of Cathy's silver handmade bead caps that I just love.
Some goodies arrived in the mail yesterday, things from Humble Beads and Summers Studio so I've got lots of things to play with over the next few days, along with the arrival of my new oven. I worked out the other day the oven we have at the moment is almost 40 years old. It's a gas oven and two of the hobs don't work properly, the griller hasn't worked since we moved in (22 year ago) and the oven hasn't worked for the last 10 years. I've been making do with a little bench top oven that belonged to my mum, so now that will become my craft oven.
Hello polymer clay, shrink plastic and anything else crafty that can be cooked in a little oven. I'm more excited about having a dedicated craft oven than I am about the new oven because the new oven means I have to cook! Can you tell I'm not overly thrilled about the cooking thing?

Thursday Child

Thursday's child has far to go..........to work.
So she better get a hurry on or Joanie will yell at her for being late.....and she's never late, so she can't give Joanie the satisfaction of gloating all day while they're at work.

Bracelet.
Three strands of base metal silver chain.
Cloudy quartz 14mm faceted beads
Large glass faceted bead.
Silver bead and spacers.
Handmade silver clasp and jump rings.

Magnetic Serendipity

Of late I've been having trouble with closures on bracelets. I don't know, maybe I have weird wrists or something because I can't seem to get the different methods to work for me.
Parrot or Lobster clasps like the one below are very problematic for me. I either need to grow an extra arm or have double jointed thumbs, neither of which are likely to happen, so I always have to get someone to do it up for me.
Toggle clasps pose another set of problems. I like to wear bracelets fairly snug on my wrist and usually they seem to be a bit tight for the toggle and clasp to work how they are supposed to.
So I decided to try magnetic clasps and I think I'm on to a winner.
A couple of nights ago I "whipped" up this bracelet without giving the design too much thought and just grabbed beads, strung them together quickly because I was impatient to see if the new clasp would be ok. The next morning I was looking at it and...... Holy Mother of Elvis would you look at that....the magnetic clasp and the silver bead have an almost identical flower pattern on them, spooky ha? Now that's what I call a serendipitous (is that even word? must be because spell check hasn't underlined it in red) happening. I know, small things amuse small minds, but I sure get a buzz out of things just coming together like that.
Two necklaces I made over the weekend. New chain with re-purposed beads and charms. The big heart was once part of an earring from the 70's I'm guessing.
Butterfly, round Bali beads, turquoise beads and chain are new and the three amber glass beads top left are re-purposed from another 70's type necklace.
They're both on fairly long chains because that seems to be how the young'uns like to wear them and they are both for my angel baby who turns 26 today.
So I'm off to ice her gluten free chocolate birthday cake that rose about half a centre metre and looks like a big flat chocolate pancake. Oh dear! I'm afraid my creativity didn't overflow into my cooking skills at all. And if your worried she might see her presents before she's supposed too, don't be, she never reads my blog.