Sneak Peek

So it's night time and the lights are on and the kids are in bed but moaning about wanting to stay up and so I'm taking (bad) photos....

Take a look if you will......none of it is pretty - it's all for the adventurous soul.......

Afganistan stampings, eletra (bug wings) and tribal fringe bits on Noibium ear-wires (I LOVE Noibium ear-wires - after my second child was born I couldn't wear any of my earrings but Noibium has changed all of that) - and I'll warn you now, I shall be using  lot of my tribal belly dance bits and bobs in the upcoming jewellery selection......

Afghanistan stampings, light metal circles, kyanite shards and steel wire - all very light-weight and all on noibium wires - from now on all earrings are on noibium wires and if they're on sterling silver wires I'll tell ya....

Brass stampings, hammered out, brass wires (sorry - forgot about these ones) and tribal bits and bobs, turquoise stones and quartz crystals held in brass bell bead caps.....

I love these ones most - twisty vintage pearls, inside light-weight brass rings, decorated with brass religious medals and belly dance bits, super small antique keys and faceted vintage beads.....noibium wires like I said before....

I adore this necklace - it has a massive inverted rhinestone crescent, held with antique patinated tin, accented with a vintage thingy (ok, I have no other word for it!) and a large amethyst point wound in annealed steel wire.  It is held as a necklace by vintage lace, wound with more steel and an extender chain finished with a carnelian bead.  

I have a whole heap of these coming up - amulet necklaces - little pouches of vintage fabric where you can secrete something precious to you and only you.....this one is made of vintage sari fabric and is embellished with a blue oyster shard, a tribal belly dance doo dad, kyanite teeth and golden and pink sari decos.  All held with plaited blue silk, antique brass chain and a French religious medal.....

All metal has been oxidised - Indian metal work, altered agates, kyanite shards, metal bits, religious medals and niobium ear-wires......

I love this one - vintage tin outer, silver and amber earring as a rivet, vintage book pages, agate beads, brass chain and silk length wrapped with glistening thread.  Turquoise and tribal bits for deco on the bottom...... absolutely one of a kind......

Gypsy Tribal bangle stacks (tutorial courtesy of Fanciful Devices) and the above ones are in white....

These ones are in pink.......

These are in green......

Apparently I made water-melon tourmaline bangles and so I am happy.

Give me 48 hours and all of this and more will be up in my Etsy shop.....if you want anything before then be quick and we can negotiate a price.....xx

Long time no blog....

Despite my best efforts to blog at least once a week I've managed to let more than that time slip away from me.

Last week though I was making sure my son was comfy as he came down with a nasty virus that totally wiped him out.  Despite the fact that slept a lot I wasn't able to get much done creativity wise but I did catch up on a lot of house-work!

By Friday he wasn't properly right again but he was a lot better and so I went camping (!) as the trip had been bought and paid for some time ago and I had the feeling that despite the weather forecast saying otherwise we might be in for a spot of good weather.  I was right, and although he was still tired he enjoyed the trip immensely, as did my daughter and as did I.

Here's our tent on the second night:

The coloured lights you can see are all from the 99p Store (anyone who knows me IRL will be able to tell you how much I love the 99p Store) and the big bright light in the middle is a water carrier (from the 99p Store, where else?) filled with water and with a halogen head lamp (£3 from Ebay) stuck into the handle so that he light shines through the water.  It's an awesome light.  Anyway, I was right, the weather was fab all weekend and I'm glad we went.

My garden - hmm......the plants in the garden are kind of okay but not that great.  This is our second summer in this house and tbh the garden is quite dark, it has trees on all sides and it's a Victorian terraced house so it's not very wide.  All of my veggies are growing in pots down the side of the house as that's the place that gets the most sun (ha ha) and even the plants there are "reaching" for the light.  Chard? Hmmm, had a small crop and now it seems to be bolting.  Carrots - getting there.  Spring onions are very slow.....  Peas and beans are doing okish so far and I seem to have flowers on my potatoes so I might have an earlies crop very soon.  At least with the summer we're having so far I haven't had to water anything but the tomatoes.  The toms aren't doing so well though...

Dance-wise things are winding down as they always do in the summer.  Tonight's class was cancelled for myriad student non-attendance reasons and there are just two classes left before the holidays (my children would never forgive me it I didn't stop the classes in the holidays).  Sunday classes have three sessions left and on Friday I teach the last session before the summer break with my learning disability group.  The summer break is a hard one but I'm good at putting money aside so that we don't starve through August!  What has been nice though is that sales have been going well and it's always a pleasure to get emails from customers telling me how much they love their purchases.

So what else is going on?  Well, I am planning a few more adventures in the world of altered art, I need to find some new and inspiring music as I'm totally hacked off with my old music destination since they changed their search format and I'm hoping (foolishly) that the festivals I attend with the children this year will be drier than they are wetter....

As always there is lots to do, lots to think about and plan for and lots of things to try.