Santa's Coming!

Not long now is it?  It's slightly frightening as I'm not sure I've done everything yet - I certainly haven't put the cards into the post that I need to so that's a job for today and I've a couple of gifts to finish.

Other than that I'm still messing around with loading up pictures of things I want to sell through my website rather than through Etsy and I managed to get some more photos done this week.  I'm glad I grabbed the moment on a sunny afternoon as the remainder of this week has been very dark and dull thanks to the usual British winter skies.

I've got lots and lots of these Tibetan repousse pendants to add (amongst other things):

I've either been brave or foolish but I've got provisional bookings at some local craft fairs in 2013, with the first one in just over a months time - hopefully this will spur me into actually making something with my huge stock of stuff that I've been amassing/have collected and as it's be January I'm going to start making some slightly Spring like things....

And I'll let you know if this goes ahead but I recently applied to be a tester/writer for a craft blog - they've accepted me and I'm now just double checking that they realise that I'm in the UK as they'll need to send me things to use and review...

Just to finish up, on the dance front I have a little break now so need to set my thinking cap on about what I shall be offering my belly dance students in 2013.

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.

Where did two weeks go?

The last two weeks seem to have disappeared out from underneath me....

As well as the usual day to day stuff I've been rebuilding two websites.  The host of my current belly dance site and of my belly dance event site is changing how they offer their services.  Long story short I am rebuilding my sites with another host, tweaking the content as I go with a view to the SEO properties (and no, I'm not an expert, I'm just trying to learn!) and getting ready for the big point and switch.

For the last two weeks I've spent one afternoon each week at my son's nursery, taking part in a story-telling workshop programme they were running, another hour on another day teaching my daughter's Primary class an improvised (kind of) group dance and doing my own prep work for a belly dance based fitness class I am now running on a Wednesday evening.

Oh, and as my next event is hurtling towards me (it's on again on Sunday evening) I've been practicing my solo, working on the group piece I'll be doing with my students and on Tuesday evenings I have 2 hours practice with the troupe I dance with.  And now I think about it two weeks ago I was feeling pretty rubbish due to a virus that was running its course....

Don't ever think that working from home is a doddle!

Holiday Season

First of all, I'd like to wish you all a belated Happy Christmas, and hope that whatever you did and whoever you did it with left you feeling happy, relaxed and content (even if it was a millisecond).

So, what have I been up to?  It's that time of year here in the UK when everything grinds down for Christmas.  Now.  I will confess that I haven't been sooo busy with making things, but here are a few pics of a headdress I'm making.

Here are some bits and bobs on the floor and you can already see there's an idea at work there...










First of all I used a base I had made a couple of weeks ago and yes, I did forget to take pics of what I did so I'll try and remedy that at some point, I promise.  But it's easy, when I show you what I do you'll say, "Yeah?  I could have worked that out!"  


So, purple velvet base, and the first thing I'm going to do is sew on some chains.  I used my trusty wire-cutters to snip through the different lengths of chain I had, and then they were all sewn onto the base, four chains on either side.  Symmetry.  (I fight very hard against symmetry so I might mention it again).

The, before you know it I've added feathers and a recycled belt buckle, and some flowers and then what's not yet seen are a brooch and some vintage chandelier drops..... If my camera battery will charge up in time then I'l add a pic of those added before I go....

I love making headdresses. I've made headresses for all manner of dancers (and divas) and will continue to do so.

So once the New Year is over with and every settles back into it's normal routine, I shall continue to create pretty things, and hopefully have more time to develop my creativity.

I hope for a happy, harmonious and heavenly year for us all in 2012. xxx

Bye bye eBlogger....

I'm quite sad to go really, I like eBlogger.  I like the set-up, the ease of use - it feels friendly....

BUT.  I also like having things in one place.

So I'm off to pastures that are not as new as they were....and that I'm slowly getting my head around....

Make sure to come join me at the new Twinkle Twinkle Shiny Things blog.

xx

Streamlining #2

So as part of my streamlining process I have finally decided to do away with my www.blackwillowtribal.co.uk website.

It's been a part of my life for some time now but as more and more of my sales and enquiries are coming via the Etsy shop I think I am wasting my money in keeping it going.  So I am starting to shift everything over and then when that's done I shall shut the website down.

SO.  If you have www.blackwillowtribal.co.uk bookmarked then you should hot-foot over to www.blackwillowbellydance.co.uk instead and go bookmark that one instead.  And hopefully you all go take a look at the Etsy shop anyway?  And if not why not? 

It makes so much more sense to have everything in one place.  And I shall have to think about transferring this Blog over to the one that's integrated into that website - again, it makes more sense to have everything in one place although I'm loving how easy this blog is to mess around with and configure.  I'm really not that technical (I'm sure I must have mentioned this before?) and the other blog bamboozles me a bit but hey, just need to make my life a little easier.

I still have a pre-schooler with me until January next year and as I generally only have evenings to get things made, practice dance and prepare for classes as well as all the promotional stuff that goes with being a teacher and designer - well, I just need a couple of places to go each evening when I'm doing webwork rather than 5 or 6. Luckily the little man was out with his dad this morning and I've had a good couple of hours on here whilst he's been relaxing so I've been able to back lots of things up, do a bit of SEO work, tweak things here and there in readiness for all the switch-overs.

I'll keep you posted with everything that's happening so that you can pop over and subscribe to stuff as it's happening, and hopefully you'll all come and see me over on the other blog and the other wbsite and then I'll make sure that I go and subscribe to everyone I like to keep up with in blog-space so I don't miss out on anything.

Necklaces and things that go deeper.......

So.  In my huge collection of stuff I have beads, bead wires, spacers, threads and all of the paraphenalia associated with jewelery making.  And every so often I am inspired to make something from this ever growing stash.  Here's a couple of pics of the stash...

So in the world of jewelery what is still really hot at the moment are necklaces made up of slightly incongruent elements.  The colours integrate but the necklace isn't symmetrical.  This is harder than it sounds to recreate properly and I strive to make something beautiful each time I create a wearable item.

I was too late in taking some proper pics this evening as the children were enjoying playing in the garden and with a river at the end of the garden that takes some supervising believe me.

But here are the quick pics of what I've done today:

 
When I was at school I wanted to go to art college and fully explore the artistic side of myself that I knew existed.  My parents, being more pragmatic, wanted something else for me and so I pursued a career working with people, that to their credit has stood me in good stead.

Now I get to pursue both of these avenues and that makes me very happy.

Sneak Peek

I have a couple of vintage items that will go up on Etsy in the next couple of days, two of them are vintage Banjara anklets, usually used by Tribal and Fusion belly dancers these days as other body costume parts.  There's also a really delicate lapis necklace.  And for the non-vintage lovers I have a new cuff and will soon have another in the same fabrics and lace but with extra embellishment......

Oh, and there's a headdress that I need to get a good full headshot of.......

Feathers!

Today saw the arrival of many new feathers to stash and I will confess that fly-tying feathers are officially my new objects of joy.  I've not been able to buy as many colours as I would have liked but I have lots of plans for the ones I've got, especially the beautiful strong and flexible generic hackles that enable me to thread things onto them without damage to the filaments.  The dust-buster will come in very handy in getting rid of the excess fluff that needs to come off of them in order to make sleek and sexy earrings and other accessories.

And now I'm working my way through a huge list of *things to do* so that I can free my mind of clutter and get on with designing and making as I can find the mundane things in life can get in the way of creativity (although I'm pretty good at not doing the ironing, that one never bothers me.)

I've paid for my Deb Rubin workshop that will be happening at a weekend event in Southampton in April (details can be found here) and I'm very much looking forward to that.  As well as doing a workshop I shall be dancing with Covert Bling in the evening Hafla and vending as Blackwillow Tribal on the Saturday.  Make sure to come along and say hi if you're there.

I now have to go and pay for my WOMAD ticket as I plan to take the kids there this summer, reply to a couple of emails, and have decided that I need to take a trip to Fabricland this week in order to see a couple of fabrics in the flesh before putting in an order for some fabrics for Covert Bling.

Once that's all done I'm going to sit back and play with feathers for a bit!

Earrings

If you've worked out my process yet then you will have worked out that my earlier post about fly fishing feathers
was going to lead to a blog about how I've made something from feathers like those I mentioned earlier.

I've made a few pairs tonight and once the glue has dried I can get them finished and get some pics up to show you what I've done.  I've yet to decide whether they go onto the Blackwillow Tribal site or the Etsy shop.

How I got the bug.....

I've always been interested in making things.  Never made jam though....

Sewing is my main addiction (after belly dance of course) but I never really had the time to indulge in much in my twenties, as I had a pretty full on full time and extra hours kind of job.

After doing some travelling I came back to the UK, found myself in the library and picked up a book called Creative Bead Embroidery.  I was immediately hooked.  I don't have pictures of the very first things I made unfortunately, and would often make things for other people as gifts so there's lots of stuff hopefully still out there that I made.  I hope they didn't get thrown away....

And then we move on and I found belly dance around 8 years ago.  Here's a pic of the first bedlah (bra and belt set) I made, that is still in my collection:

Pretty clumsy but ok.....

Then when I went on maternity leave I found that I had some time on my hands and I made this:

I absolutely adore ammonites and their internal, fossilized structures.  Beautiful organic creations created by time and pressure.

My next forays into textile art included melting and burning fabrics before adding embellishment and embroidery:

And now?  Well, with two small children to look after I get very little time to experiment.  So now I'm trying to combine a number of addictions; as a designer and maker of costume items primarily for tribal and fusion belly dancers I've expanded my range to beautifully decorated cuffs which can also be worn by women who love to look beautiful, not just dancers who perform....

At the top is another ammonite inspired piece, below is a section of embroidery I did 13 years ago, bravely cut up and transformed into a piece of wearable art.  I'm pretty interested to see where this goes....I'll keep you posted.....