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

Crystal Headdresses

I have a huge bag of old chandelier crystals so today I am having a go at making gorgeous crystal headdresses.  My fingers are a little....ragged shall we say from wiring them together, but sometimes my pain is your beauty!
Obviously the next task will be to photograph them and do them justice, but for now I'll just keep on making and we'll see what happens.

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.

I much like Mucha

My next little project this week is to make myself some new page icons for the blackwillowtribal.co.uk site.  I recently purchased a CD of images from www.lunagirl.com and amongst them are some lovely Mucha images that I shall play with - maybe this evening?

 Image courtesy of Lunagirl.com

It's that beautiful, flowing, organic movement that I and many others love.  His use of colour is just sublime.  I think that Mucha paintings and drawings are always flavouring the things I make when it's appropriate, and so I'm very much looking forward to adding the new icons to my website when they're done.

More importantly though, I have custom orders to get started on.  Icons or sewing?  Maybe I'll toss a coin or do a bit of both once the children are in bed.