Playing catch up

Looks like I logged back onto Blogger at the right time - Lori's blog hop reveal!! If you've never seen the annual blog hop, just click here and prepare to lose a few hours trawling through. Good news though, it has been limited to 200 participants this year, so you should only lose half a day. Here's a peek of one of the pieces Lori made:

It's amazing to look through and see what people make from components they are sent, and looks like a lot of fun. I know what I'll be doing once I have made my imprint on the blogosphere this evening.

It's been a long and complicated couple of months, not an awful lot of beadery has gone on, but I have dabbled a little and finally tackled working with some polymer clay. I've really enjoyed the little bits that I have done so I can safely say that it's something I look forward to working with more. I spent a week off work, signed off by the doctor for stress, and did lots of baking - I have found that my signature dish is triple chocolate brownie, and there's nothing that chills me out more than baking them. Sadly I didn't do as much beading as I had hoped but I have started a 100% from scratch necklace, here's a sneaky preview:

It will be complemented by two handmade round polymer clay beads, the chain is going to be netted in light green frosted beads and I plan to make a polymer clay toggle clasp with leaves on to match it. This will be my very first piece where all components are completely my own, and it's quite exciting for me.

In other news, we've settled into our home and are well and truly mortgaged up, next on the list of expenses is a new car as ours is still consistently dying - if any of you know what might be draining a car battery please feel free to chip in! We're thinking we need to check if any earth cables aren't connecting properly as it's had a new battery, new glow plugs and temperature sensor on the water coolant (or something like that??) but still the battery will die after sitting for a length of time... Oh well, looking at getting a 2-3 year old car on finance so we'll see what happens in Summer.

I'm off to look at the beautiful beaded items that Lori's soup-ers have created! See you there.