Jewellery, events & updates! [lots of images!]

Hi there bloggers!
Another long stint since my last blog post, but I have been busy this time, and I do have things to share. We are now in the final weeks of the house buying, and hope to find out our completion date this week. Our solicitors on both sides are pushing for the end of this month so hopefully we can get in and settled well in time for Christmas.

Here (finally!) is my finished Laura McCabe cuff:

I am so pleased with this, sorry for the shabby photographs! The leather is a joy to wear, it's so soft, and it's so lovely to have been able to make an embroidered piece without having to cover every square millimetre to make it look good. The stone is Willow Creek Jasper, so I was quick to hunt down a stone to make a matching pendant:

Again, apologies for the poor photograph, it looks so much better in the flesh. This is a teardrop Willow Creek Jasper stone, stitched around with my remaining grey/silver delicas and gold size 15 charlottes. Nailheads embellish the left and a 10mm Swarovski flat back crystal sits at the top. The glass nugget at the bottom is one made by Linda from Bead Buddies - you can visit her website here.

It was my mother in law's birthday yesterday, so out came the beadies again, you might remember my blue cluster necklace I made for my mum earlier this year, well she had commented on how lovely that was. She loves all things cupcakes, so I finally found the perfect use for the charity cupcake bead I bought from Laura Sparling quite some time ago as well. This was the final piece:

I was very happy with this one as well, and not only that but it only took about an hour from start to finish, I do love those projects! It's all made with cream/mocha glass pearls and crystal rondelles, topped with a lemon meringue cupcake.

So, in other news, I have recently been re-broadening my horizons, and typically when I have none of the things I need, I really felt the urge to draw. I made a trip out to our local art store, came home equipped with pencils, black pens and a new sketch pad, and this is what happened:

I've been browsing a lot of Zentangles again recently, and it just made me want to draw. Now I can't stop looking at my butterfly. Very chuffed. I also used to frequent DeviantArt, and haven't visited the site for a long time. Today I returned and was looking back on some of my previous work - I really need to get my Illustrator back! I miss playing around with vector art. Don't get me wrong, I was never anything amazing at it, but I used to enjoy the hours spent tweaking and re-colouring images I had created from a photograph. You may or may not be interested, but if you'd like to take a look this is my DeviantArt page. If you do take a look, do leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Well, I will leave you all with a lovely image that met my eyes whilst I was on the phone at work on Thursday evening. I just had to take a picture... or three.

Bails, Cuffs & Weddings!

Well it's been a busy couple of weeks, but I've managed to do some beading to share with you all! I've set off on my own little journey with this first piece, having conquered using wonky squares to make a star (which you can see here) - I decided to make a couple more "wonky squares" and make an eye catching bail for this turquoise donut. Goodness knows how long I've had this sizeable nugget sat around, but I finally have a use for it! The plan is for a little odd count peyote chain to sit through the top bail and look pretty and sparkly. As soon as it's done I'll update you!

Work has once again been hectic, and our senior administrator is off on her holidays for the next two weeks so it could be interesting. Thank goodness it's bank holiday next weekend! Tomorrow hopefully won't be too bad or stressful, it's Tracy's daughter's wedding tomorrow, so getting the drinking shoes on for the evening, fingers crossed! I'll be sure to take my camera :o)

Finally, I'll show you a little project that I started and finished within a week (shocking, I know!) Donna at Bead Buddies needed testers to make sure her peyote word charts are all correct, so I opted for her Autumn Flowers cuff, and this is how it turned out:

 

I definitely need to practise the attaching of the peyote strip to the cuff blank, but overall I'm pretty pleased - it's quite cute!

Good news on the fund raising - currently Sandie has pulled together over £340 for the African Crisis Fund!

Well I'm off to prep for the office tomorrow, see you all soon,

Busy busy busy!

It's been another busy week, though it seemed to go slower than usual. Friday is upon us again, and I have my new handbag, my new approach to eating (no chocolate in a week, if you don't count the two squares at my cousin's baby shower last Saturday! And no snacking either!) and looking forward to my weekend.

Me and flossy are hosting this month's pass the parcel over on Bead Buddies, and are giving away a tiara making kit along with a special little surprise from me. No peeking! I'll be sure to fill you in at the end of the month when we send it all off to the winning buddy.

It's the last couple of days of our charity auctions on eBay so if you haven't had a look yet, please click here and bid on what takes your fancy! There are some beautiful pieces, including a stunning set from Lynn Davy

You'd be mad to miss out on it!

So tomorrow I'm off to see the girls, then hopefully get my hair cut (need to call them in the morning!) and off out in the evening to one of my engineer's wedding receptions. Should be a good day. Sunday we're out to a barbeque, so I'm hoping the weather this weekend holds out a bit better than it did today.

What are you up to this weekend?

Raising money for East Africa

Over at Bead Buddies we're at it again, and Sandie has rallied the girls together to raise money for the DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal. There are lots of us who have donated pieces which are being auctioned off on eBay, so please pop over and have a look and if you bid, please bid generously!

Today is a good day

I've had a really fab couple of days, including being drawn to win an adorable new handbag. Big thanks to tinchick over at Bead Buddies! Now it's my turn to put something up to be won... Hmmm...

I also came home today to a little parcel at my door. I opened it up and unwrapped the tissue paper to find another lovely surprise from Carrie - a lush polymer clay heart pendant that I had ogled at earlier this week. I love BB, such fantastic ladies to know!  

We went to visit the mortgage advisor today to find out whether we are on target as we hoped, and great news everyone, we really are! By October we should have our deposit and fees for the lower end of our budget, and by January, we will be able to put in offers on a property at the top end! I am so excited. It's mad how quickly this year has gone, and I know that even though January seems far away, it will be here before I even get chance to think about it.

I am off to update our spreadsheets and budgets, and see how close we are to our first home, and maybe do some beading!

Happy crafting everyone

The travels - attempt #3!!

Here we go!

In 2008, I set off for what was supposed to be 3 months of travelling with my cousin. I'd been planning it for over 18 months, and we had all sorts of plans to see different places and do different things. However, having met hubby the previous June at a rock festival, it didn't quite turn out that way, and the 3 months became 3 weeks of travels. I still loved every second, but I really missed Jim by the second week, and made the decision to book my flights home for 8 days later.

I've been very lucky ever since I was young, and my parents have taken my sister and I away on some lovely holidays. Gran Canaria, Corfu, Spain, Penang (Malaysia), Florida, Egypt, Cyprus (honeymoon), and here follows my journey to Dubai, Singapore and Australia.

We decided not to do the flights in one stint, having flown to Malaysia and back twice, I didn't fancy a long flight going straight into Australia, so we made stops for a couple of days in Dubai and then Singapore. We arrived in Dubai in the evening, and it was absolutely one of the most humid places I've ever been to. Due to the heat, we didn't get much chance to explore here, and we were nowhere near the coast, but I can't say I'm all that bothered, and I won't be going back.

The 'blurring' in these photos isn't done by me for effect, I could barely take two photos before my camera lense was fogged up! We were quite lucky with the accommodation here, as it turned out to be a self-contained apartment, and for a very good price. Nice.

A couple of days later, we headed back to the airport and on to Singapore. The accommodation wasn't so good here, but a room with a bed is a room with a bed, for a couple of days anyway. In fact, my cousin even managed to drop the window...

Yes - that is sellotape. Oops. On our first day, we decided to go for a wander and see what we could find. Little did we know that our hostel was not far at all from western conveniences - McDonalds, Pizza Hut, etc - instead, we headed off in completely the opposite direction and found the local market street. Some very... interesting foods which we didn't go for. I believe dinner that day consisted of a bottle of coke and lots of crisps from the local store. If only my nose could have led me to pizza  Our second day was more successful; we headed into the town centre, as we wanted to visit the Raffles Hotel. After a little bit of window shopping, we headed inside to the Long Bar where we had a burger and chips, and I decided that with my coke, I would indulge in a Singapore Sling cocktail. Here's what my cousin thought of that:

Brilliant. Interesing fact - The Singapore Sling is a cocktail that was developed sometime before 1915[1] by Ngiam Tong Boon (嚴崇文), a bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel Singapore. The original recipe used gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, and fresh pineapple juice, primarily from Sarawak pineapples which enhance the flavour and create a foamy top

This is definitely among my top 5 most expensive meals, but it may be the only time I get to do it so what's £50 for a burger, chips, coke and cocktail hey? It was a good burger! What I loved about the Long Bar, is every table has a bowl of peanuts on it. The customary way with these, is to crack the shell to get the peanuts out, and throw the shells on the floor. You would
 be amazed at the number of people who would pile their peanut shells up nice and tidily on the table, only for the staff to come along after they left and sweep the lot on to the floor!


Let's see if I can get past this bit today - I would like to let you know, that I had just started writing the first paragraph todayand Jim's laptop did the blue-screen crash dump and restarted, so this nearly didn't happen at all... I wondered whether I am destined not to tell you about our journey! Third time lucky perhaps

From Singapore, we took our third 7 hour flight on to Brisbane, and spent a few days with fellow backpackers at the Brisbane Backpacker's Hostel. Our starting point when planning our 'gap year' was to do a week's ranch experience - this was organised a long time before we left England, and we had made arrangements to be collected from Brisbane airport by the rep. After over an
hour of panicking, they finally arrived to collect us, and after introductions to those others who were also doing the week on the ranch, we headed up to our rooms, sorted out our bags and bunks and headed out for a drink to celebrate. The only bar open was
a Rasta bar, and I had to settle for drinking spirits which I don't normally, but we had a good few days settling in.


Here comes the fun stuff, so I'll leave you wondering for a bit - I need to get some dinner on. I'm all by myself this evening, I dropped hubby, brother in law and our friend Ben off for a boys night out camping in the woods earlier this afternoon, so he's looking out on a lovely view a little bit like this, before they head into the tree-line for the night
 

Back in a bit!
Xx

Double post Thursday - part 1!

It's double post Thursday!

Sorry for missing last night's post, I didn't get back from Tracy's until gone 10pm! Was nice to actually have a night off from work  Anyway, in amongst my clearing up the other day, I came across my photo book of my travels in August 2008 - tune in later, and once we get back from my mother in law's for fish and chips, I'll tell you all about my adventure down under! I will warn you now, it's likely to be even more picture-heavy than normal 

My little roses have started to open now, such a lovely surprise from my lovely hubby 


Ooh and the star is now complete, I just need to decide what I am going to do with it:

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, it's quite cool how different they look if you squeeze them 

I even came home to another little parcel last night which is my new bead backing from America to try out. Can't wait - I have 14 different colours to play with now!
Tune in later bead buddies for a little of Singapore and Dubai, and a lot of cattle ranching in Oz!

Charity starts at home

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. 
Mohandas Gandhi

As promised, here I am, and I have even made a start on my star! I'm not sure about the colours yet, but I'm thinking about having it as a 'Fire & Ice' kind of thing, and doing a blue version as well. I'd like to make matching earring stars but it all depends how far my black delicas go  It's a little hard to see in the pictures but there are actually 3 different coloured reds - am just not 100% yet about the bright red centre lines. 

You can see in the first picture, I also managed to have a beady accident - when I moved the bead mat the beadies all went everywhere!

I don't know if you've heard of Pinterest, but I'm addicted to it at the moment. I can't help but just browse aimlessly through everyone's pins. I keep getting great ideas for decorating the house from it, there are so many pretties. If you've not tried it, pop over and have a look - can't promise you'll get away too quickly once you start though 

I can't wait to see all of the pieces that come in for the Disaster Emergency Committee collaboration, this is why I love Bead Buddies - the sense of community here is the best, and I love the fact that we can all do what we love to try and help others. I think I may be able to persuade my friends to help out too, so we could have two more donations.

We had a lovely barbeque at my parents house today, and we even made it away with some of the scrummy chicken and a couple of sausages. Scrummy - mixed chicken salad for dinner tomorrow, followed by a lemon cupcake. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm trying to make a proper start on eating a bit better, so I've stocked up on snack-a-jack snack bags for those mid-morning food cravings, nectarines, and cucumber to go with my houmous. I have registered on the Activia website to check out their meal plans, and they look pretty good. Whilst we were shopping though, I had a look at the Activia yoghurts, and was surprised to find that all of the pots including the snack pots have the sweetener aspartame in! I'm pretty gutted as aspartame not only gives me bad headaches - I used to get migraines when I was younger - but it is just really not good for you anyway. Just goes to show, unless you check everything, you really never know what you're eating...

Last weeks!

A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for
Anonymous

It was my sister in law's baby shower today - only a few weeks to go now! Amongst the games we played, I caught one on video which was using a cocktail stick in your mouth to hook little tiny dummies out of a bowl of rice... Me and my SIL tied with 5 each in 30 seconds. You can watch it if you click here. Funny  My mother in law tried a new cupcake recipe for today's party, a lemon flavour and they were so scrummy! I even managed to bring a few home, though whether I'll get to eat any of them is another matter 

Every Saturday, I have to be up and out of bed to move the car as it's always either on a single yellow line or in a 1 hour parking space. Today, I went to visit my dad, and have a catch up. We spent an hour taking my passenger car door to pieces as the lock on it has been very temperamental all week, and now doesn't unlock remotely at all - even the inside door handle wouldn't open it on two occasions this week. The aim was to see if there was a loose connection on the solenoid, and having taken the door apart, with lots of screw types, we found that the solenoid is actually under aNOTHER panel which is riveted on. Perhaps that can wait for another day then... For now I will hope that it just unlocks from the inside, as the only solenoid replacements I have found are in excess of £40! Madness. May just have to pop in at the scrapyard some time. My dad has also said he will get the front wing re-sprayed for my birthday/Christmas present (I said when we got the car that I wanted to get it re-sprayed/replaced as it's the only bit of rust on the whole car, and it has now started to spread) - so I'm pretty chuffed. I love my car ... Most of the time anyway. Once we were done with my car, we took my mum's Mazda out for a spin with the roof down - got to get the use whilst we can, right?! We took a little drive out to the countryside and into a local farm to get some nice fresh meat for a BBQ tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it, nobody else is coming, it's a test run for a bigger BBQ in a couple of weeks, but we got garlic butter chicken breast, rosemary and garlic chicken breast, and smokey BBQ chicken breast, minted lamb steak, and various sausages including Bramley (with a hint of apple) and lamb sausages with rosemary and garlic - are you sensing a pattern yet? We like garlic. Alot 

I did get some more poo news today, my grandpa was taken into hospital this week with heart problems. He has been released now, and my dad went to see him this afternoon, so I'm just waiting for an update which I will probably get tomorrow.

As it's my last week of being AOTM, I am going to make a concerted effort to be here for every remaining day - I apologise for being an infrequent blogger! I recently purchased Jean Power's Geometric Stars pattern and my aim is to have made at least one before the end of the month for you guys to see. They just look so cool  


Be back tomorrow! In the meantime, please take a minute to think about the people mercilessly killed in Oslo, and those in China who have been killed in a collision between two trains.

Crafty outbreaks

Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs - Anon

**sneaks in late - hopefully nobody has noticed!**It's a wonder I ever get anywhere on time 
I had every intention of posting yesterday evening before I went out, but we actually had a rather eventful day and by the time I got home I was just about ready to go to bed instead of out for dinner! Saturday's are normally the day I catch up with the girls at Tracy's, but we got a text at half 8 saying she wasn't feeling very well, so that just left the two musketeers [Sylvia and I] to decide what to do with the day. We weren't too worried, as this is the sort of thing that Tracy ends up doing anyway:  [love her really!]

We ended up going up to the craft section of a local garden centre, just to get out for a drive, and I accidentally bought a few bits. In all fairness, they are to go to making my mum's birthday present so I figured I was allowed to splurge - I am now broke for another 19 days though. She's asked for something long and dangly - I'm going for something that is not my usual style of jewellery making, so fingers crossed I can translate what's in my noggin to what I picked up 

I couldn't resist the dark navy blue, they called to me, and I love gunmetal, so it was an easy decision - I just hope my mum has something to wear it with when it's done!


We even popped into the bead shop - we've not been there in quite a while, so just went in for a catch up. They are doing a netted embellished bag next week, so we're thinking of doing one ourselves, just because we know we probably can!  Reserved our copies of Bead and Button, so hopefully I'll have more beady eye candy to look at soon. Then we headed to Asda, and back to do some beading at Sylvias. We had lush bacon and chicken tortelloni with tomato and basil sauce, and started doing more work on our boxes. A bit later in the afternoon though Sylvia got a call from her son who had found himself outside of the skate park, and didn't know how he got there - it turns out he had come off his BMX and hit his head against the metal ridge on the edge of the ramp and got concussion. I'm glad at this point I don't have children! A night in hospital worrying about your son doesn't sound much fun to me at all. He is ok now though, and starting to have recollections of what happened. 


So after all that excitement, I came home and was intending to blog then, which I clearly failed at. We went out to a nice pub in a local village as part of my mum's birthday celebration [her birthday is Tuesday] and had a lovely meal. I can't say what we've got her yet [aside from the unmade necklace of course], as I'm not sure if she reads my blog - hopefully she will like it though. 


Today, Jim is on his second day of his Kayak course - his latest hobby since he almost broke his other foot playing football a couple of weeks ago [last year he chipped a bone in his other foot]. Hopefully this one will be a little less troublesome? Only time will tell. He had a really good day yesterday though, so as long as he's happy, I'm happy. I've had a relatively productive morning, I have had a tidy up, done some washing, sorted some washing, hoovered, finished off my giveaway hairband which is now ready to go out to Kate at Tropical Blonde, and now I have blogged as well! Admittedly, I have done the bare minimum of washing up [saucepan and bowl so I could have my bolognese for lunch ] but that's for tomorrow. I will leave you with the finished giveaway piece, and as we're at my parents later, I will get the photo of me when I used to do ballroom dancing - it was in the newspaper, you know!