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,

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! 

Summer flower

Happy Mondays, I managed to make a start on this for you before leaving for Download Festival! After a lovely catch up with the girls, and some super treats from Sylvia ( pics to follow when I get home! ), I am now packed and ready to go camping.

All that's left to do with this little summery beauty is to cut, edge, and attach to the winner's choice of finding! To enter the giveaway, please visit this post.

So, on Bead Buddies, we sometimes have challenges, giveaways, and swapsies. A couple of days ago, Helen of LaLa Lampwork posted a swap for her awesomely cool lampwork piggies. I had to get one for Sylvia - I don't think she's named it yet, perhaps you could give us some ideas? :P - If you would like to see what else Helen creates, visit her website!

Happy crafting, liking, commenting, tweeting and blogging! Entries for the giveaway close @ 21:00 on Sunday 19th June, so please spread the word and join in!