Seaside Mobiles

 I've been busy making mobiles. A friend was kind enough to collect beachy things for me to increase my stash so I could make these (click on the images to see larger versions):

Eventide

 

Swapped for all the beachy things and soon on its way....

 

 

Mermaid's Treasure

 Artist's own

 

 

Storm

 For sale - large mobile includes:

mirror tiles, sea weed, pebbles, shells, crab shells, beads, feathers, 

sea glass, hemp, string, drift wood and found objects 

£40 + P&P

 

 

 

 

It takes me about 1 day to make a medium sized mobile and 1.5 - 2 days to make one of the larger ones. You can commission one, when you do, please let me know the size required plus any colour schemes you prefer. Please remember that these are mostly natural materials so not all colour schemes are possible. To order, send me an e-mail. :-)

Available sizes

• Small - ca. 20x35cm - £20 - 25 depending on the materials
• Medium - ca. 30x50cm - £25 - 30 depending on the materials
• Large - ca. 40x70cm - £40 - 45 depending on the materials

Prices do not include packaging and postage. The packaging has to be done carefully with a lot of packaging material to ensure safe arrival when posted. Pickup possible.

Jewellery Party Specials - March 2010

For each of my jewellery party I make something special. This time my special collection is based on clouds. There have been so many clouds recently that this seemed the theme to go with... it also went in line with another project I am working on at the moment.

Purple Rain

Fair Weather

Silver Lining

April Showers

If you live in or near Cambridge and would like an invite to the party (Thursday, 25th March, 8pm), send me an e-mail. :-)

Beanie, Wrist Warmers & a Snow White Sneak Preview

I did promise to post some pictures after the last teaser post.

Purple and Black London Beanie

Here's the beanie hat I made for Ben. I found the pattern for it on the net. It's been designed by Mark Thrailkill and if you fancy making one yourself, here's the pattern.



I slightly changed the original pattern to what Ben wanted and also to suit the wool I was using, which was slightly thinner than the one in the pattern. The wool I used was DK Super Stylecraft in black and Emperor. It's widely available and has the advantage that you can just chuck it in the washing machine. Very useful with a beanie hat. :-)


Teal Cable Wrist Warmers

I found this lovely pattern on Etsy in Nunt's Shop.


It was a lot more challenging than I had envisaged for my very first pair of wrist warmers, but I liked the pattern so much... and the pattern instructions were very good, even though I had to teach myself the Magic Loop Method of knitting in the round. I found a great tutorial video on YouTube. I also had to do other things I'd never done before - like make a thumb gusset! I'd done cabling before, but that was a long, long time ago and never anything as complex as the knotted pattern in the middle. However, I am so proud of myself that I managed this and they do look halfway decent and are lovely to wear.


The wool I used is teal bamboo which I adore. It's lovely and soft and great to knit with. Apparently it's also hypoallergenic and has some healing qualities (for most of us, some people find it itchy). The only quibble I have with it is that the threads the yarn is made up of separate quite easily which can make for messy knitting if you're not careful, otherwise I loved the yarn and I think it works really well with the pattern.

Here's the pattern in more detail. :-)



Snow White Necklace Preview

Here's a flower I felted ready for my Snow White necklace. It'll be quite a long necklace with the felted rose as a centre piece.


I've used merino wool, crystal organza and beads. The rose isn't quite finished yet, the edges still need tidying up and I am considering using some fabric stiffener to make the rose more sturdy as it's going to be used on a necklace.



More to come soon....

... I've almost finished my green chenille shawl. It's currently being blocked. I still need to make the Sakura felt flowers to decorate it (which I am about to do). The edging (my own design based on an Edwardian design - more about that later) turned out really pretty and so far it's turned out much better even than I thought it would. :-)

My Lovely Green and Pink Necklace

You might know already, if you read Natural Attril's Blog, that I snatched the pink and green necklace before anyone else could get their grubby hands on it.

It's so pretty and looks incredibly stylish when worn with a black dress. I am very pleased. Here are some pictures. And go and check out Toby's lovely jewellery over on Natural Attril.

Oh, and it arrived in the cutest little triangle box - picture of which has been provided too. :-)

Commission

Sorry for not posting for a while. Things haven't been easy towards the end of the last year but now, with a new year just begun, things are looking up.

Here are some commissions I made last year. A lady at work gave me a whole load of beads and told me to get on with it... ;-) The beads were silver foiled copper coloured squares and octagonal wonderful hematite beads. The rest of the beads was supplied and matched by yours truly.

The first one is the simple necklace I made with the very large copper coloured squares. I felt that they were so big and bold the necklace had to be simple to work:


Here's a close-up of the copper clasp and the beads:

There were three long strings of hematite beads and I added a few more smaller beads (black Miyuki cubes and black faceted beads) to make them into a flapper necklace, a 3-tiered necklace and a very simple bracelet. The hematite beads were absolutely perfect and of a lovely quality. I had to go out (well, go on eBay) to buy myself some, but I haven't made anything with them yet.

The flapper (as shown below) took five attempts to get right. This is the first attempt, which I remade four (!) times. Hematite beads are very heavy and despite the fact that I used Tigertail it was very difficult. In the end I used a small clasp.

Here's a close-up of the feature bead I used in the first attempt and the wonderful hematite beads:

Here's the 3-tiered necklace which is absolutely wonderful when worn. The picture here does do it no justice at all. The beads sparkle and shimmer and are of such a deep dark charcoal grey. Sorry, I really DO like them. :-)

And here's a close-up of the necklace and clasp:

Finally, the bracelet - same beads, same clasp as the 3-tier necklace:

Sun Blossom

After the success of Moon Blossom (previous) post, I thought a "Sun Blossom" would make the perfect present for my little sister. She's just developed a love of yellow, so it just made sense. :-)

Here's the result. Yellow is not one of my favourite colours for jewellery as it's difficult to wear for most people, so I didn't have very many yellow beads. A while back I bought the beautiful golden shell pendant and never quite knew what to do with it. I think I bought it just because it was so pretty. LOL Like with Moon Blossom I then added a feature bead (a golden, slightly crackly topaz) and three strings of chain to act as sun beams. The sun beams have 12 different beads on them for the 12 months, plus 12 Magatama beads. I've grouped the beads in threes: 3 vintage beads (all different), 3 Swarovski beads (light topaz, jonquil and lime) and 3 each of small citrine beads and little yellow daisies with clear round beads set in the centre. All is strung on bronze chain/findings to complement the gold/yellow.

Here is the pendant in detail (photo taken inside lying down).

And here's the pendant outside hanging from a lilac bush.

Here's the dangle that will hang down the nape of the neck. I've used citrine beads again, a beautiful stripy heart bead and a metal heart connector, plus some Magatamas.

This picture was taken outside on the said lilac bush so you could see how the beads will hang when the necklace is worn.

Black Daisy and Peach Blossom - Bracelets

My cold is finally gone and I had some leisure and energy to make some jewellery at the weekend. Here are the results:


Black Daisy
I recently bought some wonderful beads from EJR Beads. The lovely daisy beads in the bracelet below started the whole design. I could have gone with a white and gold theme but wanted something more interesting so I added topaz nuggets, hematite hearts, vintage faceted antique gold beads, and some Czech gunmetal beads to the design. To finish it off I used some wonderful gunmetal Magatama drops and some more Japanese seed beads (Toho and Miyuki). All is 'tied' together with the gunmetal chain and findings.


Here you can see all the wonderful beads in detail. The bracelet is now for sale in my Etsy shop.


Peach Blossom
This bracelet was inspired by the wonderful copper lined crystal cathedral beads. I added more copper lined beads and a few vintage peach copper coated faceted beads, frosted flowers, lots of Swarovski beads for extra glamour and Magatama and Miyuki drops for shimmer and texture. I love the contrast of the copper with the green/teal of the Swarovski and faceted green beads and the organic feel created by the Magatama/Miyuki beads.

The bracelet is now for sale in my Etsy shop.