Maid Marian and Black Pearl Bracelets

I bought some wonderful salmon leather from Iceland a while back. It's so beautiful that I was worried I'd spoil it, but I really wanted to make something with it. However, as a 'tester' I got myself some leather and made some prototypes first.

Maid Marian Bracelet

Deep olive green leather with two leaves cut out and the different sides of the leather showing.

There is also a silverplated vintage leaf embellished with some Japanese glass seedbeads.

Two rings sewn onto the leather allow the bracelet to be fully adjusted. If you have a particularly slim neck you can probably wear it as a choker. :-)


Here are the leaves in detail. And below are the two rings with bead embroidery. The colours and textures just reminded me of Robin Hood, although it's not an oak leaf...



Black Pearl


This bracelet was a bit more complicated and complex. It's made to measure - this one is 6.5" (17cm) and closes with rivets and lacing in deep red satin cord.



The edges have been stamped out and cut out to give it a lacy edge. The black guipur lace has been embellished with black glass pansies, black glass pearls and red lustred Japanese seedbeads.

Above you can see the lacing and rivets. The lace and beads in more detail below. Perfect for the pirate girl in your life... :-)

Rant - They're having a laugh!

Not a day goes by when I don't hear a story of some artist whose images have been stolen from their website. The most famous recent case can be read here. Each day one artist or another doesn't get paid, fobbed off or told that the profits this month haven't been good so they'd get paid another day!

Can you imagine telling your plumber, 'sorry, I didn't make enough money this month, so I'll pay you next month, the month after, or maybe never'? I can imagine what the plumber would say. (I doubt I'd get away with using this sort of language on my blog...)

Thing is there are two types of artists, the ones who run it as a business and the ones who are grateful for every illustration, image, greeting card sold. The first have confidence in their work and it's value, the others seemingly don't. The thing is, if your image does sell it's obviously worth it. And usually someone else is making money from it. So shouldn't you be making money from it? Why should you be working for free? There's always the small claims court.

Oh, and then there are portfolio websites (badly and amateurishly designed) who want to charge us for registration AND any sales we make, the art contests and portfolio books who want to charge us an arm and a leg just to look at our images,... and so on. They're all having a laugh and a porsche at OUR cost.

It's time for us to stand up and be counted. It's not right for people to take us for mugs. We provide a service and should be paid for it.

Any tips, suggestions, rants - feel free to comment!

Lovehearts all around - Presents

It was my lovely sister's birthday on Sunday, so I sent her some presents:

Raspberry Sorbet Poncho

My sister loves pink and yellow so I thought this cotton/linen mix yarn is perfect for her.



The design is similar to my Where the Land Meets the See Poncho although this design is not exactly the same as I made some improvements.

It's the perfect garment for all year round. It can be worn as a scarf, a shawl, a poncho a capelet over a Summer dress or a Winter coat. Best of all, there are no loose ends to flap in your face in a strong wind and it leaves your arms free to move (and you don't need to hold it tight like a shawl).

The pattern is again the little scallops which I think works really well with this yarn. It's so soft and yummy and available in lots of scrumptious colours from the Knitting4fun website.



The yarn is easy to knit and two skeins of yarn make the whole capelet. I might provide the pattern to download sometime soon.


Lovehearts Necklace

This necklace is based on my Sweetheart necklace, which I am wearing all the time. However, this time I've used a myriad of beads in pinks and yellows. Some vintage, some Ghana trade beads, some new, some fabric, some woven, some paper (with a coat of resin over the top), wood, lucite, resin, glass, metal... you name it, it's in there somewhere. :-)


Here are some detail shots of the beads and charms I've used:

All the findings are either black matt coated brass, brass, pewter, copper, vintage and modern, with lots of little details so the necklace never gets boring. It can be worn twice around the neck or long.

There are two sweetheart charms leftover. The sweetheart charm is actually a locket so you could put a picture inside it.