I got there!

Well, I've painted the spare room and sorted everything out in there enough for T's Dad to sleep in this weekend, so that was one goal met this week! Now I just need to sort out the rest of my papercrafting bits and pieces and move B's things in there. I think I'm going to have to ask my parents to look after B for the day or at least wait until T has a day off (he's due a few) so that I can move everything around without trying to entertain B at the same time. This is not exactly something that I can do while he's having a nap!





Anyway, despite the almost wintery weather here I've been able to take some photos, and the ones here are of the necklaces I mentioned here on Wednesday, the ones made with Mindy Macgregor's beautiful beads. The first designs that I had sketched out for the ivory and black bead used patterned silver discs (I was going to make some myself using a disc cutter and my lovely rolling mill - more about those 2 tools to come next week!), but I realised that using that much silver took the focus away from the bead, and I really didn't want to do that. So, I re-visited and adapted a design that I came up with years ago before I started using much silver. I put the bead together with Swarovski crystals and hung it from 2 strands of seed beads and one strand of silver chain. I like how this one turned out so much that I decided to use the same idea for the red and blue poppy bead.


It was only when I started editing the photos of the necklaces that I realised why the seed bead/silver chain combination looked more familiar that a years-old design usually would - have a look at these gorgeous bracelets by US lampwork artist Kerry Bogert. If you stay for a read you'll see that she's made several different colours and adapted the idea into necklaces too. Her blog Kab's Creative Concepts is one that I read nearly every day, and I guess that more stayed in my subconcious than I realised! Oh well! Kerry, if you ever read this I really hope you don't mind!

"Ivory" was sold the day after it was made - a friend was over when the post arrived one day and I unwrapped the beads and made me promise to show her what ever I made with it before I showed anyone else and she bought it! "Poppy" will be on the website tomorrow.