I'm back from university! Had a nice time, watched some anime, got both my dissertations printed off, had some tasty food, unfortunately the travelling has given me a headache.

But a headache has not stopped me from listing a new pair of earrings today!

Olive and Lilac!

Now I need to work out what to have for dinner tonight as Mum doesn't feel like cooking.

Tomorrow a new craft shop is opening in the garden center that my brother works at, so I am going to visit it, and then for lunch we're going to visit my uncle!

And on Sunday I will be having the second of my Featured Crafter spots! And the crazy part is that I've also found the 3rd one, and possibly the 4th! XD

I added two new items to my shop, one yesterday and one today, and then I've got two more left, one which will go up tomorrow and the other which will go up on Saturday, and then I have a pile of 8 things for my Dad to photograph so I can upload them as well.

Yesterday I added these earrings:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=21522481

Made with czech glass and swarovski crystals.

And then today I added these:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=21558770

Made with pearls and shell beads.

Today I am returning to my old university, going to spend the evening with the Anime society before crashing on a friend's floor. And then tomorrow I will hopefully be printing off copies of my BA and MA dissertations and binding them as I never got my copies back from the examiners :( I'd like a hard copy of each one that I can treasure, so that's tomorrows aim!

I will be back tomorrow evening!

Apparently there are 6 people watching this blog o.o *Waves* Hello watchers!

This is quite possibly the first blog I have ever had where the people reading it aren't my friends from school/university but are in fact total strangers who are watching me because they presumably like my writing style, or my pictures, or are just waiting to see if I snap one day and crack someone over the head :D

So since none of you know me I thought I would let you all in on some interesting facts about myself.

I am one of those odd people that is fascinated by the ancient world. When I was 9 my primary school held a Roman day, we made our own dresses and togas and had a day playing and it was a lot of fun, I learnt my first latin words, sinistra and dextra, left and right, which was also the first time that I heard about left handed people being thought of as "evil" back in times gone by (I myself am left handed). If I had never taken part in that day I may have ended up studying "modern" history, but instead I have followed the ancient world all the Master's level!

I am the eldest of 4 children, my brother was born when I was 5, then my eldest little sister came along when I was 12 and my youngest little sister followed when I was 14. Very big age gaps but I wouldn't swap any of them for the world (well, I might swap my brother, but not my sisters).

I broke my wrist a few days before my 11th birthday, I slipped over ice skating and all my weight went on one hand, which broke the largest bone in my wrist (the smaller of the two bones on the other hand was fine!).

I got in to jewellery making entirely by accident. In the summer before my MA I had a job that was meant to last for 3 months, but me and another 2/3rds of the team were let go after 2 weeks and by then there were no other summer jobs left. I was browsing eBay when I stumbled on the beads section and thought "I could make something pretty with some of these". Made quite a few mistakes at first but once I borrowed a book from the library things became a LOT easier.

When I make things I am either watching TV (Top Gear or The Simpsons for preference) or listening to Metallica or The Killers.

I have green eyes, I wear glasses, my left eye is short sighted with an astigmatism, my right eye has near perfect vision XD I have brown hair, I have never had a proper hairstyle, I just grow it until I get fed up and have it cut back up to above my shoulders. It spends most of it's time in a ponytail.

And that's it because you're all going to get bored if I go on much longer :D

I've tried sorting out my "desk" today. My desk is actually an old wallpaper table that sags in the middle, there's another desk outside my room that I also use as that's less rickety. In fact the wallpaper table just holds stuff that would normally go on the floor XD Mum says it will have to go soon but after going through everything today I can't get rid of it yet, I'm going to need to get some more boxes or something to put things in, or some of those plastic drawers that can be tucked away in a corner of the room.

Hmm, decisions decisions, tidying tidying, anything to stop my Mum nagging ;)

I managed to nab a Treasury the other day, and I filled it with purple things:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=41894

I have decided to do one of those "Featured Crafter" things that so many bloggers do. I hate following the crowd (which it why it took me 2 years to read the DaVinci Code and why I refuse to read the Twilight series) but I decided that I just HAD to after today's discovery!

So, with any luck (or if I'm not too lazy) this will become a regular, or semi-regular, Sunday event.

Right, on with the story! I was browsing the Artisan part of DeviantArt when I came across this amazing mask maker, Merimask. Her work is just mind blowing, the amount of time and detail that she puts in to each creation is astounding, she must have the patience of a saint!

When I saw her work it made me think of the lovely masks you see in Venice. I've got one that's blue and silver was bought from a touristy shop XD my Dad has a lovely one in cream with this pretty musical note pattern covering it that he bought from a darling shop down a little alley next to one of the canals (I hated the canal part of Venice, I had visions of my sisters falling in to them DX). But I have no idea what mine or my Dad's ones are made of (I assume some sort of paper mache thing for mine), Merimask's ones are made of leather!

On her DA page she has two links to her journal describing her process for making each mask (over 10 hours, ouch!) and the way it all comes together is pretty damn cool. Like I said, she must have the patience of a saint (I could never do it as I'd get bored after an hour XP). Here are two examples of her work, from her DA gallery (I had to trim and resize them a tiny bit)...



I love the simple elegance of this one, although she does say that carving the blossoms too "forever" which is why she only made this once, and who can blame her?



And this one I like because of all the detail she's done with the scales, and the fact that it's such a gorgeous shade of red. And apparantly it appeared on stage in Japan last year! How fabulous is that?

And now I suggest that you all go visit her Etsy shop!

It's a Friday, that means it's blog time!

So, I have next week off work, and because I won't have to take a day to mentally recover from a 9 hour Monday shift and then take another day to mentally prepare myself for the 9 hour Monday shift, I will suddenly have a whole week of time on my hands!

I am going to put this to good use and re-do my Etsy shop. New banner, new icon, hopefully some new items once my Dad gets his camera out. I have completely run out of sterling silver ear wires and gift boxes so I am going to re-stock, and I am going to go through my craft fair box and make sure everything that I want listed on Etsy is already up there.

I am also going to be opening a shop on Folksy! There are a lot of jewellery sellers there as well but I think that with my prices in pounds rather than dollars I can attract some more customers.

In fact I have a list of 24 things to do during my week off! There are a lot of little jobs that I have been putting off recently, so this is the week to get them done!

But the best bit is on Monday I am going to go to Cambridge with my favourite book (Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris) and go to a tea shop to have a cup of tea and a nice cake and just sit and be English. Oh, and on Thursday I am returning to my university so see my old friends and once again walk on campus. I do miss Royal Holloway a lot, those 4 years were the best of my life. If I could afford it I would be doing a PhD right now.

Right, off to work!

Went to Hobbycraft today and bought some more bead boxes. I didn't get enough though, because I underestimated how many beads I have XD But I do have all my crystals in one, all my dyed shells in another, all my findings in a third, and my glass foil ones in a fourth, and I deliberately left some space for the beads that should be arriving on Monday or Tuesday. I'm going to post some of my unused beads to my cousins as both of them have started to make jewellery, and I will try and sell some of the other ones I don't use and don't want.

Oh, and I've just discovered Etsy Mini, but I can't make it work on here DX

I seem to have lost track of this blog over the holiday. Christmas was very good but very hectic as I work at a supermarket and volunteered for a lot of overtime.

So, what crafting news? Not much unfortunately as I've been working some other things recently. But there will be more updates in the future as I am taking part in the "101 things in 1001 days" project. Two of my aims involve crafting, one is to make 101 pieces of jewellery, the other is to make 202 cards.

I bought some new beads off Ebay, some dyed shells, some silver bead caps, a bunch of czech pressed glass beads, aaaand, something else. Due to the bad weather I've only received the shells so far, but they are very pretty!

And that is it for now! I shall try to remember to update each Friday, and take photos of stuff that I make.