Yes yes, long time no see, and all that jazz.

Plenty of you know me as a person on Etsy but there is a whole big internet out there and Etsy isn't the only website I browse.

One of many forums I frequent is GaiaOnline, and it was on this forum that I met an artisan who I know as "Naki" XD She's a graphics artist by trade but she also dabbles in jewellery and once I saw her shop, Koana, I just had to include some of her beautiful things on this blog!



First things first, a very pretty phone charm! The stars are origami paper, folded in to shape and hand painted before being sealed with gloss and a fixative spray so they should hold up during everyday use. The other glittery bits are pealised beads and swaroski crystals and the whole thing is absolutely gorgeous!



These gorgeous butterflies are another example of origami work! The butterflies were made using vellum paper that was again hand painted and sealed with spray before being attached to more crystals. I just love how delicate they look, and according to the listing you can request them in other colours as well, so if turquoise isn't your thing then contact Naki and she'll do her best to do them in a colour you like :D

Along with the Etsy shop she also has a shop on Zazzle where she sells her gorgeous designs on t-shirts!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Today's featured crafter is not an Etsian. I found her through the wonderful world of DeviantArt. I tend to go for a browse in the Artisan Crafts section and when I spotted her photos I just had to start stalking her on DA, and feature her here.

Helen1988 is a baker and cake decorator! And you won't find any cake wrecks here (small pimp of one of my favourite blogs thrown in for good measure) because everything she puts up is simply stunning!



Yes, that IS a wedding cake. And if it was my wedding cake I would be the happiest bride in the world. This is referred to as a "simple little cake", if that's simple I'd hate to see complicated. The flowers and blue ribbon are all made of fondant and the flowery decoration is made out of modelling chocolate, and yes that is a monogram "A" on the front, painted on (if it was chocolate it would probably fall to pieces).



I love this cake simply because of the blue colour XD The title is "Sweet Sixteen Cake" so I'm going to take a guess that this was a birthday cake. Iced with teal buttercream (I think my thighs just doubled in size at the thought of all those calories) and chocolate modeling stuff for the decoration. The bow on top is made from chocolate. Yes, that is a giant chocolate bow on top, if someone could buy me one for my birthday I would be very happy.



And last but certainly not least, an awesome laptop cake! This is another wedding cake, apparantly for the wedding of two people who met on the dating site Eharmony. The picture is fondant (yes, fondant, not paint, not felt tip pen, but actual fondant). The screen itself is foam (I'm assuming this means it couldn't be eaten?) but the laptop base and the keyboard are all proper cake, and look at the detail! Even the keys are labelled! (To see a large version check out the proper deviation and click on the picture to make it larger).

While helen1988 is not an Etsian she is on DA and she also has her own website, Cake Me I'm Yours!, which has even more photos of her amazing creations!

Go check her out and be prepared to end up hungry!

And I'm back again!

Today I went out with my sisters to get blackberries and conkers. The blackberries because my youngest little sister picked some this morning while my Dad cut down branches in the back garden, and conkers because they keep spiders away and our house seems to be full of the 8-legged monsters at the moment.

We ended up spending nearly 2 hours wandering around our village collecting both. Youngest sister got stung by a stinging needle, I got cut several times by thorns on the blackberry bushes, and eldest little sister is now coming down with a cold.

I am now also really tired, blasted country air has worn me out. The blackberries are apparantly going to be used to make sauce for Dad and youngest little sister to have on ice cream, while I am going to be drying the conkers out in front of the Aga tonight.

Did you know that if you search for "conker" on Etsy you get a grand total of 7 results?



This felt pot was made by the UK Etsian cityroad, who also has some great felt badges in her shop!

Oh, and now for BIG news! I WAS FEATURED IN A BLOG!

I'm donating a percentage of my profits from various items in my shop to the Motor Neurone Disease Association, and The You And Me Show picked me as someone to feature on their blog! So go check them out as they've also got a great charity project of their own, Art = Food.

I am both tired and hungry, and I really love autumn :D

Someone I know is going to be a bridesmaid next year.

When she saw my jewellery she asked if I would make some for her to wear! This is the second wedding commission I've had. The first ended up being a bit...rushed. But I have learnt from my mistakes.

The wedding is not until next year. But my friend is very specific on what she wants. She likes the flower earrings I sell in my shop and specifically requested the colours for them, which makes my job a lot easier.





She also wants a necklace the same. And she has also asked me to make a bracelet for the bride :D

Oh, and a little pimp of my new phone charm!

I managed to nab a Treasury spot!

And I filled it with items for the kitchen!

In The Kitchen

I especially want the recipe box XD

I've been featured in a Treasury!

No one has featured me before!

BLOO AND WITE

It's the "Super Blue (and white)" bracelet :D

The Treasury expires tomorrow so go check it out!

Time again for a new Featured Seller, and this week I have dived in to the world of clothing!

I found delguidicestudio (aka, the shop with the difficult to pronounce name) while reading an Etsy forum thread about quitting your day job. Delguidi posted to say that she hadn’t jumped in to quitting her day job, but as a victim of a economic problems she had been pushed. After losing her job as a restoration specialist and artefact handler for museums in San Diego, and finding that getting so much as a waitressing job would be nearly impossible, she took the plunge.

Her shop is, at the moment, a little sparse on the ground with 35 items for sale (I know that’s a bit rich coming from the person who only has 15 in her shop, but I haven’t quit my day job for anything yet XD), but all of them are gorgeous. Dresses, sleep mask, tops, scarves, and a few oil paintings, as well as the odd piece of jewellery too.



This gorgeous dress is described as a “pontina wrap”. It’s made with 100% cotton black and white polka dot material and has a lovely wide belt with a rose appliqué. It ties at the back of the neck like a halter-neck, and looks simple but absolutely gorgeous. And if you like the dress but not the belt, or like the belt but don't fancy the dress, delguidi states that she is happy to sell them separately!



And this is a “Dopo Puccini” facemask, made with 100% silk! Lets face it, there isn’t a whole lot more that will feel good against your skin, and with this over your eyes I think getting to sleep would suddenly become a whole lot easier! Plus I love the gorgeous little bow in the corner.

delguidicestudio has only been an Etsy member since May 2009 and she already has 5 sales! I highly recommend that you hop in and buy something from her now, before she becomes too flooded with work :D

I know, I'm a bad blogger XD

I have a new listing, Snow!. My first charity listing, although I've now gone over my other items and added two more earrings.

$2.50 from selling those earrings goes to my favourite charity, the Motor Neurone Disease Association. I'm trying to raise £200 for them by October 2011. I've got a bunch of my friends collecting stamps for me to sell for the charity, and I'm contributing some of my jewellery :D Hopefully going to add some of my cards as well in the future.

I apologise for not blogging as much I should XD

Yes! It's Sunday and that means it is time for my new spot! Featured items!

Because I see so many lovely items on Etsy and it's very difficult to get a Treasury spot, I felt I may as well use some of this blog space to highlight some of the lovely things I see as I browse!



This gorgeous scarf has been knitted by tallib, who specialises in knitted items. Her shop is full of hats, scarves and gloves and the occasional doll, all knitted by her. And she's currently having a Spring Sale!



I make cards as welll (obviously from my last post) but I can't make them nearly as lovely as this one, created by mrsdstahl, who doesn't just do cards but also has wedding invitations and stationary sets! Currently 10% of her profits are going towards the Fisher House charity which helps the families of injured military personel (the English equivalent would be Headley Court in Surrey). So not only do you get some lovely things to give people, but you're also helping a charity!



Being a jewellery maker myself I can appreciate pretty pieces, especially when they're made of memory wire!!! (I love memory wire). This green bracelet was made by greenstar9, a relative newcomer who Etsy as she has only been there since January this year, but she already has two sales (including this bracelet) so I think we'll be seeing more of her in the future!



These adorable tags were found in the shop of detailshomegoods. This shop is a veritable treasure trove of items, from greetings cards to napkin rings, all involving some kind of sewing! Plus they ship internationally! Always good to know when you're browsing.



Raise your hand if you want a cushion made with that fabric! Yes, I've raised my hand too. I love the pattern and I love the shade of pink used. LittleMissQuarter printed this by hand, and has got lots of other lovely printed materials in her shop! She is VERY new to Etsy, she only joined at the end of April, but she has 2 sales and is currently offering a "Three For Two" offer to celebrate her shop opening. If you're better at sewing than I am and would like a funky or cute cushion cover for your home, this is the place to check out!



And last but not least, cupcakes! Not for eating though, purely for your hair. Charity5 is currently taking a mini hiatus to catch up on her orders because she is incredibly popular, and I can see why! Her shop is full of items for you to dress your children in, including some GORGEOUS costume pieces that make me wish my sisters were 5 again. Her shop is still open but with a reduced line from the look of things, so I would recommend this place as the place to go when you need to buy Christmas presents for little people.

And now go check out the shops themselves!

Featured Crafter will return next Sunday!

I have come up with a new feature for my alternate Sundays (until I get bored :P)!

It's quite difficult to choose a particular crafter, especially with so many lovely items that I see on Etsy.

So I'm going to stat doing a Featured Item selection, 6 items from 6 different crafters, and this way more people get featured, I get more to write about, and you guys have more pictures to look at. Everyone wins!

So keep your eyes peeled like onions tomorrow!

So a little while ago I decided to start planning what Christmas cards to make for next Christmas. I now know from last year's experience that the time to start making Christmas cards is some time in June, so I thought I should jump ahead and get planning while I had inspiration.

I absolutely adore Woodware Clear Magic stamps and bought 2 lots of Christmas ones back in November, and decided to put at least one set to good use this Christmas (a bit more difficult to use the other set and they are a bit larger and I tend to struggle to get an even amount of ink on them).

These are all hand stamped and hand coloured so believe you me, it takes me a while to make them XD I apologise for the poor quality of the pictures, I took them using my tiny little Nikon, my Etsy photos are taken by my Dad using his awesome stock photography camera so they look a lot better.



As you can see, this one involves 3 Christmas stockings and then mittens in each corner. I just the same mitten stamp for each corner but I might change it so I have two different mittens, in diagonally opposite corners, need to test that one out next. I don't particularly like this one because I think there is too much white space.



In this one I have 3 stockings, 2 hats and 4 mittens. But it took much longer to colour because the mittens are all different and I kept losing track of which pens I had used (I have the full range of 36 Whispers double end markers). The stocking on the right is actually sky blue rather than a sort of mental glowing turquoise glowing blue. If I put these into production when I will more than likely only use 2 mittens and, as with my plan for the one above, have them diagonally opposite.

The text reads "Christmas Wishes" and I will probably do it in red or green rather than black, just need to get a red or green ink pad.



And here we have nothing but mittens! The text reads "Warm Woolly Mittens" and I added little springs of holly to the corners. I think this is my favourite one because I managed to space all the mittens fairly evenly so it looks quite colourful and the white space is more scattered than in big blocks.

I'll probably end up doing some cards as mixed packs and some as packs with just that theme (i.e. one pack with cards with the first design).

I made some earrings the other day so now I just need Dad to photograph them and I can list them on Etsy! Yay for new things!

It's Sunday, and this time I remembered!

Today's featured crafter is Donna from cutedesigns, she is actually remarkably close to me, geographically speaking, as she lives in England, just a few miles down the road from me (not something I was expecting when I joined Etsy I must admit, I started singing "It's a small world after all" when we realised XD).

Donna has been crafting since she was very little, although she confesses that she fell out of the crafting habit for a few years before returning to it properly 3 years ago. And as her shop name shows, Donna sells cute items.



And this shows just how cute! I swear I went "awww!" the moment I saw this gorgeous amigurumi cupcake in her shop. From the strawberry on his head to the little felt blushes on his cheeks, this little guy is the epitome of cute. Apparantly it can take several hours to make each crocheted item, longer if they have limbs, but I think a labour of love is always worth it. Especially when the result is an adorable cupcake.



And here we have Felix Scout McFrosty, a penguin in a badge! My boyfriend loves penguins (possibly because people used to call him "Wingy" at school) so I always keep my eye open for things with those flight-less birds on, and then I spotted this badge! Unfortunately it's the only badge available at the moment, and there won't be for a while, Donna says that she has got so many cute animals in her head waiting to come out in crochet that badges are on hold for the time being. But I'm sure that once she has got enough of them out of her head and in to reality, then we'll see more of Felix Scout McFrosty and his penguin clan!

All of Donna's cute items are inspired by animals (apart from cupcakes), which would explain why she has crocheted bunnies, a hand-sewn cow, and a felt chick pin badge, along with The Blobs (both crocheted and hand-sewn), all scattered amoung adorable cherry polymer clay charms and kawaii cup of tea clay charms.

So go and check out cutedesigns and add a bit of adorable to your life!

So I came on here to post an "I'm not dead I'm just away!" message, since I haven't done anything on here since I featured Chichi, and I suddenly find I have 20 followers.

That probably isn't a big deal for most people, but I guess it is for me because I'm not used to having so many people, that I've never met before, interested in things I write.

So I was going to come on here and go "don't expect another featured seller thing soon", because I'm currently in a work swing on an entirely different track. I haven't done any crafting for a while, instead I've mostly been doing a lot of research in to ancient Egypt for my other business. I need to do more reseach on Roman Britain next XD

I recently bought a book called "Starting Your Business Week By Week" and it's very good. It's got my motivated enough to do this work after several weeks of moping around thinking I'll never make a success of it. Doing the research itself is giving me a lot of ideas, I think I will need to buy a new laptop cable for my old laptop, and then set it up on my ex-crafting desk, disable the internet so I don't feel tempted to log on to it, and then write up things like Presentations on there, then move them over to this laptop using a pendrive to add pictures and tidy the whole thing up. I'll also use it as a back-up for said work, don't want to lose it all if something happens to this laptop.

But having seen that there's now 20 people who vaguely like what I say and do on here, I guess I'll have to keep up with the Featured Artist posts at least XD although it may have to be once every two weeks for the time being, and I'll try to think of something else to do for the weeks inbetween to keep you lot amused :D

So don't worry, I'm not dead, just off on a different mental tangent!

Yes! This week I am on time DESPITE sending my questions to this weeks crafter last night DX

This week we have the lovely Gretchen from chichiboulie. Gretchen is french, currently located in Lille in northern France. Gretchen's work is filled with art in a very french style, which I love, and her shop is full of a wide variety of items from original paintings to little "Boulie Bags".

Since signing on to an agent Gretchen has tried to keep some sort of schedule going but does occasionally find that she has to drop anything in order to get a design or idea down on paper (something I think we can all sympathise with), occasionally her work requires a bit of research which can add to the time it takes to make everything, but other times she will have a day of total creativity and just let it roll.



This is one of Gretchen's items featuring her character "Nellie Bellie". It is a little tea party planner set, featuring recipe cards, a blank invitation that can be photocopied, and cards explaining how to be prepared for the party.

Nelllie Bellie is an original character created by Gretchen, there are also some lovely Nellie badges on sale in her shop, who told me that Nellie was originally made for a project and "she just looked like a Nellie to me". Apparantly Gretchen loves naming things, along with giving her 3 children long names (from the sounds of it she just couldn't settle on one) she also comes up with names for all her characters, her fairies all have names as well, such as Eloise Greengrass and Isla Waterspring.



And this lovely little mirror features The Snowman and the Wee Mouse, I think the wee mouse is absolutely adorable! Sadly Gretchen has sold out of mirrors for the time being, but don't let that put you off visiting her shop as she still has lots of gorgeous items, from original art work to colouring books, birth announcements, and cards!

And as for Nellie's future? Well, I asked Gretchen if there were any plans to write and illustrate her own books featuring the adorable Nellie, and she has said that she would love to do a cookbook featuring Nellie, but it will have to wait until all her children are at school. So keep your eyes peeled, in a few years time there could be Nellie's Cookbook coming to a bookshop near you!

And now I insist that you all go and visit chichiboulie.

Okay, this week it is actually on time!

This week I am bringing to you jewellery! And very awesome, complicated-looking jewellery at that!

So say hello to Aranwen! I originally found her Deviantart page while hunting for things to add to my favourites. She's Greek, currently located in the ancient city of Athens. Her jewellery has a lovely gothic look, with cameo brooches, chokers, and earrings to make any Goth want to blow their entire pay packet then and there.



This is the piece on DA that caught my eye and I think you can see why. This is a gorgeous watch/cuff made using silver plated brass. Despite being stuck to the cuff the watch inners are still accessible so a jeweller can replace the battery when it eventually wears out. The cuff part is also stamped on either side and there is a little key underneath the heart shaped watch piece, making it both romantic and elegant.



And here we have a lovely necklace made with silver plated brass and a lovely piece of blue sodalite. I love the shape of the wings around the blue centre, the colour of the sodalite goes really well with the silver of the piece around it. This piece has sold but she also has a lovely red one and a black one still available.

Making each piece takes a week according to the creator of these lovely pieces. She uses stampings and findings, starting with a base and building the whole thing up layer by layer, the glue that secures it all together takes 24 hours to dry so a very complicated piece could easily take longer than a week to put together.

And remarkably, she simply compiles the pieces that she thinks will match well! So that's no sketching out the design before hand, she just gets up and goes! I wish I could do that with my jewellery XD

And now you must all check out her Etsy shop to see the rest of her lovely jewellery (I highly recommend you check out the cameos).

This weeks Featured Crafter spot is delayed, because I sent some questions to my chosen person yesterday because I am silly, so haven't heard back from them yet XD Note to self: Prepare in advance.

Instead I have some fantastic news of my own. I SOLD MY FIRST ITEM ON ETSY!

I sold a pair of czech glass flower earrings, the lilac and olive ones. You should have heard my shriek of joy when I saw it XD

So I have spent today making a little "thank you for buying" card and on Tuesday I will be popping the little package in the post (I can't post it tomorrow as I'm at work all day).

Taken nearly a year XD I suspect, although I'm still unsure, if the buyer found me via LuvHandmade.com, but I think this is the case as the timing is too coincidental.

Dad is cooking dinner today as it is Mother's Day. And I'm now going to find more featured sellers for the next few weeks so I can ask them questions about their items well ahead of time XD

OMG! I'm on the front page of a website called LuvHandmade!

I replied to a post in the Etsy forums but I thought I was late in my reply :( but apparantly not!

So go check it out, and the other fabulous sellers that they are also featuring :D

Okay, I completely forgot about this last week XD surprise surprise.

But I have got a real treat for you guys to make up for this! I have added a new DeviantArt account to display my jewellery on and as a result have recently been browsing the other photos in the Artisan Crafts section, where I found this week's crafter!

ChaeyAhne an artist from the USA, who along with drawing, also makes the most gorgeous feather quill pens! She uses different types of feather, such as white goose and swan, along with beads, crystals, gemstones and fine handspun threads.

I honestly have no idea how long it takes her to make each one but at a guess I'd say several hours at the very least. The attention to detail in each one makes them completely exquisite, all you would have to do is pick one up to feel like a proper writer, especially around NaNoWriMo time.



This one is my absolute favourite because I LOVE that shade of blue. It is made with a vintage millinary feather, with hand painted gold decoration and crystals along the center.



And I simply had to include this one because it was the one that caught my eye! This one has been made with a vintage goose quill with mute swan and dove feathers added. The little blue-violet decoration up the feather itself is simply exquisite and really makes the whole thing stand out.

Sadly ChaeyAhne doesn't have an Etsy site, but she does have her own online shop with a large number of these gorgeous pens, I highly recommend you all check them out!

Since joining Etsy I have seen quite a lot those "scrabble tile" pendants around. They always look lovely, although I tend to be a tad put off by the fact that they're made using scrabble tiles because who wants a letter on the back of their pendant? My necklace flips around all the time and I'd rather had it looking blank than showing something that could confuse, and that doesn't look very nice.

So you can imagine how thrilled I am to find someone that doesn't use scrabble tiles, but still makes beautiful pendants! While posting on Etsy I came across Vibedesigns.

Located in Sydney, Vibedesigns makes round and long rectangular pendants using an acrylic base to which she adds paper and then covers it with a layer of resin to make it shiny. Once it is all finished she attaches it to a silver chain, and it's ready to be sold. In total making each pendant takes an hour but the resin requires a full day to dry properly, that's a long wait, if it was me I'd be constantly running back to check if it was done yet XD



I love the shade of blue in this pendant, it's so bright and cheerful that I don't think it could help but make you smile whenever you put it on, and the flowers give it a delicate, graceful touch.



As for this pendant, found under the title "Indian Dreams", the mixture of soft shades of pink with the cool splash of blue from the flower would make it the perfect accessory for summer parties and barbeques.

Her shop link is above and she also has a blog, I highly recommend you check out both ^_^

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.