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!

So, yes, I disappared. At the beginning of November I joined NaNoWriMo, and tried to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Failed miserably but did hit a personal best of just over 28,000 words.

Then over the past week I was preparing for my first craft fair, which I then went to yesterday (Saturday).

Got there and found I had been shoved in to the social club room with three other people, the main hall had all the other stalls. Apparantly they normally opened up some bigger doors between the two but when they went to set the hall up last night they found that the the doors were blocked by the social club so they couldn't open them and so we were slightly stranded. They put up big signs but FFS who generally reads such things?

So it didn't look like it would go well. I managed to get everything set up within 40 minutes and then sat there with my bead kit and made a few more earrings, and went over the polymer clay ones I made over a year ago so the little loops in the headpins were much smaller (I've definitely improved :D) while I waited for the whole thing to start. I was sharing my room with a charity stall, someone who makes their own honey, and a brother and sister that were selling "collectibles" (not good enough to be antique, too good for a car boot sale). Some other stall holders drifted in from the other room, and when they saw my jewellery mentioned that there were 6 other jewellery sellers out there!

But I managed to sell a decent amount. Two girls from the charity stall bought earrings, and then other people wandered in. Everything I sold was under a fiver, most were around the 3 pound mark. I sold 4 cards (need to buy more letter stickers as I had a few "Don't suppose you have an "I" one as my sister is Imogen, but I didn't have any with me), 3 phone charms (heart ones with crystals), a bag charm my Mum made, and 8 pairs of earrings. None of the bracelets were sold but I don't mind :D

So overall I have got back my table cost, my lunch, the box of Celebrations I bought so I could offer them to people, and the bacon roll I bought, and then with the decent amount on top of that I reckon I have also got back my petrol and all my bead costs for the stuff I took along.

Mum and my eldest little sister came to visit and Mum said that the other jewellery out there did not look that great, some of it was quite expensive, others looked a bit gaudy, and some just looked a bit odd (one person I noticed was selling bracelets with quite large square glass beads and small crystals and it just didn't look right). I probably would have made more if I had been in the main room XD

All in all, a nice day, even though I left early due to the lack of people towards the end, and I'm very happy that I managed to sell more than one thing!