Happy Monday! - And Hard Work Does Pay Off

I guess hard work does pay off! I spent most of yesterday doing my self employed work. I took photos for Etsy listings, wrote Etsy listings, made earrings and posted them out to one of my agents, and experimented with new designs.
 

 I also tweeted, facebooked, caught up with blog reading and entered a beading competition at Operation Tackle that Bead Stash.

I always check my email first thing in the morning, and I have received a large (for me) PayPal payment for something I was decluttering, had an item featured on Cuteable,

And one of the items with a new photograph has been featured in an Etsy Treasury! I guess those new photographs were definitely worth it!

My First Toad in the Hole

Is it wrong that I got to the age of 34 without making toad in the hole?

After a text or two to a friend who is an amazing cook, and following a recipe on the side of an ingredient packet, I made one!

A vegetarian one that is!

Amethyst and Chrysotine

I'm still loving the green and purple combination at the moment.

I was drawn to it after being asked to make a commission piece by the owner of Suedo Designs using the two colours, and then again by Beads Direct for the designer blog challenge.

So my latest listings on Etsy had to be purple and green!

Amethyst and Chrysotine Earrings

Amethyst and Chrysotine Necklace

Tomato!

My gardening went a little awry last year with one tomato plant never actually leaving the house. Which is why we had a little tomato growing on Christmas day and have a tomato ripening at the moment!

Can you tell which one it is in the punnet of shop bought cherry tomatoes?

Patchwork Bookmark

I love recycling waste materials into items that are usuable again so when I saw the Recycle Me Swap1 on Swapbot I joined in.The dark purple material used to be my favourite skirt. In fact I had two identical ones as I found another in a charity shop years after I bought the first and had virtually worn it to death. It was my standard going to a night club mini skirt. Indian embroidered fabric dyed in a gorgeous royal purple.

I'm still using parts of it in projects now and again. So far I can remember making a book cover from it as well as using it in this bookmark.

My clubbing skirt lives on!

I had a browse for photos of my wearing the actual skirt but no luck. but I did find this one of when I used to be out nearly every night!

Front Cover - And Stash Storage Solutions

 What a week! Finally this week I got to find out whether my jewellery design made the front cover of this weeks Creative Beads and Jewellery magazine. And it did! How exciting!

These style of pendants take me ages to make but I do love making them. I keep all my "lonely" beads in containers with other beads of the same colour. I also add anything else that might be useful such as odd sequins, buttons, broken jewellery.

And that is how my storage system has ended up how it is today.

These are my great Really Useful boxes. With nice clippy lids so that when they fall on the floor I don't have a bead-a-lanche.

I used to buy cheaper boxes from various shops buy found out to my cost that not all boxes stack on top of each other properly and when a shop discontinued a range, the next range they stocked didn't stack on top of the old range




My full strings of beads and bags of beads go in a separate storage system. more Clip lids boxes once again, but nice and stackable so I can take one box at a time downstairs to do a project (That's the aim anyway. I'm not very good at bringing them back upstairs until the living room where I do most of my work reaches a critical mass)

 As you can see, I have a  bookshelf for my craft  books too to separate from from my fiction which are downstairs. The tray to the left of the stack is my stash of choker wires, ready made necklace chains, hair barrette findings and fascinator clips.
 










Then we have the fabric stash. I have boxes of large pieces in  an area which would be far too embarrassing to take a  photo of, as with my yarn stash, but for smaller pieces I have a office filing system. The top set of boxes are fabric sort by one colour per drawer. This is for pieces of materials that are fat quarters and smaller.

The bottom set of drawers is for my ATC and collage supplies. Anything I could collage with really. Magazine cuttings, scrapbooking paper,card, tissue paper.

And of course my overlocker is on the top smiling down at me.

Swap-bot - Rainbow Scavenger Hunt

 

I love colour. I love matching them and seeing what goes with what. So when I saw a rainbow swap on Swap-bot I decided to join in.

As you can see, I had to send my partner a Bead Button and Bauble in rainbow colours with an aim to finding gold at the end.

New Style of Photo?

I think I might have upped my game with my experiments with photograph product shots.

What do you think?

From this:-

To this:-

New Banners!

After my foray into the Etsy forums, it was suggested that I have new banners for my Etsy shop.  I'm not the best at photoshop type stuff, but found a free banner making website so had a go.

 And whilst I was at it I made these

I also read an article which suggested that most people don't use all the available space on their facebook fan page profile picture. And that you should include a  photograph of yourself. So I made this too. I'm wearing a lovely necklace that G made for me from chainmail and black agate diamonds.

 The facebook banner is a little wonky but better than what I had.

Patchwork Heart Experiments

Sorry I've been a bit quiet. I've been making a few prototypes and trying to figure out which direction to take to try and and get my shop up and running enough to start making me an income. Feel free to pimp out my facebook page and my Etsy shop if you like my work. I'd be greatly appreciated.

This week I've been having a play with some multimedia pendants. mainly using patchwork, embroidery and beading.

The pendant is only 4cms across so you can imagine how small the embroidery stitches and materials strips are. I've embellished it with seed beads and a Swarovski pearl on the tip of the heart.













This is the other side of the pendant. Instead of adding beads, I kept it more simple with patchwork, embroidery and a bit of couching.

I think I prefer the one without the beading, but G prefers the one with.

Which do you prefer?

All Change!

I was feeling like the blue was a little depressing so had a very quick change over to red and I think I like it. I might change again when I get bored though!

I'm off  to London on Saturday to see some Bookcrossers. I love making friends and meeting people I've chatted with on the internet. I've done it loads and they are always so lovely.

I'm feeling quite disallusioned with my Etsy shop at the moment. I think it needs a set style to give it a bit of oomph. I like the items that I make, but I'd love the shop itself to look better. Haven't figured it out yet. I might just retake all of the photos. Any suggestions welcome of course! I want to get it just so.

And in good news, I've got an article in Creative Crafting magazine this month! I'm quite pleased with myself over that one They'd even used my photo as well as my tutorial.It's free to read online