Party, party, party...

So how are you all? Hope you're well and happy.

Well, the big news it that I'm now the mother of an 18 year old! Tom's birthday on 20th February was wonderful. We took him to the pub at lunchtime to buy his first legal round of drinks and then in the evening we had a big family party. It was great fun.

Here he is cutting his cake.
Also in this picture are Sarah, who is my partner in crime when selling jewellery, my fabulous hubby and my lovely, lovely Mum.

On the jewellery front, I've been hard at work finishing my project for my jewellery course. Here it is:
The basket is brass with copper foil woven in and out of it, the handle and rim are copper and the bail (more of that in a minute) is brass and copper. The necklet is silk.

This is the reverse - a piece of shiny brass.

The bail was the bit that caused me most headaches. I wanted to try making one of these woven bails, but, boy, are they fiddly!

Here are my attempts to get it looking neat...
The first attempt I made (somewhat foolishly) in Sterling Silver, I then switched to copper and then the final one is brass and copper.
To make them you form a skeleton of wire and then wrap hair thin wire round, in and out, round, in and out, to form the weaving. I'm glad I persevered and hope to make some more, I do think they're attractive.

It's been a busy couple of weeks with sales in offices, a great party last night and trying to build up stock. But I've loved every minute.

Right, that's it for now. Short and sweet just to keep you up to date. Will hopefully be back soon with more things to show you.

Take care, all, and have a great weekend.

Much love
xx

Shell I show you?

Here are some of the shell necklace and earrings sets that I've been making. I love using shell - it comes in such wonderful colours.
The larger round beads in the set above are really unusual. They are tiny shards of shell which have been set into resin and formed into beads. They're very effective, aren't they? I got some in turquoise and some in pink.... think I might have to get some more!


Tom had his Spanish Oral today - which he'd been quite nervous about as he had to give quite a long presentation and then answer questions on it. But, apparently, it went really well. And then RF (RE) which he said was fine... he 'waffled on'!

They say that this spell of fabulous weather is going to break tomorrow. It's been so lovely to have the sunshine as we didn't really have a proper summer last year with all the rain. Even though we only planted up our pots and hanging baskets last week, they've already grown masses and there are flowers opening! As we were having all the work done on the kitchen last year we didn't bother with doing the garden, so it's doubly pleasing to have it all looking pretty and tidy again... rather than it being full of rubble, planks, cement, builders, cardboard, bricks, toilets..... We've already sat outside more often than we did for the whole of last year!!!

Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is just a taster for a long, sunny summer.