I used to draw and paint and the rest of it but somewhere along the line got distracted and made jewelry instead so this is the first thing I've done in like an eternity, apart some quick drawings of pin-up girls for shrinky dink earrings.

Charcoal/carbon/pencil angel on a bridge, the background and light burst are digital (something I'm just starting to pick up) and is what I would have done had I had any paint around.

So this has been a bit of a running joke, that eventually I'll combine my jewelry making with my academic stuff (politics and philosophy undergrad). Predictably the joke wormed its way into the back of my mind and the urge to do a "man was born free but he is everywhere in chains" necklace kept cropping up. So I did and here's the result: a necklace for J.J Rousseau



I'm not entirely happy with it as yet so I'm going to put it to one side for a while until I can figure out what it needs/what needs altering. As such any suggestions would be great.....

My first experiments in shrink plastic jewelry, inspired by pin-up and old school tattoo's of pin-up. I'm not so fond of the hell pin-up girl, her face got all smudgy but other than that I'm pretty pleased. Not to everyone's taste I'm sure, but they amuse me.

It was hard to get a good shot of this so sorry! Its a set of earrings and pendant quilled and varnished half to death. They were originally a brown paper bag from a grocery store or somewhere, if you look close you can see the green flecks of the logo in places. The idea was to be a comment on recycling, the paper that was once a tree formed to resemble slices of the tree trunk (the rings) though really in retrospect I shouldn't have made the circles so neat.

I told a friend of mine I'd learn to make these. This pair were my first attempt before I did the ones she wanted. What do you think?


 

So I've made a couple of bags from the fused plastic bags and I had some pieces left over, I don't use patterns and to be honest I tend to make things up as I go along hence lots of scraps! no bad thing. I'd never made a wallet before, had a peer at a couple of tutes on here to figure out how to make the card slots. I used the idea of pleating it but, I don't know if it was the plastic fabric or what but I found it made it reallt bulky; have to change it if  i do another.   




Sorry the second picture is soo dark, sun went in!

My second wallet. Bright red and shiny, heehee I'm a simple soul. 

I found a quilling kit I'd had as a kid a couple of weeks back and remembered the joy of messing with bits of paper, though I didn't have any pretty paper to use so i used the brown paper bag I'd bought a sandwich in. I made some plain brown varnished ones but haven't got any good pic's - still working on my camera skills - so i'll post them later. These are paper I quilled, glued and the coated in several layers of liquid silver leaf.
I'll get a better shot of the earrings too, I'm pretty proud!

 

So I've had some time on my hands and have gone a bit mental with the whole crafting thing! Hope you like the beads...
Theres a brillant tute for the necklace on this board, search for "princess necklace". My personal favourite is the earrings; I'm not a big fan of the bracelet but thats mainly because I don't dig the colour combination, it was made with some left overs from a commission! Thanks for looking....

I made this a little while ago so i don't have pictures of the original chair(s)- sorry!.
This chair was rescued from the parts of three chairs which were headed for a bonfire (so the legs, back and seat all came from different chairs), they were basically your bog-standard pine flat-packed dining chairs but after years of abuse they were scratched, wobbly or else bits had actually snapped.  I don't want to think how many hours and packs of sandpaper it took to get the bits of the chair smooth again, the seat especially had some really deep gouges i wanted gone but lets say i sanded for so long that the motor on my electric sander burnt out and i had to finish by hand! The flowers are all individually cut out from a huge stash of gardening magazines I found in the attic (credit has to go to my mum for spending hours cutting flowers out with me : ta.xx), the flowers were then stuck to the wood with pva glue and then finally I varnished the whole thing half to death because there needed to be a lot of layers to keep the paper and the soft pine protected from being damaged again. So basically a frustrating project but I love how it turned out, a permanent reminder of spring.