These were my final pieces for my latest jewellery project at uni - they're made with silk petals, steel wire and handmade silver beads. And lots of araldite!!







The petals are made by holding the silk up to the side of the candle flame, very gently!!

They all started from this brooch I made last summer...



There's more photos in this flickr set here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/18596951@N00/sets/72157617952484885/ - I didn't want to overload the thread with huge photos!!

Hey hey - I'm trying to make salt dough ornaments but they're puffing up

Any idea why this is happening? Could it be because they're quite thin? Or because I have a fan oven? Thanks girls and boys, any help would be muchos appreciated!!

I'm doing a jewellery design degree at the moment and here are some little things I made last year..

First up in the bloody copper cup - we had to form this out of a flat circle of copper, so flipping hard but worth it for the sense of achievement at the end! It's pretty tarnished now but still pretty!



This bangle is aluminium, anodized & dyed pink - I love this and wear it all the time.



This bangle and ring are made of brass... I gave the bangle to my sister and the ring is somewhere in my house ( I need to find it!!) They were fun quick projects





PS sorry about the rubbish picture quality on most of these, I haven't worked out how to adjust the white balance on my camera... getting a DSLR soon, yaaay!!!!)

I am officially insane and made nearly 200 cupcakes for my wedding back in July. Unfortunately I forgot to ask the photographer to get a detail shot of the cupcakes (sigh - that was pretty much the only shot I didn't get though!) but I do have a nearly-close-up...



And here's one of them all to show the scale (and me grabbing my boobs?!? Weird girl...)



I also made Percy Piglet (amazing english sweeties) cupcakes for my husband's birthday yesterday - I sent him to work with 42 and he returned with 6 so I think his whole department had one!



And then I also did some experiments with fun icing - chocolate buttercream with chocolate chunks in it and plain buttercream with mini marshmallows... yum.

I plan on making some big, reusable shopping bags for people for christmas (as both sides of my family are mad about not using carrier bags!)  but I don't have a serger (and won't by then, unless by some magic I can persuade my husband it's a good investment!) so am puzzled about how to finish off my seams so they look pretty.

I know oilcloth doesn't fray as such, could I just leave them? Would french seams work or is the fabric too bulky?

I could get some bias binding but I worry I'll end up spending 10 times more on the binding than the oilcloth itself (£3.50ish a metre from Trago Mills for any Devonish/Cornish brits around!)

Thanks!

This is a dress I made for my friend's wedding on saturday (I checked with her, she's happy for me to wear it. I was worried it was too white!)

It's made using McCalls Stitch n Save 5292 (Which is identical to M5094 except half the price because there's no instructions for sewing on lace to the skirt. Bizarre!) and Ikea's Cecelia fabric (£1.99/m, score!!)

The pattern's a bit dodgy, misses out great big lining sections but it's quite easy to get your head round if you concentrate! Anyway, here's the dress, I'm so happy with the way it turned out, can't wait for the wedding now!

Ok so I'm getting married in 5 weeks (ARGH!) and I've got my lovely, big fluffy trad white dress for the ceremony, but later on in the evening we're doing scottish / barn dancing and at that point I'm going to change into my going-away outfit so I can actually dance. I got this outfit for £5 in a charity shop sale, it's Next tailoring so it's good quality...just a bit bland! here's a picture of it - the top needs taking in and it needs a good ironing ...



I'm going to be wearing it for a good few hours so I want it to be beautiful, so looking to add to it, do it up etc... going for a bit of a hippy / gypsy vibe - these are the kind of thing I'm taking inspiration from...



http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluebutterflyart/2335592500/





Pics from a wedding my sister went to this weekend

~

Any ideas on what I could do to jazz it up a bit, other than tailoring it to fit? The more ideas the better! Thank you wonderful people! Ses xxx

I'm making a quilt. A double quilt. Cos I'm insane...probably. Anyway - this is a big quilt. My sewing machine is normal sized. How does this work!? Do I need to get a quilting hoop and do it by hand? Thanks for your help!

I have a LOT of fabric to stashbust so I thought I'd do some weaving and make some little rugs - just hammered a load of nails into an old frame and voila - I think it's pretty! Will take better photos tomorrow when it's light but I'm so happy with how it turned out - just have to make a fringe and I'm done

I was messing around in the workshop this afternoon, avoiding doing my coursework, and I made these - they're made from brass, I swirled some binding wire up and ran it through the rolling mill and then cut out tear drop shapes from the brass and attached some gold-plated earwires and voila! They've got a brushed finish, if I had had the time I'd have oxidised them but meh, they're still pretty