Loving the Sunshine

How awesome is this weather? I am completely loving it. Summer just puts me in an extra good mood and helps motivate me to get things done. And that is exactly what I have been doing this week — getting lots done! (Warning: The Chrissy Decorations that I made for my ornament swap are in this post... so don't scroll down too far if you don't want to see them!)

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to get along and see the Dalai Lama talk in Auckland. Whilst he isn't a public speaker as such, he is an amazingly insightful and down to earth guy. His philosophies are truely wonderful, yet are so simple. I left the talk feeling very enlightened and positive, so it was a lovely start to the weekend.

The wonderful Dalai Lama

You may have seen my blog last week about my little melt down I had, when my 160 pendants that I had coated with my new brand of lacquer failed to set, leaving me with 160 unusable pendants. I was worried that they wouldn't be able to be saved BUT yippeee... they have :) I was frantically researching alternative products to use to make the pendants completely waterproof rather than just splashproof. I came up with a couple of options and reluctantly decided to give resin a go. I am very pleased with the result and although they are still drying, I am confident that they will all be completely set and sealed by Friday (just in time for Crafternoon Tea on Saturday!) I had heard some really scary stories about resin like the toxic fumes, making sure the mix was accurate and thoroughly mixed and also about the bubbles it is prone to getting. Thankfully aside from being a bit of a messy exercise to begin with, I eventually got the hang of it and spent quite a few  hours carefully coating my pendants. I'm very excited that they are now waterproof too :)

I was very excited to receive another Christmas decoration in the post yesterday. It was a lovely beaded snowflake (I think!) with a sweet little angel hanging below made by Helene of Mira Design. It's going to look great on my Chrissy Tree.

Thanks Helene - it's lovely :)

As I mentioned at the top of this post, I finally managed to get my decorations finished today and in the post. They took me ages, as they are all hand sewn, but I am pretty chuffed with how they turned out. I used a variety of materials to make them — fabric, ribbon, buttons and freshwater coin pearl. I made a couple of extras for a gift and for my own tree. Here they are...

Little Handmade Tree Angels

Another busy night tonight as I am cutting out fabric ready for assembly tomorrow. Want to make sure I have my new products ready for Crafternoon Tea this weekend. Very excited about it — it's going to be a blast. Looking forward to seeing all my crafty buddies and selling lots of goodies to Christmas punters :)

Enjoy your evening x

Shopping, Wine and Good Times

This week has been a very crafty community week for me. On Sunday I popped on down to Kraftbomb with Jess to have a browse and do a spot of shopping. Of course, I was meant to be shopping for Chrissy pressies for friends and fam, but it ended up all being purchases for me. I picked myself up an adorable wee owl from Purrsie — I'd been eyeing these up for a while now and when she mentioned on her blog that stocks were low, I grabbed one quick smart! My other lil purchases were some super cute badges from Nut and Bee and an adorable little spotty ring by Leila Loves Handmade.

My wee purchases :)

On Tuesday night I was lucky enough to be able to head along to the Lucky Penny Crafty Club in the city. I was supposed to have my final class that night (I've just completed my Small Business Management Cert - Go Me!) but it got postponed until this evening, so my Tuesday was freed up. If you are ever free on the 1st Tuesday of the month, I highly recommend coming along to one of the Lucky Penny evenings. They are great fun, and a good excuse to drink wine, eat cake and talk craft (couldn't get any better really!). It was the first one I have been able to get along to, and it was great to meet some new crafty peeps. There were a few pics taken, but alas none by me, so hopefully they'll make their way to fellow crafters blogs soon.

This week I also received my first "Christmas Ornament Swap" in the mail. I just love getting packages in the post. It's a hand felted mini stocking with my name on it and was made by Peach of Twohand Jewelry.

I really need to get onto making my decorations to send out, I just can't decide what I want to make. Think that might be a Friday night project for me.

On a final note, I have been having a nightmare of a time with Pendants this week. The supposed "new and improved" lacquer I purchased to coat my pendants with has turned out to be far from that. So I've been frantically researching a better alternative to re-do them in time for Crafternoon Tea next weekend. Here I was thinking I was being super prepared getting them ready the last couple of weeks, only to discover a week before the market that they need fixing - eek! I'll be fine though, just maybe a tad busier next week than anticipated!

Hope everyone is getting themselves all prepared for Christmas... I know I'm not ;)

xx

Pendant Market Display

As I mentioned in my last blog, I purchased supplies to make myself a display for my pendants to sit on at the markets. Well today was such a glorious day outside, I decided the get all my materials and head out side in the sunshine for some sawing and sanding.

 Supplies for my pendant display

Now I am in no way a green thumb, but I do really appreciate gardens. The place that I recently moved into has no shortage of gardens and flowers and whilst it may not be my particular taste in garden style, there is undoubtedly a lot of pretty colours and flowers amongst it. This was bits of my scenery whilst I was at work creating a display.

Some of the pretty flowers in my garden

So after taking some snaps of some pretty flowers, I got to business and cut, sanded and assembled my display. I am pretty stoked with how it looks, and it works really well so it was a successful venture :)

  

Left: My finished display

Right: A couple of Pendant cards positioned, to make sure it fits nicely!

I am still in two minds about whether or not I will cover it in Brown Paper, as I had originally planned. I quite like the natural wood look, but I think natural brown kraft paper stuck on with Mod Podge might look quite cool too. What do you think?

Anyway, I am looking forward to testing it out at Love Handmade on Saturday morning. Hope you are all coming along to say hello and check out all the talented peeps at the market :) Will be fab to see you there x

My Market Travel Case

I had a right pain in the butt of a time trying to get all my pendants to stay upright in a box and not get all messed up everytime I picked it up last week, so my weekend endeavour was to create a carry case for all my market stock. I had an idea in my head on how I thought it should work, so it was off to the Stationery place, the Warehouse and Mitre 10 for supplies.

Supplies

I picked up a pretty pink patterned box for the Warehouse for about $20 to use as the case, and purchased some heavy black corrugated plastic for the dividers. I carefully measured it all out and began cutting.

 Cutting and Measuring... it's getting there!

It took me WAY longer than I anticipated, and there was a couple of minor design glitches along the way (the long dividers started to bow with the more dividers I added) but all in all I am very stoked with how it turned out!

The finished case :)

It fits all of my current pendants, as you can see, and has plenty of room for all the news ones I am busy making! My final touch was to put a dividing piece of plastic along the top, so that I could sit all the rest of my other stock, such as headbands and coffee cup sleeves on the top.

When I was out getting materials to make this carry case, it also dawned on me that my current market display needed some refining, so I also picked up some bits to make a pendant display. It's nothing super fancy, but it'll make it all a bit easier! Will be making that this week so will post another blog about that once it's done!

K x

Views, Displays and Pendants!

Good Morning all :) What a lovely, but windy, day it is today. I can hear the ferns and trees that are close to the house, scratching against the walls. It sounds eerie at night time but I quite like the sound during the day. Look at the gorgeous view I am able to look at everyday from one of my office windows.

I am pretty lucky where I am currently living, it's so lovely and peaceful out here. I have to move in a couple of months though, unfortunately, and I just hope that I can get somewhere that is just as nice :) I thought I should try and take some more pictures before we have to move, for memories sake.

This morning when I got up I managed to take a semi-decent pic of my jewellery display. The sun doesn't hit my side of the house early in the day, so it's still not the best photo, but it'll give you an idea as to what it looks like.

As you can see, the display is pretty chockablock with earrings, so a larger one is definitely needed! But nevertheless, I will soon be offering these for sale. Not sure whether or not they will be made to order, or if I'll make a heap up yet or not... but you too, will soon be able to get your hands on one of these beauties ;) hehe

I'm heading out for the afternoon, so my pendants should all be dry and ready for their second coat tomorrow. Getting excited about having them all finished :) For some odd reason though, on a couple of them, the paper has cracked underneath. It looks quite cool, but I'll need to work out why that's happening so it doesn't do it in the future!

Here they are, drying on my desk. I seriously need a bigger desk!

The chores aren't doing themselves this weekend (no matter how hard I wish!) so it's off to do that for a couple of hours before heading out to enjoy the fresh air. Enjoy your Sunday x

A beautiful day for making things

Well my first lot of supplies arrived in the post yesterday afternoon, how exciting! It was a good thing that I had my course to go to last night or else I would have sat up all hours playing with them. Anyway, I got up reasonably early and after checking emails and Facebook (priorities people! hehe) I have now started working on the first of my pendants. I have been wanting to make these for so long now and am really pleased to have had such a creative burst this last couple of months. It has definitely spurred me on to get back into it.

Here is a little picture of my wee workstation (I really need a bigger designing space!).

I have had my selection of gorgeous scrapbooking paper (after my lil shopping spree at NZ Scrapbook last week) just sitting here, waiting to be turned into something. I can tell that my obsession with paper is only going to get worse over the coming months as I start to work on all my different product ranges.

The warm sun beaming through my window is just delightful this morning, so I think I will trim these pendants and then go and make a coffee and soak up some rays. Best make the most of it before the unpredictable kiwi weather decides it's had enough sunshine for the day and becomes overcast.

Hope everyone is having a fabulous day :)