What I've been making - Custom Orders :)

I've had a crafty weekend!  I've had a couple of custom orders to do, so I thought I'd share them with you!

First one was a personalisation on my birthstone key necklace.  Lovely for an 18th/21st birthday present, this one has a peridot Swarovski crystal - peridot is the birthstone for August.  

Each charm is on a separate ring so you can wear all three or any combination, and the crystal and pearl are hung on headpins that have a little twist under the loop.  The crystal is 6mm and the pearl is 4mm, so it's still dainty.

The next order I had was for 9 custom wine glass charms for a bridal party.  The theme is orange and pewter, so after a chat with the bride, I went for pretty silver tone charms with Swarovski crystals and pearls.

I'm really pleased with them!  I love custom orders because I get to try out colour schemes I wouldn't necessarily have tried otherwise.  The crystal satin Swarovski crystals really sparkle in the light (excuse the photo - I'm away at the moment without my photo cube!).  They're off to a lady in the US - I hope she's happy with them!

And here they are all packaged up to go!  As they're for a bridal party I put each one in a separate organza bag, ready to give to each person as a keepsake - a pretty reminder of the day!

Lastly, I tried my hand at something totally different.  I love baking so I decided to make a birthday cake for my OH.  My cakes never turn out like the pictures (whose do?!) but they usually taste good.  Anyway, with this much chocolate in it, it was bound to be tasty... :D

I found the recipe on the BBC website here, highly recommended if you want a quick and easy recipe for soft, chocolatey goodness!  

A few updates - prints now available

So again I feel I should apologise for the long absence!  Summer months are busy for gigging musicians and I haven't had much time off.  That and things are picking up in the shop so I've been keeping on top of orders.  I have finally started adding prints to my shop though!  :)  I'll put more on that in a sec but first, there's no space to write this on Etsy so I'll put it here - I've been selling more of these bracelets recently than I ever expected! (thank you if you've bought one!)  At the moment they're sold out, but that's temporary.

I've run out of the little bird charms.  I've got some more on order, so hopefully I can get these back in stock soon, so if you are wanting one, I will be making some more.  :)  I've also been making plans for a Harry Potter inspired bracelet, and in the meantime I made this blue one, centred more around Annie and Finnick.  Again though, until I get my little birds I only have one in stock!

Anyway, that's my little service update :)

Back to the prints - I'm really pleased about this because I've been dabbling in photography for a while now - I had a DSLR for Christmas a few years ago and have been experimenting with it ever since.  I finally decided to take the leap and list some of my photographs in my shop.  At the moment I'm just selling them as prints, but I have been looking into greetings cards, calendars, and more.  Here are a couple I've just listed.  I'd be really interested to know what you all think!

This one was taken in a little patch of woodlands in Dorset in 2010.  It's such a pretty place I have a number of images from that spring.  Every year it fills with pretty bluebells, and the light was just perfect on this particular day.  








This photograph was taken in July 2012 on my recent trip to the Loire Valley, Brittany and the surrounding area (see previous post!).  This is the Passage du Gois, a natural road between Beauvoir-sur-Mer and the Isle of Noirmoutier. The road is flooded twice a day by high tide.  Luckily for me, the beautiful weather and the timings lined up and we crossed just at sunset.  It really was an incredible sight!  


So yeah, you'll be seeing more of my photography sneaking into the shop - I'll mostly be listing nature and landscape photographs.  I'm also into sports & gig photography so I might put those up in an album but probably not in the shop.  As with most of my work, I'm not too focussed on any one thing, I just tend to go everywhere with my camera and see what catches my eye! 

Lastly, the final reason for my recent disappearances - I'm moving house!  I'll no longer be based in the Midlands, but I'm moving up to South Yorkshire to start a full-time day job.  I'll still be running my shop and blog, but over the next few months I might be a bit quiet.  However, one of my main excitements about the new house is I'm getting my own craft room!  No more scrabbling in bags and boxes for bits of ribbon or those crystals I know I have somewhere - I'll actually have a space to set everything out - YAY!  :)