Travel files - Latvia (Riga)

Courtesy of Air Baltic, we spent the last few days of our time after the wedding in Riga before flying back to the UK.

They also had snow...



...and ducks, in the snow



and other things in the snow

Creative accounting

I do ocassionally pick up a copy of the Financial Times. I can never be bothered to read it, but there is something nice about using the stocks and shares pages to draw on with charcoal. I hadn't done this for ages as I just haven't had a great deal of time recently but I acquired a copy when travelling last week as they occassionally give you news papers on the plane. I had a choice between the FT, The Mail and something printed in Russian, so the choice was an easy one.



This is the box I keep my receipts in. The scorch marks on the top were as a result of me playing with a pyrography iron, but didn't really like where it was going so never finished the design. I've been wanting to brighten it up to cover over this scribble, but as usual, it's been langishing in the work-in-progress pit for ages.



Just using slightly watered down PVA glue to stick strips of paper to the box allows me to build up the layers and cover the previous attempt at doing something with this box.



Carrying on...



We have this jar at home where we put coins from overseas that we didn't manage to spend on sweets at the airport. Last time I checked in here there were coins from over fifteen different currencies, some of which don't even exist any more and some of which are from places I'll probably never visit again. As I'm still going to be using this for keeping reciepts in, it seems fitting to use some of these coins to embellish the box.



I've just added a couple of stripes of ribbon down the sides then pasted a couple of the coins on top to finish it off.

Standing on ceremony

I have been a bit tardy with the whole blog thing recently, but that is mainly because I have been organising a wedding.

Actually, I say that loosely because I haven't actually be organising a wedding, I've been answering emails to a person who is organising my wedding for me whilst trying to stop other people attempting to out-organise my wedding organiser. Quite frankly, if I had my way, we'd have run off somewhere ourselves and just told everyone when we got back - but the risk of the wrath of family was too much to bear (I started this blog after the "curious incident of the graduating in absentia fail" but you get the general idea).

As far as I could see it though, the easiest way to avoid full on veil-fail was to go abroad. This has several advantages as far as I could see - I don't have to invite people I don't like, I don't have to have an after party and I don't have to give a damn about chair covers and table scatter. In fact, I don't have to do anything because a lovely lady in another country is doing it all for me.

Given that OH proposed in front of a glacier in Iceland, we've chosen somewhere equally freezing to get married; an ice castle in Finland. This rather handily solves a lot of problems for us - in particular not having to worry about anything other than just turning up and trying not to freeze to death. A lot of the traditional things simply just go out the window; which is great for someone like me who really doesn't like to do things because other people think I should and likes even less doing things with such horrible roots just because the meanings have been lost over time. But there was a problem - OH proposed at the end of September and the ice castle only has a short season, so we either winged it and did all the planning in a couple of months or waited until next year.

As far as I can see, planning a wedding doesn't actually involve as much effort as people seem to think it does. Venue - done within a couple of emails, food - checklist with the venue, guest list - as short as possible, dress - that is what the internet is for and the rest of it was just a case of talking nicely to the make-up lady in debenhams and going to the outdoor shop in search of ski gear we could fit under a dress and a suit. All of the sundry bits came from folksy and etsy.

But then there is the issue of the flowers. I wasn't actually going to bother with flowers because it will be minus five inside the venue, but when I was sorting through my craft box, I found some wonderful old glass vintage buttons and combined with some lovely plastic flowers I bought from folksy, a frost-free flower bunch resulted.



Twisting the beads, buttons, broken jewellery and flowers together allows me to build up sprays. The wires are paper coated cake wires and just came out of my sugarcraft box.



Carrying on allows layers and layers of stuff to be wired together.



Eventually it gets to this stage and the shape starts to appear. I was aiming for a teardrop shaped bunch rather than a round one.



Further building up of beads and buttons, then sealing the sprays in with white waxed florists tape gives something that looks like this. I've made a matching buttonhole for OH using the same sort of technique. I think I'll ditch the snowflake ribbon though.



Wrapping the handle with white yarn to soften it a bit and make it easier to hold...



Then with lace to cover the yarn. I bought this back from a fabric market in Korea orginally.



Brightening up the handle...



And all finished. I won't be throwing it though, it weighs over half a kilo.



Huge thank you to these folksy people, whose shops I raided for beads and the like to help finish this project: Destash by SimJaTa

Travel files - Iceland (Reykjavík to Jökulsárlón)

I was just sorting through my files when I came across some of my travel snaps from last september. I fully admit I'm a dreadful photographer, but just sometimes the scenery does all the work for you.











I could live in Iceland, I really could. It's amazing.

Secret santa - take two

We're doing a secret santa on folksy as well and I've been itching to post this make for ages, but I didn't want to risk my victim finding out it was me - so I decided to wait a little while until we did the reveal.

Swapping is all well and good, but I have a shop full of plastic cupcakes and as much as I enjoy kawaii crafts, I wouldn't actually wear any of it myself as it simply doesn't suit me. I'm always quite mindful of this when swapping as I worry my swap partners wouldn't wear it either as it's quite a niche craft, so I tend to try and go for something a little different if it's a suprise gift.

My secret santa partner from folksy this year is the super-mega talented Tanya from Bluebutton and Bluebuttonbride; who makes, amongst other things the most gorgeous button bouquets. Her work is quite simply stunning and appeals to my love of bright colours, simple shapes and non-fluffy things. I've decided therefore to go for something unfussy and simple and actually make some jewellery for a change. Earrings are out, as I don't know if she has her ears pierced, so it looks like a necklace will be the way forward.

I'm not going to pretend that this is the first attempt I've had with metal clay and I should probably admit I have done a silversmithing course in the past too before I start.

This is 1 mm thick half-hard sterling silver wire, which I've cut into several short lengths. I like half-hard wire as it behaves itself when you are trying to bend it, but isn't too soft to get bent randomly.



This is PMC slip, a suspension of PMC in water. It's like a thick paste and I find it quite nice for painting on things like flowers as you can burn away the core to leave the fine silver metal shape. I rather like it as a medium because of the way that it flows. Most of the time, you'd use it to repair cracks and stick things together, but I find it useful as a material in its own right.



I'm just dipping the ends of my bits of wire into the slip so I get a blob on the end, then allowing it to drip down to form a more organic shape. I want it to look a little like unopened flower buds or snowdrops, so I'm rotating it a little as it dries off so it form almost petal-like ripples. Once the first layer has dried off a little bit, I can repeat the process to build up a bit more slip, then leave it to dry again.



I like to leave it to dry off a little bit before I fire it anyway, so I've just stuck the ends in blu-tack to support it and left it overnight.



I find this stuff actually fires fine on the gas ring of the cooker. Please remember to protect your hands if you want to do this.



Curling the end around a cocktail stick and putting a soft curve into the wires provides me with four little irregular silver buds.



After firing, I can use a polishing wheel and an engraving tool to burr out any remaining bits of crispy matrix and lift off the firing marks. In this case, I've chosen a course polishing wheel and have continued up the wires to texture both the petals and the stems. This serves to smooth out the join between the metal slip and the wire and make the whole piece look a little more continuous. The coarse polishing wheels leave a more intresting textured finish as well rather than a high shine, which I quite like. Working the wheels round the buds allows me to open up some of the waves in the fired slip so the whole thing looks a bit more organic. Fired PMC behaves like the metal of a similar thickness would, so it's quite mallable and amenable to being poked around. I strung the buds onto a slightly oxidised silver snake chain for a bit of contrast.

And finished :) I apologise for the naff lighting again, it's really late!



I packed this up in a black cardboard box, then packed the whole thing into a larger box stuffed with organza and some buttons insted of packing material as I know the recipent would be able to find a use for them (and it would making pre-Christmas guessing hard!).

Secret santa

We are doing a secret santa at work. We don't normally, mainly because my boss thinks it's a pants idea, but after a lot of persuasion, he agreed. Only I was in Germany when they dished out the names so I only found out about this on Monday. And it has to be done by tomorrow.

I have one of our undergraduate project students - so I can't torture them too much. Actually, I could have but I didn't have time to have a t-shirt printed with "If the North is so great, why are you here?" or "I love Thatcher" - both of which he would have found beyond offensive.

So it's into the craft stash for a quick throw together.

I have this box that I liberated from the recyling at work. It used to have my hot air gun in it.



I had actually attempted to paint it red, but I didn't actually have enough red paint to finish the job properly.



The box also has an insert, which I am going to leave in place though to help hold the contents where I want them.



I've just loosely tucked a piece of tied-dyed cotton over the insert, put it back in the box, then cut an opening in the front of it.



Because the painting didn't work, I've covered it red wrapping paper.



Then cutting through it to reveal the opening I made before wrapping, tucking the loose paper underneath and adding some die-cut lettering.



Fill with an assortment of scary alcoholic things and some sweets, then inserting a piece of clear overhead projector film over the opening gives the final product.



Hopefully it will make him smile tomorrow morning.

Simple things...

I have been searching for stamps with snowflakes on for a long time (mainly for stamping wedding things, but also for stamping OH's forehead when he's asleep), then I came across these in Muji a couple of weeks back.



It was in fact - one of the highlights of my trip to London - having watched a crazy opera I didn't understand (talking dogs, Soviets and ermm... testicles?) and wandered aimlessly round Camden market looking for a dress.

I did my degree in London (and it wasn't even that long ago) but I remember Camden market being a bit more arty than it is now. I think I must have seen the same t-shirts on fifteen different stalls. Even the goth shops are full of plastic and shoelaces rather than the velvet and ribbons I remember. Noone uses nice fabric anymore.

So I spent a few minutes this afternoon decorating my folksy envelopes, because we don't have snow in Oxford - just coldness. It's a simple thing, but it made me smile.



Especially this one...



because it looks like a virus...