So it has been forever and a day (almost a year in fact!) since I've updated this blog. I've been busy making jewelry, learning to live with my lovely husband, and traveling back and forth from home to Atlanta and back. I finally have some pretty business cards for my etsy store and uniform packaging. Seems like a small thing, but it makes me all excited! Here is a sneak peak of the new logo:

Pretty happy with how it is coming along, although inking an image in Photoshop is way harder without my old Wacom tablet. I need to save up for a new one! I'm branching out from my bead work and starting to create more items with wire and chain mail. I learned to do the tree of life from a tutorial by Ellen Thurmond.

Sterling silver wire, yellow and rose gold fill wire, and sunstone chips.

Copper wire with a black coating and rose gold colored copper wire with a soapstone moon.

Sterling silver and Rose gold filled jumprings. This is a variation on a stepping stone pattern. I wear this a LOT. It is my new favorite piece of jewelry!

Saved one of my favorite cameos. I've got a minor obsession with cameos - many more coming soon!

I have yet to get a really good name for this piece, but it will be in my store soon. Swarovski rivoli, crystals, and a piece of rock that I picked up at a craft show. I'm not sure what it is, so if anybody knows, get in touch!

Ok, I promise that is the end of the picture spam for now. My husband and I are working to get all the inventory sorted out, photographed, and carefully wrapped before we put up the new listings this week. I hope that everyone has had a good Easter weekend and I'll have more updates soon!

Flowers

So for the past several months I had been working on making flowers for Michael and my wedding in June. Last week I had a "cat incident" in the box where I was keeping them. So this past weekend I went insane trying to re-create a couple dozen flowers to at least making my bouquet. These are the results! Each flower is made of either fabric, ribbon, or paper and they all have wire stems. I bought the gold leaves and dried flowers to fill out the arrangement. The cuff on the bouquet is made from felt with little card suit cutouts hand embroidered on, and it is edged with some vintage lace. The crystal heart slide charm on the back of the bouquet is one of the first things Michael ever gave me so I wanted that part of him there. :)

The last picture is a closeup so you can see the Alice in Wonderland characters in the flowers. I wanted to somehow add little teacups or something as charms in the bouquet but find somebody that sells blue/white mini cups is harder than I anticipated. For my very first bouquet I've ever made, I'm pretty darn pleased!

Kanzashi flower

So I've been puttering about making flowers for the wedding and the latest is a kanzashi flower that I made from 1.5 inch ribbon squares and 2 inch squares cut from this really pretty pale blue and gold fabric. I hand serged the edges of the fabric with a blanket stitch because even with the quilt grid fusible interfacing (2 inch squares already drawn on the fusible makes things so MUCH easier!!!) it likes to unravel. At any rate I used a big pearl brad to finish off the center and I'm really pleased with how these are turning out.

The only down side to these flowers is that because I do such a tiny blanket stitch (I'll show more pictures later) each one takes me about 3.5 hours. Since I want to make about 2 dozen of these... yeah it's going to take a while. ^^; My mother made several carnation type flowers with the same fabric that just came out beautifully and I'll be making corsages with them. Yay! I keep switching between making fabric flowers and paper flowers. I have a flower obsession!

Annemarie taught me how to fold these paper flowers back around Christmas. Same color scheme as my fabric ones. I printed Alice in Wonderland characters on squares and folded them to put them into the flowers. I'm still not sure if I like the paper or fabric ones more! What do you think? (Well I hope somebody reads this!)

Wedding Headband

So like I said there was ultimately going to be pictures of my headband I've been working on. Oh and a picture of the necklace I made. The earrings were made by me too, but they are a bit hard to see because they are delicate. I'm working up a bracelet next. :) Please ignore all the fabric and craft stuff in the background in the shot of me. I can't help it I make things! Also... need to organize in here better cause I admit, it's become a mess and I can't really find anything. All the pictures are taken with my iPhone and for some reason it's turning things orange with the front facing camera. It's weird.

This is the headband from the side without the flower so you can see the embroidered heart at the bottom that says LOVE. I wanted to be able to wear my flower as a pin and other stuff too because I overthink things.

So yeah I also need to grow my hair out more cause it's pretty sparse. Ah well, things have been made! The wedding is sort of a Mad Hatter tea party and my colors are Ivory/Cream, Aqua/lt blue, and Gold. So, I wanted the headband to be pretty over the top. Still no ideas on how I'm doing makeup or wearing the veil though. Suggestions are welcome. :D

Starting up a craft blog

So this is going to be my first craft blog. I'm basically going to be posting stuff I've made, though for the next few months it's likely to all be wedding related as I am TOTALLY a DIY bride. Though I do admit I cheat now and then and use kits. :D My next project is going to be working on a cover for a guest book for the wedding out of felt and leathers. Cross my fingers it turns out well! I'm really not sure what else to say now, except HI! Mrs. Cthulhu says hi as well!

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