Hiya folks, nice to catch up with you again. I thought it would be good to play some music right at the beginning, so you can have something to listen to as you read - most of my readers are women, and at the risk of sounding sexist, I think we are good at multitasking. The inspiration for my piece this week was this picture - the pink smoke spreading through the grey in a careless whisper. For once I chose the colour scheme first and picked a peachy-pink druzy teardrop to embroider around, with braids of pale pink and grey and accents of peridot green. Hung on two strands of spectrolite, which is a dark labradorite with the same beautiful flashes of colour, and rose quartz. In last weeks edition of the blog I showed you some polymer clay headpins I made - here they are made up into simple earrings. I applied paint and a coat of resin to get these pretty effects. I even threw some sequins onto the resin on one of them, just because it is the festive season. The earrings are all about 2.5 - 2.7" in length. The black and white drawing I have used to display them on is not life size and is only meant to give an idea of how the earrings would hang from the ear lobe, so don't be taken aback by the seeming 'hugeness' of the jewellery. I took Caprilicious to the 'Family Fun Day' last Sunday. Mike drove me to the venue, on a cold autumn day, only to find that the place was being cleaned - there had been a fortieth birthday party the night before, and the revellers had decided to have a food fight - chicken legs and nuts and crisps were strewn all over the place as well as glitter and streamers and other party stuff and the cleaners had not turned up. The poor organisers were frantically sweeping up all the detritus and eventually made the place habitable. Caprilicious did fairly well and made a few quid for charity, which I put into one of the collection pails at the end of the day. There was the obligatory bouncy castle, line dancing to live music for the kids, face painting, tombola, cake stalls, and a few others that I did not visit. I met Emma, the bath bomb lady - she had a line in home made skin creams and bath products that were cheap and cheerful and were snapped up by people looking for Christmas stocking fillers. In spite of the cold and obligatory rain which always shows up at an outdoor event, loads of people turned out to support the charity. Here are some pictures from the event.
I was exhausted after a day of resisting cake, and spent the rest of the week in a slight daze. Next week, I will be running the Caprilicious Treasure Hunt on the website - I shall post the picture below with a code - it will be found amongst the necklaces in one of the pages of the 'Treasury of Statement Necklaces'. All you have to do is find the picture and code to be entitled to 15% off your entire checkout cart. There will be a new Christmas related code every day, and it will be valid for a week. So, do feel free to have a go, folks. Grab a few Christmas presents and Bling for that office party while you can. Only one code per person please - as the codes are valid for a week, you have plenty of time to pick the stuff you want. That's me for this week folks, thanks for joining me. Catch you next week, same time, same place,
Until then xx
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Hello folks, and a Happy Friday to you. I wonder if you realise that there are only nine weeks and three days to Christmas. Phew! That sounds exhausting. I've been getting mentally prepared for two pre-Christmas stalls, all the presents I need to make, and stuff to take back to India for my show in February. In the meantime, I also have the Christmas Treasure Hunt next week and possibly a giveaway on Caprilicious' birthday in mid November. I am exhausted already! So let me tell you about a couple of these events. First, the Treasure Hunt - I hope a lot of you will join in - it is open to everyone, including ladies who do not live in the UK - if you live in India, you'll just have to wait for your jewellery until I get there in February as I wouldn't want to take any chances with the postal system. Just as it says in the poster above, every day next week, I will place a discount code with a word relating to Christmas amongst the jewellery in the 'Treasury of Statement Necklaces'. Every day will have a different code in a different place on the website - all you have to do is find it and use it at checkout to claim a 15% discount, simple! Here's what the code will look like. So, here's your chance to snag yourself some gifts and treat yourself and your loved ones this Christmas. Have fun shopping. This week, one of my lovely customers sent me a few drawings for a kilt pin she designed for her brother. I picked one of the designs and made a penannular fibula brooch with pale green jade briolettes as accents. No sooner had I put this on Instagram and Facebook (yes, I am now into all sorts of social media!) than Jules Harper, who is a jewellery maker herself, saw it and commissioned one for herself. As it was going to be worn with a dark coloured wrap she had knitted herself, she decided on turquoise briolettes for maximum contrast and I added a few extra curlicues to make it a bit more 'girly'. Which one do you like?? Spice Route This one started it's life from a Tiger Iron cabochon in my stash - Tiger Iron is a stone cut from a specimen of Tiger Eye which has seams of Haematite, Yellow and Red Jasper running through it. It has a beautiful sheen and flashes in the light. If you believe in the metaphysical properties of gemstones,"'Tiger Iron is thought to be a powerful lower Chakra stone, promoting physical vitality, energy, and stamina. Tiger Iron is a helpful aid to those who feel emotionally, mentally or physically exhausted and burned out." To read more, please check out this website. I just love it for it's beauty and would have used it even if it didn't have all these wonderful qualities. Soutache is a strange and interesting genre of jewellery making. It starts when I pick out a stone and stick it onto Lacy's Stiff Stuff - which sounds like it comes from a J K Rowling novel, but is actually a felted card, which is stiff and acts as a backing. I then surround it with bead work and the act of picking out the tiny seed bead colours is what sets the future look of the necklace. By the time the bead work is finished, the piece takes on a life of it's own. I then pick out the colours of braid and sew them on, and we're off and away. At this point, I'm reluctant to put it down and go to bed - I want to know how the story ends. I make no drawings, and so each stage has the capacity to evolve into just about anything depending entirely on what I do next - exciting!! I post pictures on Instagram as I end each day, just before I go to bed - many people ask me where I got the jewellery from especially when I have my exhibitions in India and it helps to have a running display of my work as it evolves, just to prove that I made it. I had a few minutes last weekend to play with clay and quickly made these headpins - they don't look like anything at the moment, but soon, one day they will be beautiful earrings - at least that's the plan for them, we'll have to wait and see if it works out. I cured them on a tile and let them cool slowly so that they would remain flat and then applied a layer of paint. When this dries, I will apply a layer of resin to preserve the paintwork and once set I will be able to turn them into the items of jewellery I visualise in my mind's eye - you'll have to come back next week to find out. That's it this week folks. I have the stall on Sunday and am going to be exhausted next week as I rely on my weekends to relax and recover from the rigours of the week. However, I don't do this very often, so I daresay I will survive. Those of you who live in and around Warwickshire, do come to the Family Fun Day - it promises to be a good day, under cover in case of crappy weather and of course, in a good cause. Have a fabulous weekend, and I'll catch you again next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx Hello folks, thanks for joining me this week. The nights are drawing in and I'm dreading the start of winter where it is dark when you get in the car to leave home, and dark when you get back to it at the end of a day's work. If it weren't for Christmas and all the associated festivity, it would be an intolerable time of the year. In fact Christmas has come early to Nuneaton - at the Slimming World Class I attend the consultant threw a taster session and we all took in Slimming World compatible festive food, shared recipes, and dressed up for the occasion. The lady in the Christmas hat is Cathy Lee, the Slimming World consultant from Nuneaton who works hard and tirelessly with the ladies of Nuneaton to help us loose weight. Here she is when she isn't dressed inappropriately - she's on a cruise, and wearing Caprilicious to boot! She has a lovely, bubbly, endearing personality and is very popular with her groups. I've been getting ready for my stall at the Family Fun Day in 10 days time, and made loads and loads of earrings (could that be a frenzy/orgy of earrings?). I have another stall in early November and then of course there's Christmas and gifts I will need to make so they will come in useful somewhere. Of course, at Caprilicious I don't do things by halves. I try to use hand made components, and I like to make said components myself. I made the components with polymer clay, paint, resin and added semi precious beads, pearls, crystals and Czech glass flowers. The polymer clay shapes were made over a weekend, and then each subsequent step took a couple of days. I think they are rather pretty, though I say so myself. The last two were made using Jewellery Beetle wings - they are perfect for Christmas parties - I have a couple of necklaces I made earlier that I will take to the stall at the Christmas fair in November, everyone loves a bit of Bling! at Christmas. Announcing the Caprilicious Christmas Treasure HuntTo join in the festivities, Caprilicious will be running a daily Treasure Hunt from the 31st of October to the 6th of November. I will place a coupon every day among the pieces of jewellery in the 'Treasury of Statement Necklaces' - each coupon will be valid for one day only and can be used to redeem 15% off any purchases made from Caprilicious on the day. So hurry up and get your gifts and stock up on Bling for that office party. And finally, a reminder of the event next week, I'd love to see you if you are in the area. Have a great weekend, and see you next Friday, same time, same place.
Until then xx Happy Friday, dear readers, how nice to have your company again this week. I have been busy booking my next holiday - it will soon be January and time to visit my 89 year old mother in India again. I find that I get very depressed after a holiday ends, and the only antidote to that is to book another almost immediately. One does need something to look forward to, don't you think? A visit to Bangalore means of course, that I will take Caprilicious Jewellery with me and have a little show, once more at Raintree. I've got used to the place and the way they work, and am comfortable with the footfall there. This time, an old friend from university has a daughter who is to be married in Mysore (two and a half hours from Bangalore) and I am invited. I get to wear my silks and jewellery and it promises to be a grand affair. I love to wear my sarees and walk with a swishy/gliding movement, rather than striding and stomping along like a great galumphing heffalump in my regular trousers and skirts. The family is related to the Mysore royal family and it should be an interesting and lavish affair. Indian weddings are crazy, raucous, and a load of fun, where everyone has a good time except perhaps the hapless bride and groom who wear heavily embroidered and embellished clothes that weigh a ton, and sit sweating by a fire in the heat of an Indian summer, their eyes smarting from the smoke, with the weight of their attire, headgear and make up hampering their every move. I've done my time a long time ago, and now it is somebody elses turn. September is always a manic month in maternity units up and down the country and this year has been no different. Although I had very little time to spare, I played with my beads and braids and an amazonite cabochon caught my eye - I've had it in my stash for ages. Surrounded by hundreds of little tiny Japanese seed beads and strips of soutache braid, this stone sprang to life - I realise now why I let it sit in my stash for such a long time. Set in a conventional manner it's beauty would prove very muted and in my opinion, it's colours have been brought out by the South Western colour scheme of the pendant. I hung it on a simple torque necklace and covered the back with ultrasuede to keep it clean and tidy. I made a couple of pairs of earrings to match a couple of necklaces I made previously - I personally do not believe in wearing more than one piece of jewellery at a time as I tend to think it dilutes the effect of a statement, but a lot of people are used to this concept and ask for earrings to go with their necklaces. And who am I to argue? After all, the customer is always right!! That's me for this week, dear readers. I am due to have yet another busy week and am not looking forward to it. Caprilicious Jewellery will have a stall at a Family Fun day in Nuneaton on the 23rd of October in aid of a couple of charities with our maternity unit as a major beneficiary. If any of you are in the vicinity, do come by. Thanks for joining me today. Have a fabulous week, and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place Until then, xx |
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