Well I warned you

Bluebell Wood Necklace  - Sold

After a day watching the wedding though I'd no intention of doing more than checking out the highlights I'm back to inflicting my jewellery on you.

That and Dora and how beautifully she is growing up and her amazing copper coloured eyes

Dora Copper Eyes Priceless

I'd show you my new short haircut too but that would be just too much.

Shameless

Iris bracelet

 Here's me shamelessly showing off my jewellery again. Well I don't get out much. The sunshine has me desperately missing my garden sitting on the front doorstep here just doesn't cut it. So I seem to be going with a decidedly flowery theme of late for a not too flowery person.

The Iris bracelet and necklace boldly teaming purple and green which some people don't seem to think go. It's one of my favourite combinations maybe it's the eccentric old lady coming to the fore a bit prematurely if so it's been happening for ... mm yes well ah cough quite a lot of years now since I was in my teens. Anyway it reminds me of Iris'

Iris Bracelet and Necklace Set  - Sold

The Tiger Lily necklace well the colour reminds me of lillies and it got tigers eye beads. The logic is there you know I don't just pluck it out of thin air. So that's me that is I'm gonna have a cup of coffee and make more jewellery and oh yes you will have to look at that too.

Tiger Lily Necklace £20

Too much colour

This bank holiday weekend I have been experimenting some more with patination the chain is liver of sulphur, the leaves are heat patinated, the flower is ammonia and the chest is not having the sense to get out of the sun.

We spent a glorious sunny day at Bolton Abbey yesterday and had a barbeque next to the river watching big kids and little kids and dogs paddling about then spent all evening slapping on the after sun It's what bank holidays are all about

Cats and Blogs

No the title doesn't mean anything but then again does it ever? It mainly means I was thinking about blogging and to be honest I've not a lot to say except about jewellery and the cats and you've already had jewellery this week.

 I don't like to blog about work because well I'm at home now and though it's a rich untapped seam of comedy capers it's not nice to talk about people behind their backs. Especially people who might sack you. Hell now I'm tempted !

Work does come into it a bit because I decided to share some pics which TS sent to cheer my working day (which I looked at in my break of course!)

I suppose the reference to sponges and bottle tops needs explaining ? For some reason Max is under the impression that washing up sponges are his natural prey. He hunts them down wherever they hide then runs round the house with them in his mouth growling. The sort of thing that other people's cats do with mice. He likes his sponges succulent, that is fished out of the washing up bowl as wet as possible, so that he can cause maximum mayhem running round soaking everything in sight. Our bed being the favoured final resting place.

His other main obsession is beer bottle tops. The minute you open a bottle of beer he swoops in and runs off with the top. It disappears in the time it takes to reach for a glass though usually it reappears upside down when you are walking round the house in bare feet looking for the washing up sponge. I did tell you Max was TS's cat didn't I?

Dora of course is perfect

And the winner is

Blue Daisies Bracelet

In the end the daisies won. That's if they are daisies they remind me now of those lovely blue wild geraniums which I have always vowed to grow and never got round to. The patinas and the links have given me a boatload of new ideas to try out. It's no wonder it takes me so long to make stuff I'm forever skipping along thinking of the next thing I could do.

Isn't it hard to take a picture of your own arm!

You can see from the blue green patina I finally got my ammonia. By the way have any of you seen the Travel Lodge ad with the teddy bears? Is the pink one in the ice cream cone really saying f**k off ? Surely not.


Right off to wash my hair and get depressed about Monday and going to work.

ps added Monday    -    Re- reading this I realise I sound completely manic sorry no excuse

On the other arm

So mmm right back on the 20th March I happily published pics of my prototype daisy chain bracelet but do you know I just couldn't quite take to it. So since then I have been mostly turning copper into less copper to sort of misquote and plagarise (yes all at the same time) Terry Pratchett on alchemists as I tried to get what I wanted.


As you can see I  went off at a bit of a tangent

Dark sulty poppies

Not much sweetness and summer meadows going on here.

But it's a lovely sunny day so I'm torn,  do I go back and revisit the daisies or do I stay with the dark side of the force?

Bright shiny daisies

The Cube

I went looking for ammonia on Friday to get a blue/green patina on copper. Could I find any? Well obviously not or I wouldn't of mentioned it. Whilst wondering round the shops chuntering to myself about not being able to buy basic things because greedy b*****d supermarkets wanted to repackage basic stuff and make us buy 50 different cleaning products at 10 times the price and the world wouldn't be in the mess it's in if everyone didn't fall for it I spotted something called a cat cube. I had got myself into the kind of mood where I thought they'll probably get just as much pleasure from a cardboard box,  but them remembered Max's unfortunate habit of peeing in cardboard boxes.

I should have known it was going to be trouble when I undid the packaging and it sprang out like one of those self inflating lifeboats and smacked me in the face. This was at work so at least someone got a laugh out of it. It's sort of a springy wire and cloth type thing with cat sized holes on three sides and it defied all my attempts to get it back in the packaging so I finished up kind of screwing it up and securing it with elastic bands then sat on the bus waiting for it to explode out of my bag all the way home.

Dora liked the look of it and sort of went in and out of the holes and batted the bits of tape around, thought it might be a good thing to sleep in then along came Max. He promptly evicted her and claimed it for his very own boys toy. Initially it was just a case of storing his collection of beer bottle tops in there and repelling Dora as she attempted to get back in which he did at the cost of one of his bottle tops. Dora tried tempting him out by batting the top around the floor. This is where the trouble really started for whilst trying to get his top back but keep at least his bum in the cube he discovered that it was mobile. Thus began the reign of terror,  nothing quite freaks out a semi senile old dog who lives up to the name of Sissy like a bright orange cube with claws hurtling across the livings room

The cube is coming to get you

 Especially when it blocks the path to the door

Are you feeling lucky dog?