Weekly round-up

Custom Orders and New Ideas

This week has seen a few custom orders, the largest of which was a set of four of my Mighty Oaks Necklaces but with an additional acorn. This was for a lady who had given birth to twins very prematurely and had since spent a lot of time in hospital under the care of four exceptional nurses. And so these necklaces are for those nurses.

 

Sterling Silver Mighty Oaks from Little Acorns Necklaces

I have also been playing with my metal hole punch and doming tools. The soldering torch will make an appearance again next week and hopefully with some better results than last time as I'd like to turn these into studs. I'm thinking they could be mini moon and black hole studs!

Sterling Silver Mini Moon and Black Hole Domed Studs

Lastly, I wanted to share a photograph of my latest card make - for my Valentine ;)
I used a new stamp from the Gorjuss range and coloured with distress ink and layered with some of the papers from the range. I have, however, had to scribble out the little sentiment to the right - it's just too naughty for general consumption!!

Handmade Valentine's Card

Hope you've enjoyed and join me next time for new ideas!

Ellen

Valentine's Weekend

A cheeky little break!

After having the last two weeks cooped up inside what with the weather, waiting in for post and maintenance men plus a whole day bidding on an auction of comics for the other half (!) I really felt like I needed a short escape!

So I booked a night in a country house within the Brecon Beacons - just look at the view from our room first thing in the morning:

 This is the hotel:

We drove up on the Saturday and on the way up we stopped off at Raglan Castle:

The castle is an interesting mix of ruin and restoration with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. 

On the Sunday we were tipped off about a fantastic walk up to Table Mountain which we started as a loop walk from the hotel - a total of around 7 miles.

Now it's back to it! I have been sketching a lot today working on some designs for handmade chains to go with some beautiful artisan silver charms that arrived from the States last week - pics to follow :)

Ellen

Commission Week

and I can't show you any just yet!

Since my last post I have been either very busy with commissions or feeling crappy! So my creativity was coming in quick bursts here and there before retreating under the duvet with a hot cuppa!

I managed to complete a gorgeous set of relic necklaces:

Relic Necklaces

 and the very last one in line has returned to the lovely Linda who made the lilac glass ring used in the pendant!

I also had a few handmade card requests to get through which are always a great challenge for me as I don't really papercraft daily. I can only show one so far (as the birthday was over the weekend!) and all I had to go on was 'male birthday' and 'silent movie theme possibility'. I loved making this card:

Handmade Silent Movie Birthday Card

I also enjoy the combination of digital designing and traditional papercrafting although this is one of my more 'simple' cards - but then it is sooo hard to do cards for guys!

There will be plently of new designs by the end of this week including more long, knotted necklaces and some bracelets made with new beads from Smitten beads that came last week.

Until then,

Ellen