Have you met Laura?

Over a year ago now, Laura decided to arrange a meet up for Folksy sellers in the local area and invited me along as we’d been to fairs and stuff together even though I wasn’t active over there any more. What actually happened is Laura, Zara and I (who had met before at various craft fairs) ended up meeting up regularly, first for dinner and now it’s turned into a Bingo ritual.

Months ago now we were talking about my blog and I said to Laura that I would write a post about her and only now am I getting round to that, sorry Laura! So this is my first of a two part installment about my friends online who became offline friends and who make lovely things. Come back tomorrow to look at Zara’s lovely wares!

Laura makes jewellery under the name Laura’s Jewellery and has done for at least four years now, possibly longer I haven’t asked, but I know she was opposite me at my very first craft fair (blogged about in 2008!). It was a rubbish fair, we shall say no more and just show some pretty things. Honestly I’ve no idea how she does these but aren’t they great?

She has some fab butterflies in this style too, however my dislike of insects with wings (phobia?) dictates them inappropriate for showing here…

And this is my personal favourite item in the whole shop…

She is an active member of the Craft Britannia team on Etsy. her Etsy shop is HERE so make sure you go bookmark it.

She’s also on Twitter.

And Pinterest.

Oh and Facebook– go there too!

And her dog Ellie is from the same place we got Penny, so obviously being a dog lover I had to include a picture of her sweet Alsatian/Husky face! Look at those huge ears!

Advertisement

Sweet little giveaway

So, the blog is all fixed up good and true to my word, here is a giveaway!

I have for you…

• a vintage hook and eye resin pendant made by me
• Over a fat quarter of Lecien Un Amour de Cuisine fabric
• a mini retractable tape measure covered with hedgehog fabric of my design and made by me
• a big pile of fabric scraps with solids, rooftop garden, Liberty, Kaffe Fassett, a bit of Storyboek, Pezzy Print, Meadow Friends, Grand Finale and much more all mixed in. Of course all you stitchy people will know what do do with these, but if you’re a resin jewellery fan following this blog for quite some time, you could embed your favourite snippets and make jewellery from them 🙂
  

So you want to win the whole lot?

Leave me a comment here before midnight (GMT) on Monday 11th June. Tell me anything you like, maybe how you found my giveaway? Leave me your blog address if you have one if you like so I can have a nosey, or maybe recommend your favourite one if you haven’t got one. Giveaway open internationally.

***

Bonus prize:

• 6x 10″ squares of my fabrics- hedgehogs, cats and chickens with the co-ordinating dots to go with them 
• A tape measure custom made for you to your favourite colours

To win these prizes, tweet about my giveaway with a link to this page making sure you reference me so I can count you in (I’m @pennydog). The winner will be randomly selected from my @mentions section on Twitter so PLEASE DON’T LEAVE AN ADDITIONAL COMMENT ABOUT THIS! 

***

Feel free to follow my blog. I’d like that but it’s not essential. I will be doing some free block patterns and stuff soon as a BOM if I have enough regulars interested. And tutorials and what-not- I’m planning on having a play with gelatin printing my own fabric very soon and showing you what I did along the way. So yeah, hopefully you might want to stick around….

Good luck!

(Oh and this won’t get you extra entries or anything, but it would be great if you voted for me over here: http://www.crafteroo.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,9491.0.html)

Sneaky Secret Jewellery Sale

Just for you dear reader! I have lots of my resin jewellery just sat in a drawer so I thought I would root out some handmade bargains for you- just e-mail me if you fancy any of this little lot: kerry_l_wilkinson(At) hotmail.com

Prices include UK postage and all items are boxed and on chains where applicable.

Textured yellow and silver bangle – medium/large – £8

Little Crucifix Pendant – £5

Blue embedded fabric pendant on ribbon – £6

Jumbo purple rose ring (adjustable) – £4

French Kids vintage graphic pendant – £6

New York graphic pendant – £7

Large red heart brooch -£4

Coffee Drops Cufflinks – £7

Ladybird ring (approx size L) – £4

Scrabble tile pendants – £3.50 each

 

Thanks for looking!

Another quick tutorial- paper ephemera pendant

Following on from yesterday, I thought I’d do another mini-tutorial, this time using the glass cabs and settings from Beadcrafty. They are both 18mm x 22mm ovals so are compatible with each other, which means you can get the two essential parts from the same place.

You will need…

A bezel, a cab, a piece of paper for the image (scrapbook, ephemera, photograph, whatever!), scissors and Ranger Glossy Accents.

Squirt a bean sized amount of Glossy Accents onto the flat side of the cab and squish it down over the part of the paper you want in the necklace. Push it so that the glass goes clear again (Glossy Accents is cloudy when wet) and there are no trapped bubbles. Once happy with the position, wipe off the excess glue from the edges with a paper towel or a rag. Leave to dry for at least half an hour, preferably a few hours if you can spare them.

Cut around the cab close to the edge.

Squeeze a pea sized amount of glossy accents on the inside of the bezel and push it around with the nozzle to evenly coat it. Stick the glass piece on top.

I’ve got a few secret sewing projects going on for Christmas, so I can’t show you them just in case, but I will show you a bit of stippling I did yesterday on one of them. It was my first attempt at this, and I found it quite therapeutic- the texture is lovely. And I must say the pedal-less operation was particularly useful!

PennyDog’s Bumper Jewellery Giveaway

I’m having a big clearout at home because I’m sick of living and working in a dump. None of my craft stuff has a permanent home yet because of financing the garage renovation, so this week is the week it get SORTED, or at least we start to.

I’ve also been entering a lot of giveaways in the blogosphere recently so it’s only fair I offer you one, dear reader! And also it will help me clearout some of the stuff I keep clinging on to…

So here’s the prize….

That’s right, three pieces of jewellery for one lucky winner each representing different times in my jewellery making life, here’s more info about them…

This necklace I made 3-4 years ago with precious metal clay, which means it is 99.9% pure silver (though I have added a patina to it which is why parts look dark). The stone in the middle is a garnet and I remember setting it to be a total nightmare and after shouting at it, my OH set it for me, cos he’s good like that. The chain and jump ring are sterling silver and I still have a tag on it from a fair, priced at £28.

This one is even older, I’ll have probably made it whilst I was at sixth form, or the first year of university. Beadweaving was my thing back then when I was less impatient and time-poor, and this small to medium size bracelet is circular peyote in pink around a memory wire core with a magnetic fastener. I remember magnetic fasteners were really hard to get hold of in the UK at the time- they were the new thing! This was around the time when Bead and Button had to be specially ordered from The States though as it wasn’t readily available in Smiths. The clear embellishments on it are tumbled chips of rock crystal. Shiny.

Last but not least, this piece is about 18 months old and is pretty fabric in resin on a black ribbon necklace. I just randomly selected this from my £12 craft fair display since I don’t sell jewellery at fairs at the moment.

So there you are, three pieces of handmade jewellery retailing at around £50. To enter to win, leave me a comment on this thread before midnight on Sunday 30th and I will draw the winner on Monday 31st October 🙂

New stuff!

Yes, really!

I’ve started sorting out the PennyDog site and I’m making good progress, I found a load of stuff this morning that I’d made ages ago but hadn’t put online, so rather than it gathering dust I thought I’d upload a few bits and get them online gradually. I will also be updating the supplies soon to sell my ribbon, buttons, etc that are currently only in my Folksy shop.

Things are now in categories of “made to order”, “one-off” and everyone’s favourite- I have a sale section! There are quite a few discounts on there so please have a look, including this necklace you may remember me working on last week…

It’s in the sale because there was a tear in the top coat of resin and when I refilled it it isn’t totally even (you might be able to see this in the picture where the jump ring is). It still looks pretty though. Normally I’d list it at £15 but because of this I’ve put it at £10 🙂

More will continue to be added until I run out and the next step is to start listing one-off handbags and bound books – though I need to make some first!

 

A re-encounter with resin

I’ve not felt particularly like playing with resin recently as you will have noticed. My time has been consumed with artworking the Crafteroo digital magazine, chocolate making, baking, crochet, papercraft, quilting and patchwork (let alone computer games) so there’s not really been time and it’s been nice to take a step back for a while.

I have casted these white tea and coffee motifs though and now I’m a bit stumped. I don’t really know what to do with them. I’d imagined making a series of pendants but I don’t know if that’s too boring, and also I think I need to add some colour or something to these because they’re a little bit plain in just white.

Some ideas I have had: putting in chatons in key areas (maybe eyes if it doesn’t look too scary), painting on small amounts of black paint to fill the eyes and mouths and possibly the outlines and totally starting again but with different colours or with patterned paper backgrounds.

Anyone got any creative ideas because my mojo hasn’t quite recovered enough for this yet?!

Ch- ch- changes!

I am drastically cutting down the pieces of jewellery I am now selling. I’ve started by giving the Etsy and Folksy shops a good weeding and this will follow onto the main PennyDog site.

Why?

Well it is silly me offering more and more made to order items that I don’t have time to replenish. I really don’t want everything to be made to order. So I have been taking stuff off, even popular items. Then I will list them as I make them…. if I do choose to make them again! It makes life a lot easier, but this doesn’t mean I won’t list new things as I have a few things slowly being made.

The resin supplies section is totally unaffected, and in fact it is growing, along with my Folksy supplies shop! I am also quite happy to do wholesale and custom orders like the doggy necklace above!

The reason I now don’t have very much time is because I am trufflepigletting away in the kitchen as the launch of the site seemed pretty successful! So this is where my energies are focused at the minute and it feels good to be doing something totally different, I’d like to be more relaxed with the resin side of things rather than running around in a manic panic as I have been recently.

Ohh and if you are chocolatey minded, please come and visit my sister blog for the trufflepiglet venture, it’s nothing at the minute but I have plans to make it more interesting, so if you have a blog reader, I’d recommend adding me 😉

New Sweetie Items…

I’m struggling to blog at the minute as I have a shedload of wholesale orders I am working on, but I have found a little bit of time to finish some ideas and list them online. I have Polo mint earrings too, but the posts haven’t set yet, so they will be online later in the week… Also planned at some point are “peppermint” flavours to go with the “spearmint” ones.

I need your help bezel fans!

Since I posted about the cupcake bezel class, it seems loads of people want to get hold of that shape, moreso than the hearts and stars, so I wondered, what other shapes should I start to offer? I plan to introduce the cupcakes to the range very soon, so this is the current list;

* Heart Pendant (black, though white is on the way!)
* Star Pendant (black, again white on the way)
* Bracelet Squares (black, white on the way)
* Bangles (white)
* Circle Pendant (white)
* Cupcake pendant (white)

I’m thinking maybe ring blanks at this stage? Suggestions please! 🙂

Don’t forget to enter the bezel competition! www.flickr.com/groups/pennydogbezelcomp