New project underway!

Sorry I haven't blogged in a few days - the weather's been awful, which meant no natural light for photos 'til this morning. And I didn't want to just post old pictures. So here's a pair of earrings I made a few days ago.

There's nothing vintage and there are no handmade elements, other than that my hands assembled them. And while I would have thought they were pretty fun several months ago, I now feel like I'm cheating. That's definitely a good thing, because I really want my stuff to be unique. And these could have been easily made by any handy 12 year old with access to a decently stocked craft store. Someone, somewhere might love them and need to have them, and that's great for me. But things like this will be ending soon. 

And things like this will be starting:

This is the early stages of my first attempt at homemade bead caps. All I had time for last night was punching and sanding. It didn't really take too long, I just had many other things to do before I could play with my new toys. This was the lid of a Hedley's Tea tin (Black Currant). I was saving the part where there are pretty paintings of berries and scrolly bits for once I had the technique down, but honestly I think it looks pretty cool with all the chopped up text. It makes you wonder what the words might have said. (Hint: it's all in French) Tonight, I'll punch center holes in them and pound them into nice little domes. I can't wait!

Earlier this week, on Facebook and IRL, I put out a call for tins. All the tins you can't throw away, ('cos they're perfectly good tins!) but that you don't really want to keep. My call was answered in the form of 9 big silver tins and several big white tins. At first, I was mildly bummed that no one had any crazy floradelic tins or zoo-themed tins, but then I realized silver and white will be perfect blank canvases for me to paint whatever I want! Then with a nice varnish over it, it should be okay, right? That way I'm not being as derivative as I fear and I'm being even more homemade than I originally planned! Now, that doesn't mean I'm turning down any crazy floradelic tins. And I'm still pretty excited about the text pieces as well. But I'm looking forward to exploring this brand new concept (painting on the bead caps) on top of the less brand new, but still really new concept (making the bead caps in the first place). Go me!!!

And for those of you who may have been hoping I'd be getting that craft desk I mentioned last post, it's not going to happen. There's no way to feasibly make it work without just sticking it in the middle of the way. One day in the future I really hope I will have my own room to turn into a studio. For now, I'll just have to make do.