It started with a dress....

I am often asked how I get inspiration for my jewellery designs so I thought it would be interesting to show one of my recent pieces through its design stages.

My oldest dearest friend Karen has a "special" birthday coming up and I wanted to make her a necklace. It was quite funny as I initially had thought of making something in secret and then at lunch she asked if she could commision something to wear at her party.
Perfect, that way she would get something she would enjoy wearing.

So...........it started with a dress................this one infact.

 A very pretty M+S Per Una dress and Karen emailed me the photo.

The photo does not really show it's true colours that well - what may look green is actually grey. It is really a lovely print and I even checked it out in store so that I could see it in the flesh.

Karen liked the oval mother of pearls which I was wearing in another necklace (below) and that was where we started. I decided that as the background for her dress was white I needed to stay more with white than cream so I chose to use the white ovals shown in the bottom of my necklace.

This was my necklace

Mother of pearl oval beads with Swarovski pearls

 

I then looked in my bead stash, yes it is pretty big! I also felt that the necklace needed to be quite simple so that it did not detract from her beautiful dress. Karen also wanted to wear it with other outfits. I chose  some lovely Czech facetted beads, Rose quartz and Swarovski white glass pearls.

Here is the selection.

Then came the creating part!

Karen likes quite short necklaces so I came up with a short repeat using little facetted beads inside the ovals which gives a lovely sparkle. The Czech beads are very sparkly anyway.

After several changes my final necklace came to life and after approval from Karen I have also made a matching bracelet.

 So here is the final piece all made up with lots of love for Karen to wear at her birthday party in a few weeks time.

And yes........

it started with a dress!   

 Jx

Early morning sunshine

It's 8am as I write this and it's my day off...yes...I have that list written and I have lots of things to do but I just opened my back door and was greeted by sunshine and blue skies and just had to stand for a moment and take a relaxing breath in....early morning sunshine....wonderful.

The sun has not even come up over the front of the house so there are long shadows cast...everywhere is still very quiet, despite it being the summer holidays.

Here is Billy enjoying the sun, I had to just swop some biscuits for the mouse he caught-he seemed to think it a fair swop. I have put the mouse in a flower pot in the garage to see if it can recover. It's only a little field mouse - I think it deserves a second chance!

So wherever you are reading this, even if the sun is not shining on you, I am sending you some rays...have a great day.


Bye for now,
Jx

The first tomatoes ripen, it must be mid summer already!

Another great pleasure for me is gardening. I really do get so much pleasure planting things and seeing them come into flower or fruit. My garden is postage stamp size but it does not stop me cramming as many plants, pots etc in as possible.

Today is one of those special days because I have found my very first tomatoes have started to ripen. That's a sure sign that we have reached mid-summer.

I will resist the urge to pick it now as you do need to leave a  ripening tomato on the plant, the chemical secreted by this process causes the other to follow suit.

Also I find that leaving my tomatoes on the vine to ripen in the sun naturally produces much sweeter fruits.

I grow the Gardener's Delight variety, it produces lots of scrumptious, sweet tasting small fruits. They even freeze quite well and can be added to stews etc in the Winter. Perfect!

I have also been able to harvest my first chillies, seen below. This plant produces very unusual purple coloured fruits which are quite mild. This suits me - I am not someone who can eat the really fierce hot varieties but I enjoy adding the mild varieties to some of my meals, especially my home made chili con carne.

This is an unusual Chilli plant which I bought at the Hampton Court Flower Show in early July. I was able to buy 4 different varieties and the purple is the first variety to bear fruit.
Summer got off to a very late start here in the UK but for the last month we have had high temperature and no rain in the South at all. My poor grass looks like hay.

So that's a peek in my garden, I will feature more of my antics out here in my blog but for now it's time to get out the watering can.

Bye for now, Jx