♥♥♥ Love is all around us ♥♥♥

♥ Yes it's that time of year when us old romantics like to celebrate. It's also a good excuse for a post Christmas celebration. It is 31 years on Monday since my Hb proposed to me...gosh that is such a long time. I wish I had some digital photos from then, they would be fun to see! ♥

I thought I would share with you my card creation for the occasion....

If you recognise the backing paper, yes it's the last pieces of the paper I used for my daughter and her fiance's engagement card last November. Us crafters never waste anything so I used the almost last part to make this card too which I put into my Etsy shop.

On the love heart theme I also want to show you some new very pretty, feminine Fimo pendants I bought from the USA...

I really like these and decided to make up a design of me for to wear  using some pretty seed beads I have used recently.

This is my necklace below, I will probably make the other 2 focals into necklaces as I think they will sell well at my Open Houses/Parties.

As Valentine's Day falls on a Monday this year we are attending a Valentine Dinner/Dance on Saturday night at National Trust Property in Surrey. Also on Tuesday night our Dance School is hosting a Valentine's Ball. It is a black tie event and should be great fun.

Having mentioned at the beginning of this post that I wish I had some digital photos I remembered that my Hb has an old album of photos from when we first met (1979). I only started keeping scrapbooks from our Wedding (1981) so I don't have any photos of our engagement. After a little searching this morning I manged to find his album and laughed  and smiled when I looked at the contents! He had a beard (long gone) and I had very long hair (cut in 1982!). I had to photograph the photos in their album through the protective plastic so they are not that clear but thought I would share the smile with you.....

This is us cutting our cake!

In the photo above I think I was dancing around here the day after our party showing off my new engagement ring. (Hmm yes remember I was only 19!)  Now I know everyone will say...so what on earth do I look like compared to that photo 31 years ago...well OK I don't really do photos of me on my blog as it is about what I do rather than what I look like but I decided to break that rule and show your one of  me with 2 other "special men in my life" aka my 21 year old son Matt and my Dad. These was taken last September at my Dad's 78th Birthday party...

Same ring but rather older hands now-LOL! Mind you it's been such an adventure these last 31 years and my hands have made SO many different things and treated so many patients!

So Happy Engagement Anniversary to my dear Hb and sending everyone out there in blog land lots and lots of love......love really is all around you ♥♥♥
Billy sends some too....

I am meeting my dear daughter up in London this afternoon for her first try on of Wedding dresses...so exciting.

 Bye for now,
Jane
x

Precious Metal Clay....a ring in a day!

If you remember reading  this post last November  I was lucky enough to attend a class at our local college as an introduction to this marvellous medium. For those of you who are not aware, Precious Metal Clay (or PMC as it is known) is a made of particles of fine silver held in a pliable binder. This can be worked in a similar way to clay or fimo or sugar craft icing. When completed it is either blow torched or placed in a kiln where the binder burns off to leave solid fine silver which is actually purer than sterling silver.

Well this Sunday I was delighted to return for another PMC course called "A ring in a day". Just as it says on the tin, this is exactly what we did! It was a very intensive day and we only got a 30 minute lunch break, every one was so absorbed in their work. Please excuse the quality of my photos, silver is SO hard to photograph, flash on wipes it out, flash off it seems a little gloomy.

This is my completed ring, not fully polished but in a near finished state.

It has a cubic zirconia stone set in the middle as a feature. This ring was more a ring for me to learn some new PMC skills rather than to actually make a ring I would wear but in the end I did rather like it! My ring started its life in a very different state to the above.....

 
..........it is in this piece of foil wrapping as a blob of clay on the right side of the photo. This is my workbench as we got started. We had to condition and roll the clay out, on this piece of Teflon in the centre, into a ring shank shape.
 
 
 
 
 
 
We then had to texture the clay and carefully wrap it around the ring mandrel which had been marked up to our ring size. It is quite fiddly to work with and needs to be kept moist and not dry out until the shape is final. You also need to use plenty of olive oil to stop the clay sticking to everything.
 

Next we had to carefully remove the ring and put it on a hot plate to dry thoroughly. The clay is SO fragile at this stage if dropped it shatters and sadly the girl's sitting next to me did just that :0(

Once fully dried it was filed smooth at the edges.

 
 
The seam was also filled with clay "paste" which acts in a similar way to the use of "slip" in pottery making. I then decided that I would like to find out how to set stones in PMC so I bought a 4mm cubic zirconia stone from the tutor. These stones are heat proof and will not crack when being fired.
 
 
 
 
 
I had to use a drill bit and then a burring bit to make the hole for the stone to sit in.
 

I then put in the stone and used PMC paste in the form of a "piping" syringe to make a bezel setting and a pattern on the ring shank.

 
This was all carefully dried off again and then fired in the kiln. At this point the fragile clay becomes solid silver. It really is incredible to see.
 

Once it had cooled I used a brass brush to burnish the surface and then tumbled my ring to polish it. Here it  is balanced on top of the lid of my bottle of water.

When I got home I tried to get some better shots;

 I also found it actually went rather well with a heart ring my Hb had made for me 2 Christmas' ago. I may well wear them as a "set".

 

 

I really enjoyed playing again with "Marvellous Precious Metal Clay". I may even attend a 3 day summer school in July to further enhance my skills in using this wonderful silver medium. Oh the thoughts of summer.......... :0)

Bye for now,

Jane x

A little gift of kindness....follow up to my Pay It Forward

I promised I would post a follow up to my Pay it Forward to show what handmade gift I would be sending to my fellow "Pay it Forward" blogger friends. So far I have Andrea from the delightful blog FallingLadies who is joining me for the fun.

 Please do have a look at my original Pass it Forward blog here and see if you too would like to play along. If you do please add you comment at the bottom of that post not this one. I still have 2 free spaces (as this post was launched) for anyone who is interested. It involves just sending a little gift of kindness to 3 fellow bloggers who will also pass it on. The aim is to spread a little happiness via our blogging world.

I thought you would like to see what I am sending Andrea. I contacted her to ask if she had a favourite colour and her  response was blue......

So I  first made a blue themed card. In my recent giveaway I noticed that Andrea's favourite card was my butterfly one so I decided to keep to this theme. I used some bright cheerful blue floral backing paper. I added a  pretty punched  border ( I so love using punches). I used white glitter card for this. I added  jewels to the body of the butterfly to give some sparkle to the card.

I have deliberately left the card blank so that Andrea can use it for any celebration or she could even keep it as a little picture if she want to.

 Then I checked my bead stash and found some pretty one-of-a-kind artisan lampwork beads in a blue colour and made up something new that I have been playing with recently.............

............bag charms.  I have been  working on these as a thank you gift as part of a rather special birthday of mine which is coming up in April. I will show you more in another post. I have found some lovely Tibetan silver charms to add and I am quite pleased with this prototype. The charms I used here are a funky sandal and bunch of keys together with a very dainty dragonfly.  I shall package these up and get them off to Andrea, they will be going to the USA. I hope she enjoys them.

Whilst I am showing some WIP I thought I would also give you a peep of the invites I have recently sent out....hmmm yes this is really is happening to me soon.

Here is one finished

 ......... now that does look quite old when you see it in rather large gold numbers, but hey they say it's the new 30 so I am going to celebrate it in style when it arrives. I have booked a small country hotel restaurant for the Sunday after my birthday and have invited my closest family and friends to enjoy lunch. I am really looking forward to it and am now working on making the place cards. The theme will be spring and I intend to have some lovely spring flowers on the tables too. I still have plenty of time to get things done but it pays to get organised now. I even made and sent out "Save the Date" invites last October....just to make sure people kept the day free. It is an incredible coincidence but my lunch is the same day as Mother's Day!

 

These were very cheerful birdies asking everyone to save the date and everyone has!

So there we are, lots of things on the go...busy, busy...not sure though that Billy is! He is just dozing here on his favourite chair. I think he too is looking forward to some warmer weather when he can chase insects and lie in the shade of his favourite bush in the garden.

Whilst I was looking at some photos recently I found some of Billy as a kitten. This one below was taken in September 2008 when my daughter came to visit him for the first time. If you want an ahhhhhh moment,here is one........

What a sweetie! I had forgotten how tiny he used to be...and he still has his glorious pink nose!

I should now get back to some of my projects. There is also an exciting day for me coming up on Sunday..another precious metal clay class and we will be making a ring in a day. I will take my trusty camera and share all! Watch this space.

Bye for now,

Jane x