More Shiny Things!

My mother, much to her annoyance, turned 60 this year. So, seeing as a 60th wedding anniversary should be celebrated with diamonds, a 60th birthday should too, no?

I got to feel like a real proper jeweller, going off to Hatton Garden to buy the stones. It's amazing how much more attention the sales staff pay you when you say "I would like to buy some diamonds please"!

So diamonds purchased, white gold sheet acquired and design finalised, I extremely carefully cut it out of the sheet metal, using the worlds tiniest sawblades. And I only broke one, go me! I bought a pack of 24, assuming I'd break one every two minutes, given how fine they were. I should have more faith...

Soldering was pretty scary, as I've not soldered anything but silver for years, but the scariest bit by far was the diamond setting. I was so scared I was going to drop one on the floor, never to be seen again.

But, it all turned out okay, hurrah! I'd forgotton how exhausting stone setting is, requiring as it does a particularly annoying combination of intense concentration, delicate movements and a large dose of brute force.

Anyway, here they are:

And they are both shiny and sparkly! Mum hates anything dangly, so I went with small stud earrings instead. It was quite difficult to combine this with my fondness for big swirly designs, but I think I managed to pull it off and I am actually really happy with the way they turned out.

Back to Shiny Things Now

Well, given the title of this blog, it's high time I posted some more shiny things, no?

A busy little bee I have been over the past few weeks with parties and weddings galore to attend, but I did find the time to make something for my lovely friend Nem, which was a necklace for her equally lovely girlfriend. She skates for the London Rollergirls' Suffrajets, whose logo looks like this:

So, Nem and I decided to take the font from the logo, play around a bit, and make up a necklace using her skate name, which is Silky Briefs. I cut the whole thing out of one big piece of silver sheet, engraving on letter details as needed. Here's a little work in progress shot...

And the final product ended up like this:

I was really happy with how it turned out and hopefully the birthday girl was too!

Cupcake Queen

I was going through random photographs on the hard drive and came across a ton of pictures of cupcakes that I've made over the past couple of years, so I thought I'd put them as a little group here. It's been a while since I had time to make any, which makes me sad. Also, my absolute favourite ones, with green icing grass and marzipan bees, I have no photographs of. Maybe that's a good excuse to make more...

These were one of my very first attempts at cupcake icing, for a London Rollergirls fundraiser.

And another fundraiser, this time with a bonfire night theme, hence tiny icing flames on logs made from Cadbury's flake. I made the cupcakes ginger flavoured and everything...

These were for my friend Jennie's birthday, which is also Valentines Day, so I decorated them all with pretty pink icing swirls and hearts.

Another friend's birthday cupcakes here. She's called Sky, hence blue icing swirls and sugarpaste clouds.

And back to London Rollergirls, these were made for a bout between two of our league teams, the Ultraviolent Femmes and the Steamrollers, and iced with swirls in their respective team colours. Turns out it's really difficult to dye buttercream dark red...

And for the season championship, cupcakes in the LRG league colours of pink and black. The green ones in these pictures were made by Metallikat and had the yummiest icing I've ever tasted!
And that's it! My flatmate turns 40 next weekend, so I shall be making Canadian themed ones, possibly with sugarpaste 40s if I can find tiny enough number cutters...

Hello...

It's been at least a couple of weeks since I've been able to post, partly because my actual day job has been super-busy, thus interfering with creativity slightly (how dare it!) and partly because the flatmate's computer is becoming increasinly slow and grumpy when asked to do anything photography related. I think the hamsters may be on their last legs.

So, what have I been doing?

Clearing out my wardrobe for a start. We have a new lodger in our spare room, which means I no longer have the use of two full double bedrooms to keep my stuff in. Having been reduced one one bedroom, it has occurred to me that I own way too many clothes, yet wear my favourite things all the time. I managed to sell a ton of stuff on Ebay, which is very satisfying, but also pretty time consuming and dull. Need to do another pass now, but more ruthlessly.

Also, I went to Torture Garden for the first time ever. It was much fun and not at all scary and I've never been chatted up so politely in my entire life! The night had a nautical theme, which gave me the excuse to buy a rather fabulous sailor corset that I've been coveting for some time.

It's from a company called Boobie Trap Corsets, who make beautiful things and have the best customer service ever. I think I now have enough corsets to call it a collection. Some people collect crystal animals, or china frogs, or whatever. I shall collect corsets.

And this is me wearing it (sadly I look nowhere near as good as Boobie Trap's cute model, but considering how shocking I normally look in photos, I quite like this one)

I have also been making shiny things, hurrah! More on this later, but for now I must get back to work. The Employment Tribunal beckons...