Custom Silver Sock Charm

So, I was contacted by a very nice lady, who had seen my stripy derby sock charm on my blog, but wanted a pair of them and for the socks to be a little shorter as a present for her friend. My first ever custom order from a complete stranger!

And voila: This was my original...


And this was my custom...

Apologies for the dreadful photography - I had to take it on my camera phone with no stablisation.

It's the first thing I've actually soldered and made in my new workshop and the new space is a million times more comfortable than the old one!

Now if I could just finish my little skate charm...

The Make Lounge

As my sewing machine has been sat grumpily in the corner recently, throwing me occasional reproachful looks, and my friend Jennie hasn't even taken hers out of its box yet, we signed up for a cushion making workshop at the Make Lounge. I've been cycling past the Make Lounge every weekday morning for several months now, and have been meaning to go in, as their shop window is filled with lovely colourful things.

So, armed with nowt but our bicycles (everything you need to make the cushion is included in the cost of the workshop, hurrah!) we pottered off to Islington.

The hardest part was choosing what fabric to make the cushion from, as you can choose from the hundreds of lovely and quirky patterned fabrics in their shop. I went with a turquoise and green butterfly print.

The tutor was really good, very patient and helpful, as the course is aimed at complete beginners, who have never used a sewing machine before. Even though I have, I still learned loads and found it really informative.

And here is my cushion:

Cute huh? It definitely brightens up my boring old sofa.

And, with my newly acquired cushion making skills, together with an alrmingly large bag of stuffing that I ordered (it's sold by weight, I had no idea what the actual volume of the stuff would be!), I have also created this cushion:

It was actually supposed to be more of a pouffe type thingy, but dimensions and 3D visualisation are not my strong points. Still, looks nice, no?

Right, let's get on with it then...

I appear to have been somewhat lacking in motivation for shiny things since I moved house. Partly because I have been asleep rather a lot, and partly because I'm just enjoying hanging out with the boy. Also, my workshop is quite cold.

Anyway, no more of this nonsense! Let's have some motivation please...

I have booked into the London Jewellery School (happily now moved from Dulwich (miles away) to Hatton Garden (right near where I work and on the way home), this evening to re-fire my little silver derby skate, now that I've added laces to it. Also, I've painted over the Union Jack logo on the master copy of my crash helmet charm with silver clay, to (hopefully) make a plain crash helmet, which I will then attempt to master the art of etching on, so I can make tiny crash helmets with skate names/numbers on. Because they will be proper cute :)

My New Workspace

After going rather off-tangent with the blog posting recently, due to not having the facilities to make stuff, let’s get back to the point, shall we?

After some frustrating experiences and terrible customer service involving trying to purchase a small piece of vinyl flooring from B&Q, I finally admitted defeat. Shortly after which, the nice finance people on BBC news in the morning said that B&Q’s profits were down this year. Perhaps if they made it slightly less difficult for you to actually buy something, they might make a bit more money, no?

Anyway, I pottered off to Carpet Right in Stamford Hill instead, where they happily cut me a piece of flooring there and then and I ambled off home with it clutched under my arm.

Finally having acquired this all important bit of floor to place under my workbenches (so as not to damage the landlord’s floor, I could finally unpack all my tools, yay!

And this is my new workspace:

It’s almost like the space was made for me. The workbench, shelves of chemicals and tool cabinet fit along the wall under the mezzanine perfectly, and there is already a handy spotlight positioned above. Now that the tool cabinet no longer has to live under the jeweller’s bench, I can actually sit at the thing properly, without spending hours with my knees twisted to the side. I think my spine will be happy about this...

I also got a magnetic strip thingy from Ikea, which I have now screwed to the bench so I can stick all my pliers/tweezers/files to it, rather than them ending up all over the place. Sticking everything to it was a surprising amount of fun :)

So, now I have no more excuses, expect something shiny coming this way soon...

X

Tropical Cupcakes...

Hi again,

Still no shiny things, I’m afraid, but I thought I’d share with you some rather fun cupcakes I made for the last London Rollergirls bout. I am unleashing my frustrated creativity via the medium of cake :)

The event was called Club Tropicarnage (my favourite name for a bout so far) so I went all tropical and made some pina colada flavour cupcakes, with rum and pineapple and a coconut frosting, and some margarita flavour ones, with lime, margarita mix and tequila. Then I added frosting and decorations till they looked bonkers enough...

Here you go:

I also made some slightly more sensible victoria sponge cupcakes for a visit from the boy’s sister. They were really yummy :)

I think I would like to be one of those people whose house always contains cake when people come to visit...

...And I'm Back!

Hiya *waves* It's me again!

Yes, it's been a while. I've had no internet for a couple of weeks, so no blogging for me :(

But... guess what?

The boy and I are all moved into our new flat now, woohooooo! We discovered that between us we owned three coffee tables but only one fork. Eating salad with a spoon can be quite challenging...

The actual move itself was pretty stress-free, thanks to the muscle power and organisational skills of the boy's awesome friends and the tetris-packing skills of John the van man, who managed to fit my not insignificant amount of junk all into the van in one load.

We've just about unpacked, finally, although we need a bookcase, so some boxes will have to remain for a while till we can afford something nice.

So all in all, everything is good. I have never properly lived with a boy before, and I rather like it, although I have discovered that living with someone means I can no longer come home from work and eat cheese sandwiches for dinner though. Apparently that's not proper food or some such nonsense... Consequently, I am putting on some much-needed weight, hurrah! Derby thighs shall be mine once more :)

No shiny things yet, sadly, as I need to purchase a strip of lino to put under my workbench and cabinets to make absolutely sure I don't damage the floor that does not belong to me. It's weird, living in a house that belongs to someone else...

In the world of my old house, the bathroom did finally get finished.

Almost done here....

And tada!!! This is it pretty much finished, apart from the bright pink waterproof roller blind (thanks for the idea mum) that will cover the window and match the bath mat nicely.

And a little closeup of my nice sink, which turned out to be somewhat bigger than it looked in the picture. Turns out you're supposed to check the measurements, not just look at a picture and say "oh, that looks about right". Pah! What do they know? It looked fine in the end :)

So, onwards and upwards now. First task is to sort out workshop floor, then finish rollerskate. There will also be more new-flat related stuff I suspect. Do yell if you get bored...

Bye for now X

More Progress!

I has a floor. Squeal!!!!

Tada!

Am also adopting alarmingly cavalier attitude to packing up my entire life. Especially given how long it usually takes me to pack for a week's holiday...

I have but three packing boxes left and a lot more than three packing boxes worth of stuff to fit in them. Not entirely sure how that's going to work out...