Strange Dreams...

This week I have been mainly having dreams where I am getting my roots done. Apparently, even my subconscious thinks my hair is horrible...

Silver Christening & Birthstone Charms

I have only made one so far, but have been playing with a rather lovely new computer program called Lightroom, which I discovered allows me to select small areas of a photograph and "paint" new colour over them. Amazing! And so much easier than Photoshop.

So, this here is the original photograph, with a ruby for July:

Some deepening of the colour gets us to this, which is garnet, for January. Still red, just a little darker, so not that impressive, you might think...


...but check this out! Desaturating, upping the exposure then painting layers of semi-transparent purple colours gets us a pretty accurate rendering of an amethyst, birthstone for February:

And so on. We have aquamarine for March...

Diamond for April...

Emerald for May...

Sadly, June is still missing, as the birthstone is a pearl, and even the fabulousness that is Lightroom can't turn a faceted stone into a smooth and even coloured pearl. Booooo.

But, we have peridot for August...

Sapphire for September...


Opal for October...

Citrine for November...

And finally, blue topaz for December.

Sadly, Adobe will only let you have a 30 day free trial of Lightroom. Booooo. Something to do with them wanting you to actually pay for the program or something...

But, I love it so much that I may well do that. Maybe. When I have some spare cash...

Charm Bracelet for a Christening

Hello! As usual, things have been manic recently. This weekend was Luke's little brother's wedding, which was lovely, and last weekend my cousin had her beautiful little girl, Milly, christened.

As it's traditional to give silver for a christening gift, I thought I'd have a go at a personalised charm bracelet with Milly's name carved into a silver oval, and a flower with her birthstone, which is ruby. I'm happy that Milly is following in the family tradition by deciding to have expensive tastes before she was even born! Go Milly!

Anyway, here it is:

I may write some more about it later, but at the moment I'm at work, having had hardly any sleep and commuted in from somewhere in Essex after the wedding. Very, very sleepy... zzzzzzzzzzzz........

Canadian Cupcakes

A rather hectic time was had last weekend, as I frantically baked and iced cupcakes, tried to tidy the house, and also make a silver charm bracelet for a christening (more of which later).

So, my flatmate Yuri turned 40 and arranged a little party in a rather nice pub in Canonbury, the Marquess Tavern, which I've not been to for ages and is happily staggering distance from our house. Even though I wasn't actually drinking...

Anyway, I made some Canadian/birthday themed little cupcakes, with maple leaves and 40s cut out of red sugarpaste, with red and white frosting swirls. I even made them maple and pecan flavour...

Tada!

Roller Derby Charms - New Photography!

Unhappy as I was with my recent photography exploits, my lovely friend Dan arranged for his photographer friend, Paul, to come over and take some new pictures for me. And he was happy to be paid in beer! I wish more people would work for beer, it would make my life much easier. Dear Mr Website Designer, please could I have a website? Here is some beer. Sadly, things don't work like that in real world. Sigh...

Anyway, I digress. Paul turned up with a massive camera (it turns out that yes, size does matter...) and a ton of flash guns.

And here are the results:

Much better, yes?

So, now I just need to get me one of those big cameras, some photography knowledge and learn how to build a website and I'll be sorted. Simples!

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!