A few designs

The last few weeks have been quite busy really but I've had a chance to finish a few bits and pieces in the past few days.

First of all: the mosaic commission! It's based on the rainbow drinks coasters I make and sell at my craft fairs. I was asked if I could use the same colours but that the actual design was up to me. I decided to make a series of concentric circles with a glass pebble in the middle. It always amazes me how different mosaics look before and after grouting them. Look:

In the process of making the mosaic

Finished mosaic - it's much darker now and has lost the vibrant glare.

Sadly the only photo I remembered to take of this was taken late at night when my camera decided it didn't really like taking photos after all so it's a bit blurry. Sorry! Anyway, do you like it? I'm quite happy with how it eventually turned out.

Secondly, I finally got around to changing a cushion cover. I've had a cushion for years and years and it was beginning to look pretty worse for wear. It was clearly beyond another tumble through the washing machine so I took the plunge, found some old scraps of material and made up a new cushion cover. You might recognise the material from the insane city quilt I made last year. It was actually surprisingly easy to knock together and probably only took about half an hour. In fact I am considering making some other new cushion covers with other scraps of material as I quite like the effect. I have some reds and pinks left over somewhere....

This week I'm going to work on some more small mosaics for the next craft fair I'll be doing (10th June, Keston Lodge, Islington for those who might pop in to say hello.) And I need to make a few more penguins as I'm beginning to run low on stock!

That Friday Feeling...26/08/11

It's Friday again and that means one thing here on Creating Trouble - Etsy shout out time! This week I'm being a bit lazy - mainly because I am sleep deprived after our recent trip, so have gone for a fairly easy theme: hearts. There are LOADS of them on Etsy but here are a few from members of the British Sellers on Etsy team.

sequinned wedding ornaments by AndiaCreations - cute.

Everyone loves cake - shout it out with a necklace from UrbanCookie

Love this patchwork cushion from TheCandyTree

Did you know...

• Women's hearts beat faster than mens - but are significantly smaller.
• Your heart beats about 70 times a minute, 100,000 times a day and on average 2.5 billion times in a lifetime. 
• The reason we associate hearts with love and emotion is because the Ancient Egyptians believed that intelligence and emotion stemmed from the heart. The Chinese also believed that the heart was the source of happiness.
• Another interesting Ancient Egyptian belief: when a person died their heart would be weighed on a balance with the feather of truth of the goddess Ma'at: if it was successful, then the person's soul would pass into the Underworld although rather oddly, no one ever said whether the heart had to be equally balanced, heavier or lighter than the feather...
• Where the symbol we commonly use for hearts comes from is quite open to discussion - one of the more interesting ones I came across was that it resembles the seed of the Silphium plant, which used to be used as a herbal contraceptive in medieval times.