Mosaic Earrings!

It's quite exciting over here in Trouble HQ because I've got a new line of mosaic jewellery now available - mosaic earrings! These are still in the very new stages - I've only made 5 pairs so far and I'm now waiting on more backings to arrive before I can make some more. But thought I should share them with you.

None of them are yet in my Etsy shop but feel free to drop me a line here if you are interested in any of them. They will be £22 + postage.

Pendant and Earring set - £42 + postage

What do you think? I'm excited - almost excited enough to re-pierce my ears so that I can make myself a pair!!

Mosaic Mania!

Despite the ankle surgery and spending most of my time presently lying on my bed I have managed to get up for a few things...

I've had a few custom orders in the past few days - one from a lady who ordered a pendant from me and as soon as it arrived ordered another one! That's got to be a compliment and a half, right? I can't show a picture of it yet as she ordered it as a present but her feedback was lovely:

"I am thrilled to bits with the necklace, it is simply beautful. Could you possibly make another one as quickly?"

So I've spent a fair amount of time in the garage over the past week making some mosaics pendants. What do you think of my new designs?

Of course I haven't just restricted myself to pendants... I've made a few new rings and a pair of cufflinks as well:

And the good news is that the physical bricks and mortar shop up in Highgate has sold a few of my pendants too so I'm going to have to restock there as well! Here are two of the pendants I'll be sending up to them later on this week (the others aren't quite finished yet...)

I've also been having requests from all sorts of people in the past few weeks about making mosaic earrings. I have to say I've been a bit dubious about them as part of me thinks they'd just be too heavy. But I've been convinced to give them a go. I haven't actually made them up into earrings as yet (I'm going to need to go into a craft shop to buy the fittings in order to do that first) but there are designs for 2 pairs ready to put together properly and see what they're like...

So it's all go on the mosaic front! So much so in fact that I need to put in some orders for new stock! Hmm... best get on with that. I have ambitions of moving onto bigger and better places this year and I'm going to need a fair amount of stock ready by August at this rate. Off I go to check out my suppliers...!

Etsy Treasury

I've been over on Etsy almost all day today. I finally got around to taking some photos of jewellery this morning and spent quite a long time editing and trying to get some listings up. As a bit of a break from photo editing, I had a bit of a browse in some of the shops belonging to members of the new team, British Emporia, that I was invited to join yesterday. British Emporia is still in its very early days (as in it only came into being yesterday) and at the moment all the members are crafty folk I already know from the Etsy community which is great - lots of friendly faces. Anyway, I decided that I would make a treasury today as I haven't made one for ages.

I do have a bit of an issue with finding the time to make treasuries and I'm not sure if I am the most talented when it comes to colours and finding things that work together. But here's today's attempt. If you click on the picture, you'll get sent to the treasury on Etsy from where you can browse the individual items and see some other things that these lovely shops have to offer.

I managed to post up a few listings today as well... 

What do you think? (Click on the pictures to go to the Etsy listings) 

I've got a few more photos up my sleeve to list over the next few days, so please go over and have a look over the next few days! http://www.etsy.com/shop/creatingtrouble 

Some talented kids

It isn't just me who's leaving my school at the end of this week; our head teacher is retiring as well. So all the children across the school have been making presents for her. My year group decided to make a mosaic... which meant that over the past few weeks, 60 children have all had to don goggles and arm themselves with glass cutters to cut and fix the pieces. They designed the mosaic themselves, chose the colours (our head's favourite colour is green) and made it all. The only thing that I have done on this was instructing them how to do it and grouting it.

We had a bit of an issue when the first mirror didn't have the right adhesive. I was in the middle of polishing it up post-grouting when... SMASH! It fell out. I was in the classroom with my class at the time, who all sharply drew in their breath and went 'uhh!' Knowing how much work the children have put in to the project, it took a lot of self-control not to scream and burst into tears on their behalf, but luckily I managed to keep it together, calmly clear up all the pieces and then rang around to see if someone could cover my class while I ran to a hardware store to replace it. Anyway, the second mirror has been fitted properly and we gave it to her on Monday. What do you think of their work? I am seriously impressed with how good this looks - they even chose the order of the colours, got all the pieces the right size and helped sealing it properly. We have some fabulous kids in year 6! 

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!

A Week of Commissions

The title of this post says it all... I'm having a fabulously crafty week this week with 2 separate commissions for totally different things. It's a good thing I'm not back at work for another week as otherwise I would not be able to keep up!

A few weeks ago my flatmate's sister came over for dinner. We have a number of mosaic table mats and coasters lying around the flat (well I do make them for fun as well as for sale...) and, having seen the mosaic coasters but the size of the table-mats, she asked if I could make her a table-mat with a rainbow theme. So I spent most of yesterday working on making a table mat with a rainbow design on it. None of this is stuck yet as I still need to cut some of the pieces a bit more and I wanted to check before I actually stuck anything down. What do you think?

The other commission I have is quite exciting - my first bulk order! I had my first 'business' meeting yesterday. I went for coffee armed with a sketch book, my laptop and some ideas. I've been commissioned to make a set of beach tote bags for a hen party. As the hen party is going down to the Devon seaside for a weekend, the idea is that the bags are personal to the weekend so we played around with sailing boats and beach huts and eventually decided that beach huts were the better design. I have spent all of this morning cutting lino and material and here is a sneak preview of the designs.

How exciting is this week going to be? I am working away like a little busy bee which is fabulous. I'm really excited about these commissions and hoping that the respective recipients love them. A short post from me today  - I'm off to go and start printing some designs!

Getting ready for a Craft Fair

I'm sorry, there wasn't a Silent Sunday post today... instead I have been designing my table for the Balham Craft Fair. I started with a walk in Victoria Park this morning where I got a few odd looks as I kicked around under the trees looking for twigs. Coming home with an armful of dead wood that was clearly not good enough for firewood warranted a few more bemused glances. However, it paid off as, after painting them white, I have put them into my two red vases and hung some pendants on them... quite effective I think!

After that I decided to convert the photo frames I bought from IKEA recently into display frames.  Using some foam and a handy picture I saw recently (I pinned it on pinterest here) I got to work covering some foam with material and then attaching on to a piece of backing foam.

And this is what I ended up with... 

Then of course I made a realisation. My vases are red and I had used navy blue as my shelf foam pieces. Duh! So I had another dig around my material stash and found some red. Obviously I then had to do my two display frames again. But the second time around was much quicker and I am much happier with the result now:

Nearly done! Having a bit of a root around my room I found some of the bits that I will be selling on Sunday and played around a bit with setting them up and this is what I came up with. What do you think? Obviously my kitchen table isn't quite as large as my stall table is going to be so this isn't quite what it's going to look like, and I still need labels, a tablecloth and various other bits. But generally I'm quite happy with how it's looking so far. Any advice for me? 

Craft Fair

I'm sure most of you have now realised that I've been a hive of activity recently... so much so that I haven't really had time to blog properly in recent weeks. And why? It's because I'm going to be doing my first craft fair next weekend! ARGH! But how exciting! I've wanted to do a craft fair for ages now but had never quite got the guts up to do it - but this year is my year for being decisive so I signed up in January for the Balham Craft Fair on Sunday 25th March. It's from 12 - 6pm in the Balham Bowls Club  and it would be fantastic if any of you are around and could come and support us. There are 12 stalls in all and we are all looking forward to it. I've been making pendants and penguins for weeks now... can't wait to see how it all pans out. 

A flurry of a weekend with Etsy

Hurray! This weekend was another Etsy BNR by the British Sellers on Etsy Team. I curated twice for this one as I enjoyed curating last time and, being still fairly house-bound, didn't have much else to do. As I'd volunteered to curate fairly early on, I was featured in the initial line up which was great and I did say to myself I wasn't going to go mad and buy lots of things... 

I was bought out on Friday night when someone bought a bunny bag from me, and in total I made 4 sales in the BNR - a pink and a blue bunny bag, a wedding card and my green and blue mosaic pendant all went over the course of the weekend. My etsy store is now looking quite empty! 

 As always it was a great weekend and I really enjoyed chatting to fellow Etsians and browsing through their shops. Of course I bought back in (how else did I get so many sales?) Want to see some of the goodies that I'm looking forward to receiving? Well you get to see them anyway!

Love Altered Eras's steampunk hair clips - and she's making special ones for me! Yay!

House of Hampton are throwing in an extra set of Wine Charms for me as one of the special offers. Thank you! 

How gorgeous is this seaglass necklace by RainbowsOnTheBeach? Love!

Thought I would post photos of what I sold as well - just in case you've all forgotten what kind of things are available in my Etsy store...!

Pretty pretty shiny shiny

Ooooh, I'm all excited - I received 2 parcels today - one from www.mosaictraderuk.com and one from Eolith who sells on www.etsy.com. Eolith sent me these pendant backings and Mosaic Trader UK sent the vitreous glass tiles and the really cute millefiori. I LOVE the black ones with the yellow stars - they are sooo great. Can't wait to get to work!

These are actually for two totally different projects - the tiles are for some drinks coasters I have in my mind but need to get down into reality, whereas the pendant backings are for, well, necklaces; I'm going to experiment with some mosaic jewellery and am all fired up about it.

So why am I on here then? I need to get to my desk and start cutting up some glass...!