Jubilee Jewels...

Hey there everyone!! :)

Happy Bank Holiday to you all- hope you’re all well and enjoying the weekend’s Jubilee festivities one way or another... my mum’s church had a ‘street party’ on the church path yesterday afternoon and I’m just so glad for them that it has been such a lovely day after she’d been dreading more of Sunday’s rain!! :) Mum made some displays for the event and of course raided my stash and equipment to help her along the way... also my actual help last week as she was running out of time to get things done, so that has been taking a lot of my crafty energy... but... I do have another Jubilee-themed project of my own which I thought I should try and share with you before all the celebrations are forgotten...

I discovered this fab blog a month or so ago after a bit of a browse on Pinterest and was very intrigued by the glass tile jewellery posts... I have never tried this kind of thing before but it seemed simpler than I thought it would be {I didn’t end up doing it the way she suggests as I didn’t read it all through and instead followed the instructions on the site where I got my supplies, which takes longer but might be more sturdy... will have to experiment!} so I popped off to Google to find some supplies...

And then promptly got rather carried away!!lol It’s not as bad as it looks, I do seem to have a couple more necklaces than my mum and I need but all the little round ones in this pic have been made into pins and are already with their new owners... when mum saw my first (okay, first successful, but more on that in a mo’!!) necklace she asked if I could make some little pins for the people at her church to wear :)

The Union Jack flags I used are a graphic I created earlier this year when I couldn't find papers I wanted for my cards- spent ages getting the proportions right!!lol- and then printed out sized to suit my various glass shapes... and therein lies the story, as I had a couple of botched attempts at first while I was finding my feet... they looked great when I made them and I was v pleased with myself... but by morning they were a blobby mess... yup, I’d used too much glaze to glue them into the metal pendant trays, and been too eager to see the finished results, so not let all the layers of sealant and the glaze to stick the image to the glass dry properly first... and the inkjet ink had run... too much even to call it an intentional style choice!!lol But I got there in the end thanks to some advice from the lady I bought my supplies from... if you want to know more about making these then pop to her blog as she has some Tutorial posts :) 

This pic is of a slightly different style- an epoxy sticker on a metal dog tag, which was a free gift with my order but surprisingly nice so I got some more!! :) The others are glass with the images glued on and then either set into a tray or with a bail added to the back. But the glass seemed to play up with my camera/ lamp and this shot through the sticker was the best one to show the pattern on the flag, which is a simple overlay of a photo of a jacquard fabric added over the block colours of my finished basic flag in my graphics program. The darker image just has another ‘burnout’ type overlay on top of that for a more distressed vintage effect :)

I thought I should try a different image so this is made with a piece of Bo Bunny Gabrielle paper... this particular piece is a bit busy for my tastes and I’ve always wondered if I would ever use it... very nice to be able to say yes, just not on a card!! :) It just needs a charm to sit over the top right corner when I find something that suits :)

I also made my mum a quick little pin with a couple of my crocheted flowers and a teeny Portobello Road button- love these!! :) – all stuck together with Pinflair!! :)

So, that’s what’s been keeping me busy this last couple of weeks- aside from helping my mum!! I hope you like them... I’m really excited by the possibilities of even more personalisation and creativity in my jewellery that this technique gives- so glad I took the energy to search out the supplies and figure it out so I’m sure I’ll be making more!! :) Right now, though, I really do need to reclaim my desk from all the different jewellery findings and glues, etc. so I can get to making some cards... June is a *veeeerrry* busy month for cards and I haven’t even started on account of not really having my head around the idea that it was going to be June so soon!! Ooops!!:S lol Best get going... well, maybe in the morning!!

Ooh- as a little extra, here is a of pic of the mini Victoria Sandwich cakes my mum and I made this afternoon... mmmm!! :) Can you tell I just love my Union Jack mug, btw...and the napkins even match!?!!lol