Problems, solutions, adventures and prizes.

I'm slacking a bit in keeping this up, but in my defence I have been very busy. 

I spent this weekend away, first in a spa in Kent with the lovely Corrie of Plutonium Muffins, and then in Brighton with Corrie and JT. Corrie and I had much fun going round all the shops I wouldn't have wanted to drag JT round and had some awesome hot chocolate.

Here are some pictures of our adventures:

Dinner in the hotel/spa. Notice the teeny tiny pots of sauces. Corrie and I now have a LOT of these.

I tried to take a picture of the beautiful sunset we drove through, but it hasn't really worked.

And that's me being very uncouth drinking wine through a straw (as is my way) in the hotel bar before we (and a random pair of rich people) nearly drank the bar dry of coffee flavour cocktails.

In more crafty news, after my recent development of new stock I had been proudly wearing my lovely multicoloured gun earrings pretty much every day but one day when I took them off I noticed the colour had worn off in a lot of places.

Sad face.

Back to R&D.

Seeing as I'd made about 50 pairs of earrings up already, this was a bit of a blow. I discovered with some spare charms that the colour stayed pretty well under a coat of spray varnish so I dismantled all the pairs of earrings, sprayed them with two coats of varnish (one to seal and one for good luck), left them to dry and then rebuilt them and have packed up the two orders I need to send and they should be in the post today. 

Yesterday I also made some new things! 

I've been wanting to play around with salt dough for ages and finally got round to making some up. I loved playing with it so much I decided to make more in different colours and attempt to marble the colours as dough, rather than water marble them after as had been my plan.

The water marbling was.... Fairly ineffective. Salt dough likes to absorb water. Bit of a problem. 

The marbled dough was.... Fairly dull by my standards for colour but I think it picked up when I drew on the dried pendants. What do you lot think?

I also remembered making some cinnamon dough ornaments a while ago at a friend's house and thought

"Wow having a little gingerbread man necklace that smelt of ginger and cinnamon would be SO cool"

So I went back to the kitchen and I created.

Mainly I created mess. I realised the dough set too quickly to do much to without having a cutter of the right size (and my attempt at making a cutter did not go well) but I did manage to create a ball of cinnamon ginger scented awesomeness that I will probably find no use for, and these little fellows!

Pretty cute, yes? Sadly they don't smell too heavily but I think they will do more when next to warm skin, and if you sniff them they smell heavenly, but you do look a bit odd sniffing your necklace! 

If you would like to win one of these little guys, head over to my Facebook 

www.facebook.com/colourfulcrafter

And find out how!

I think that's pretty much it other than letting you know that pendants will be available soon in all types and designs. They'll be available on their own so you can attach them to any chain you like, or with waxed cord (as shown) or a thin 20" sterling silver chain for a little extra money.

I hope you're all well. Let me know what you think of the salt dough experiments!

Over and out

Janet

P. S. I also made this. I can hang useful reminders to myself on it too!