Meridian Ariel

Have I told you how much I love Twitter?  Have I?

Oh right.  I have.

But I really really like it and the people who are part of it.  One of those people is Apryl Lowe who is also known as Meridian Ariel.  Apryl makes all sorts of groovy things including these marvellous pin badges :

They're made with images from the pages of an old Star Wars annual so how could I resist them?  I thought I was going to love the Lando one best but no, the winner is the Luke and Threepio one that's at the top of this post.

Apryl sent me a sweet little Jayne-from-Firefly-inspired 'Cunning Hat' badge too.  Shiny.

But Apryl does way more than badges. She also makes the sweetest 'Little Monster' dolls like this one :

Photograph by Merdidan Ariel

His name is Merle The Ghost Boy and, like all of Apryl's dolls, he comes with his own little story.  Merle is a typography nut and he can't stand Papyrus and Comic Sans.  That makes him brilliant in my book.  Merle is currently looking for a home, bless him.  And his buttony eyes. 

All of Apryl's dolls, badges, drawings, jewellery and other assorted goodies come packaged in the most wonderful way accompanied by sweet typewritten notes.  You can click here to visit the Meridian Ariel Etsy shop to see more of Apryl's work and she also blogs here.

I'm off to the shed now.  I've got glass to melt and beads to make.

Happy Saturday!

'Monochrome+Pink'

This set of beads was going to be bigger. Thing is, I had to have the door open while I was making them as it was really muggy. It was quite breezy too and my flame kept blowing about. I burnt my finger and I also singed a bit of hair - only a couple of strands but isn't the smell of burning hair just so horrid? After that I thought I'd leave the set at just five beads. Who knows what may have happened if I'd carried on .....

Anyway, these beads are glossy black and white accented with raised dots in hot pink. I think they look quite cosmic. I know it's sad but I'd like to think if Darth Vader had a missus then she would wear these beads!

Ha ha! Technology, I win!

As you can see I got there in the end with the phone photos. This is me with a Stormtrooper at the O2 on Friday night. Mr Stormtrooper is aiming his blaster at Chris who is taking the photo. This is because Chris was having a spot of bother with my phone camera, hence the blurry picture. But hey, it's yours truly with a Stormtrooper nonetheless.

I've been to many a venue for gigs and concerts over the years but I have to say that I was really taken aback by how amazing the O2 is. It's absolutely ginormously big and such a bright and lively place. In fact, like some kind of old person, I actually described it as 'happening' which made Chris laugh and he told me that I should write all about the 'Happening O2 Place' on my blog.

I'm still in the process of sorting out my laptop. I've just put iTunes on it (it used to be on the desktop PC) and now Sirius (my iPod) has a severe lack of music until I import my library. I've got all the purchased music but none of the hundreds of tunes from my CD collection. Why oh why am I even boring you with this ..... ?

I'm going to go and see if I can get the camera to behave now. May well be back soon!

Technology hates me right now

So did you have a good Easter?

I had a nice weekend off and Star Wars : A Musical Journey was amazing - like truly astounding. I do have photos but the techno-trauma continues and my phone software has decided to act up so I can't actually get the pictures off the phone. I'll try again tomorrow. Also, I did have some bead pictures for you but my camera batteries are flat and I have no charged ones so I'm waiting for the charger to do its thing.

I'm off to knit a sock .....

Colin

Yesterday was The Day Of Unexpected Post and two of the deliveries I received were cupcake-related. Firstly, my friend Helen in Southampton (whom I miss terribly) sent me a gorgeous ceramic cupcake pot for Easter and secondly Caroline from Uniqart posted me a cute amigurumi cupcake! I've named him Colin and he's living next to Bridget Blobite and all the other little nice-to-look-at things on my desk. Isn't he just so sweet? I can never get over how creative Caroline is - she's always making wonderful things. In fact, she's kindly agreed to be my next interviewee so look out for that interview next week.

I'm travelling up to London this afternoon because tonight Chris and I are going to the O2 to see Star Wars : A Musical Journey which should be good, then I'll be spending Easter weekend in Cambridge.

I hope you all have an ace weekend. Make sure that you eat far too much chocolate!

Final post of the year

I do hope you had a wonderful Christmas?!

I had such a fantastic time in Manchester. It really was the best Christmas I've had in yonks! I bought Chris a Lego Star Wars AT-AT (he's thirty-two, but like me, in his mind he's only about fourteen) and on Boxing Day Chris, his brother Kev and I spent about three hours building it. It walks in that clunky, heavy-footed AT-AT way and its head moves about too. Dang, I love Lego! The other night I asked Chris to send me a photo of the AT-AT so I could blog it. I was expecting a grainy iPhone photo but I received this super duper Chris-enhanced image instead. He's a clever thing!

Did anyone see Eastenders on Christmas Day? Ha! I loved the whole thing about Christian's vest! (You may remember that I was on about that a while back.) I think the highlight of Christmas telly for me was the Gavin & Stacey special. I found Bryn's glee at the wonder of Mint Baileys hilarious! I'm so pleased that they're making a third series.

So have you eaten all your Christmas food and nibbles? The other day my auntie was saying how fed up she was with cold turkey but I love the stuff! I think I had three cold turkey dinners at Chris's parents' house. In fact I'm thinking of cooking another Christmas dinner this weekend just so I can have cold turkey, stuffing and oodles of pickled red cabbage again! Talking of food, remember how Chris got all arty with the mini party food the other week? Well, it's a case of Like Mother, Like Son because his Mum got all Delia with the salmon rolls and prawns on Boxing Day. Check this out :

We're just hours away from a New Year. This year has been a particularly hectic one for me, what with the move and everything, and it would seem that 2009 is going to be just as busy. Chris and I are going to get a place together next year so I shall be moving to Cambridge at some point. It all feels mighty grown-up and tiny bit scary ..... but totally exciting!

Thank you for your custom and your interest in my work and waffle these past twelve months. Here's to a beady 2009! Happy New Year!

These beads need a name

I'm back from my mini-holiday in Cambridge which was great. It was very odd to have nothing to do! I know I said that I was going to blog while I was away and I tried but while I was in the middle of drafting a post there was a power cut in Chris's flat. He was at work and I had no idea how to get the power back. This happens occasionally and normally Chris goes out to some wooden hut place out the back of the flats and twiddles some switches and the magic of electricity is restored. But I don't possess any magical-electricity-restoring-switch-twiddling knowledge and therefore my blogging plans went out of the window.

We went to see Star Wars : The Clone Wars on Monday. Oh dear. So bad. So very, very bad. I mean, I watched all three prequels with an open mind. I put up with the terrible scripts and dialogue, Ewan McGregor looking like Noel Edmonds, Anakin's constant whining, Boss Nass and the CG Yoda. I didn't even hate Jar Jar Binks half as much as most SW fans do. Because I love Star Wars. I've loved it since I was six years old. I spent every breaktime running around the school playground with Trevor, Tim, Paul and Mark (who were Luke, Han, Chewie and a Stormtrooper/Vader respectively) with my hair in side buns, firing my imaginary blaster (with terrible sound effects - try as we might, us girls will never be able to make proper gun noises like boys can) generally really wishing I could be Princess Leia. But The Clone Wars - aarggh! George Lucas, what have you done?! More bad dialogue, more annoying characters, more totally pointless stuff but most of all - most of all - Ziro The Hutt. Chris and I laughed out loud when he appeared on the screen, and not in a good way. We knew of Ziro and his make-up wearing ways but nothing could have prepared us for the sheer ridiculousness of him. Seriously, George Lucas needs to be stopped. Enough is enough! I said to myself that I wasn't going to mention The Clone Wars on my blog but I feel I have to because it's narked me so much. Actually, this morning I found the cinema ticket stubs from the movie in the back pocket of my jeans. They'd been through the wash. Those Star Wars ticket stubs - in pieces, tattered, scrumpled up and broken - summed up my feelings regarding Lucas's latest offering. *Sob!*

Anyway, enough of my Star Wars anguish. You want bead talk, right?!

On Saturday morning I posted the 'Psychedelic Peacock' beads to their new owner, Jennifer Borek, in Texas. Less than a week later they've reached their destination and have already been turned into wearable loveliness! Jenn has done a wonderful job with them and she's also written a lovely blog entry about my beads.

I didn't get many beads made today. Those five up there at the top of this post are the result of today's glass melting action. I reckon it's about time for a bead giveaway so if you can think of a name for these then please post your suggestions in my comments section. The person who picks the name I like the most will get a lucky dip bag of my lampwork beads. You've got until 8.00pm on Sunday night and then I'll announce the chosen name on my blog. Get naming!

A little bit stressed

These 'Cosmic' beads are some of the few I've made in the past couple of days. There's been a lack of glass-melting action this week and bead production will probably decrease a bit more over the next month or so. The house is sold and it's all gone a bit manic. We've got a cash buyer (a good thing) and the house we're moving to in Abingdon is empty so it's all moving very fast. There's such a lot to do. Emptying the loft which contains thirty years of junk is the thing I'm dreading most. A free weekend would be a handy thing but tomorrow Dad and I are in Abingdon for a friend's 60th birthday do and the following weekend is Dylan's Christening. So cupboard clearing, junk slinging, packing away and boxing up is going to eat into my working hours. I predict stressful times ahead . . . . .

I went out for a drink and a natter with Nicky last night. We couldn't decide where to go and in the end we chose The Jolly Sailor. This is a really old pub down next to the water. Actually, here's a useless fact for you - it was the pub that was used in the eighties television 'drama' Howards' Way. Anyway, a few months back I asked Nicky if she could make me a Star Wars necklace but I wanted it to be a subtle-and-not-instantly-recognisable-as-Star-Wars necklace so we decided to go with the Rebel Alliance logo and this is what Nicky made. I'm so pleased with it. Thank you, Nicky!

Well, I'm off to the shed now to see if I have any kind of beadmaking power. I hate the way that my mood affects my work. If I'm in a good mood I can sit and make beads for hours but if I'm worried or stressed it all goes wrong. Fingers crossed it's a good day . . . . .

Jewellery Bashing

In the old Star Wars movies several props were made by taking model kits of aeroplanes, cars and the like and cutting them all up and re-assembling them to create fantastic spacey-looking things. One example of this is the trench in the Death Star run in Episode IV. Anyway, I won't start on that but I'll just point out that the model kit re-assembly process is referred to as 'kit bashing'.

Why am I talking about this?

Well, sometimes when I'm out and about shopping I quite often see cheap and nasty jewellery that occasionally contains interesting-looking components. The jewellery itself is tat - base metal and usually very poorly put together (don't I sound like a snob?!) but bits of it are pretty nonetheless.

I wanted to make some earrings to wear to this shinding tonight. My shoes and bag are pale gold but I couldn't find any nice gold jewellery. So I took these crystal links out of a cheap pair of earrings that I bought, some glass drops from another pair, re-wired everything on sterling as I'm allergic to gold and threw in some Swarovskis for good measure! Ta da! New earrings.

So for all you jewellery designers out there who don't do 'jewellery bashing' as I call it, you should give it a go. It's fun!

My first attempt at Art Clay Silver

A week or so ago I bought ten tiny grams of Art Clay Silver. If you're not familiar with this it's a clay that performs alchemy-type magic. When fired it turns from clay into fine silver. I've been reading lots about Art Clay Silver and have been slowly gathering bits and pieces for working with it and today I had my first go at making something with it. I am SO pleased with these oh-so-geeky-but-oh-so-unique Darth Vader earrings!

It's quite rare that I actually make jewellery for myself and I'm wearing these shiny danglies as I type. In actual fact they could be shinier so I'm going to give them another polish later. That's the thing - watching the material turn from white to shiny chrome-finish silver as you brush, sand and polish could become quite addictive . . . . . . .

Thought I'd show you this . . . .

As I was making beads today I was working on a doodle in my head. I know that may sound crazy but my brain very rarely stops thinking about beads, pictures and and designs. I've been doing quite a bit of sketching and drawing lately. I intend to turn some of said sketches and drawings into paintings in the near future - just got to find a spare few minutes!

And then it occurred to me that I've often wittered on about drawing and painting on my website but that you've never actually seen any of my creations. This was the first scannable (is that a word?) piece I could find. It's an acrylic painting of Boba Fett from Star Wars that I did a few years ago. He hangs on the wall in my shed. The canvas is smaller than A4 so you can imagine the size of the brush that I used for the detailed bits. I think it only had about three bristles!