Quick update

Hello everyone!
As you might or might not have noticed I have changed my blog layout because it was just annoying me... I had quite a few projects to share with all of you and also I wanted to adjust the header and all the other stuff that still looks unfinished BUT my computer decided to die right after I had made most of my adjustments and now I'm not sure how long it will take for me to get a new one since it wasn't really in my budgetplan... Right now I am also making insanely long sentences because I'm typing on a tiny iPhone screen which is another thing I am absolutely not used to plus I always have to change this silly little keyboard thingy when I want to use punctuation. NOT FUN you guys...
Anyway now you know what's going on and of course I'll let you guys know as soon as I am back online with a keyboard that is sized for human fingers... This was just to let you know that I am missing you a LOT!!!!

A little sneak peek

Happy monday!
The sun is back out after a very stormy week-end and we will be outside as soon as naptime is over... For now I am enjoying the silence.
I thought I could share with you a little sneak peek of the new items in the shop:

The hex nuts are still my favourite element to play with, but I have been missing colour a lot lately. And on one particularly tiring and dreadful day, I was trying to get the boy to sleep and I was lying down with him when the idea hit me. Use thread to embroider on the holes of the hex nuts! I don't understand why I didn't think of this before....

A new range of endless possibilities (and obstacles...) has opened itself up to me once again and I have been very busy to say the least... I have even started thinking about studs, an absolute first for me.

So far I'm enjoying the ride and you will see a shop update very soon!
Have a good day and remember, without Mondays Fridays wouldn't exist! (does this even make sense? I'm not sure...)

Little yellow flowers

Good evening friends!
It's almost 2 am over here but I just had to show you the skirt I made last night... I went shopping with Julia, and stumbled over the cutest fabric, dark red with tiniest yellow flowers on it and it was love at first sight...
I had an idea of what kind of skirt I wanted and I just went looking for the right tutorial and - brace yourselves! - I found the best, most understandable, easiest tutorial ever! Dana from danamadeit.com explains it so well, I believe even people who sew for the first time can get it.... I got through it without a single mistake (and usually it takes about one to three breakdowns before something is actually finished...) and it went quite quickly!
Have a look!

Trust me I have been dancing all day and made it twirl! The best thing about the tutorial is that you end up with a pattern that you can use over and over again for excessive amounts of skirts :) Which is perfect since I am obsessed with skirts, and now it looks as if I will never have to buy one ever again :)
Happy sewing and goodnight!! (I ordered some fabric on sale and now I can't wait for it to arrive so I can make more of those!!!!!)

One month later

Hello my dears! :)
It's been a long time since the last post. I haven't been at my best in these past weeks and every night I ended up being so exhausted that I just fell into bed. There have been weeks with a lot of work, and weeks where I couldn't bring myself to pick up a bead or a hex nut because I was just so unmotivated...
But I've learned that you have to find the little things that make you happy to keep yourself going. Here are a few of my "happy-makers" of the past few weeks and days:

Cute "people-beads" turned earrings that came in the post today... Aren't they just so sweet and funny and instant-smile-inducing? Of course I have a female version of them:

Cutiieeeees! :) I love it when new beads come in the post (after waiting three eternal weeks for them)...

Strawberries sprinkled with sugar in my new pretty bowl that I got for my birthday.

More pretty bowls that double as jewellery storage since I find them all too lovely and cute to actually eat from them.... They should always be sitting there on top of the piano and make me happy. So they are. :) That's how easy it is :P

The very cutest little animal rings by katiwo who draws them herself. She is on holiday right now, but on the 22nd July she will be back and you will be able to purchase these super cute rings again... She also had a cat ring and the cutest bird earrings...
And last but not least there is the creepy taxidermied owl that I saw in a thrifting place and it scared me half to death and then I couldn't stop laughing because it reminded me of the taxidermy-obsessed Bloggess and her hilarious post about Juanita the weasel, so I just had to snap a picture (of terrible quality) of it....

So here's to the little things that make us smile. Let me know what makes you smile! :)

Birthday bracelets

Good morning everyone!
It's not morning anymore but I don't care. To me it is still morning as I was too lazy to even get dressed today. Good afternoon sounds silly and all the other greetings I could use don't inspire me right now. Also if it's still morning it means the day can still get a lot better. Not that it's a particularly bad day, but it's not a good one either. So I suppose "Morning everyone" is a better greeting... Let's stick with the one I already have for now....
Do you know the feeling when you feel claustrophobic in your own skin? Today is one of those days for me. Nothing can be right, nothing works and I feel like doing nothing, and when I do nothing I am not happy. So it's pretty much a lose-lose situation...Annoying!
If you are still here after this depressing start to a post which was actually supposed to cheer me (and ideally you) up then thank you! It means a lot to me.
Since everything goes wrong today I decided to tell you about the things that went well lately :) It's my sisters birthday this week and I decided to make her a bunch of bracelets. These were the ones I started off with:

The bottom one is simply braided cotton cord with hex nuts threaded onto the strands. If you want to make the same one, go to see the ladies from Honestly...WTF they have the best tutorial ever for it... The top one is just macrame knotting with hex nuts threaded onto the middle strand. You can find a link to the macrame tutorial underneath the last picture of this post.
She wanted a very simple cord bracelet with a skull bead on it and of course that was easiest and fastest to do :)

And the third set of bracelets I made for her were again macrame knotting with brass washers as a charm in the middle:

Again, the ladies from Honestly...WTF made an awesome tutorial for exactly this macrame style and also explain the closure very well. Needless to say that she absolutely loved her bracelets and of course, wore them stacked to work today. Very proud indeed. :)
I think I am actually slightly cheered up now that I thought back to this. I'll either go and make more bracelets now or go and have a nap. Both should work equally well :) I hope you guys have a better day!

Hopping on the spraypaint-train

First things first:
We are out of Internet and I spent most of last week battling with our provider and I am tired of it!!! Turns out I am addicted to the Internet like other people to crack or alcohol... This isn't funny!!!
This is why my posts are really not regular at all right now.
For example at this very moment I'm sitting at university with a bad 1 Mbps connection to bring you this blog post! This is how much I love you! :)
Ok rant over, where was I? Yes, the spraypaint train. I don't know if you noticed, but the blogworld has been going crazy with spray painting everything within reach and of course I had to give it a go as well.
I had one old bottle of blue spraypaint lying around and because it was late and I just HAD to do it RIGHT NOW I used it. The look I was going for was supposed to be "dipped" but I still managed to get colour almost everywhere...

Not really the colour I had in mind when I first thought about spraypainting because I had seen some gorgeous neon colours. But for the night my need for spraypainting was satisfied. :) The next day though I went out and the first thing I got was some orange neon spraypaint and I tried it again at night!!
Here is my other go:

Now these ones are truly my favourites... I'm still on the lookout for some yellow neon spraypaint (that silly store didn't have neon yellow can you believe it??) and I have been wearing them a lot!!! Turns out the blue spraypaint is rubbing off on my skin... Not great at all. After wearing them one whole day in the evening I looked into the mirror and saw two big blue half circles underneath my ears, something like the earring dangle path :) I can happily report though that the orange ones are safe. They don't rub off although I haven't sealed them. I might need to find something for sealing the colour in though. Any thoughts or suggestions?
That's it from me for today, I'm sorry if I was sometimes slightly incoherent and confusing, but today that pretty much sums me up. Confused and chopped up... :)
I'll be back soon (if the Internet decides to work again) on a better day!

A geometric fairytale

Once upon a time there were two little arrow heads that were meant for something beautiful. But somewhere along the line of their creation, they got abandoned for a faster, simpler, more impressive idea. They lived a sad life between abandoned projects and unfinished businesses, always hoping that one day they might get picked up and worked into the great thing they were meant to become.

But time passed and their hope dwindled away. Every now and again they would get picked up and looked at, but their joy diminished quickly, when they always flew back into the little drawer of failed ideas. One day a bright shining idea came along, got picked up and worked on, and like a dying star, it burned out and turned to cold ash. This idea left behind two tiny triangles with no immediate future.

 

Those two triangles got tossed into the failed ideas drawer to live a sad unfinished life. They moved around for a while, getting to know the two little arrow heads and ended up making friends with them.

On one particularly uninspirational day the failed ideas drawer was opened in a desperate attempt to create a new idea. This was the moment for the two little arrow heads and the two little triangles to shine. They arranged themselves in a formation and tried their hardest to look as harmonious as possible.

 

In that moment a new idea was born, a particularly bright and intricate one. Quickly the little triangles and the little arrow heads got picked up from the failed ideas drawer, jump rings were opened and closed, chain was measured, cut and attached, two earhooks were found and connected and from the table emerged like a butterfly, a new pair of beautiful earrings.

 

 And the little arrow heads and the little triangles lived happily ever after, exploring the world while dangling joyfully from two earlobes...