Evolution of a Brooch

1. Found bright pink rope. Thought I'll use that one day. Liked the colour, it was cheap, good texture, and was in great condition.

2. Experimented with melting the rope. Plan was to melt pieces of it completely.

3. While melting realised the texture was great and worth keeping. Liked it looking like rope. Kept experimenting and found a way to make it stiff, while keeping the appearance of rope.

4. Made some samples. Wanted to make a chain.

5. Worked on making the pieces look more finished.

6. Needed a few pieces to exhibit (will talk about this in the next post) so thought a few samples would be good to show.

7. Started layering pieces and realised they would make great brooches. Plus three of these would look good as a group.

8. Made three finished brooches as shown above.

9. Will now keep experimenting with other types rope, and other forms of jewellery.

10. Want to finish that chain.

GreatGreenGoods

Just a quick thank you to Liz over at GreatGreenGoods for her years of ongoing support. She was one of the first bloggers to support me, and has done so ever since. So thanks again Liz, it is very much appreciated.

Congratulation to Reg for winning the Knitwit necklace too!

Road Trip Score

I went on a little road trip yesterday on the hunt for supplies. Some days you score, and some day you don't. That's just the way it goes. Yesterday was one of those rare days when I found more than I had hoped for! It is great when this happens, and it is a nice balance for all the time spent looking with little success. I think I sometimes forget how much time this side of things can take.

pictured above less than half of the days find!

Etsy Finds

It was a nice surprised to find my Knitwit bangle featured on Etsy's blog this morning. I do admit to having wondered if admin will ever notice me over there. There are so many sellers and many with really great products. Now I'll just wait until I get a featured seller spot. I'm hopeful.

Anyway I do think you just have to stick with something (and love it!), be consistent, and the rest will just happen in time. Having fingers in lots of pies helps too. That helps with feeling patient because if one thing isn't paying off, something else probably is. Like dating, it's a bit of a numbers game.

Free The Pink Bottles

Free plastic - I like the sound of that! In fact very little of the plastics I use have been obtained without cost, although much is recycled. Yesterday I did get some for free and realised just how many opportunities for this there actually were.

After months of eyeing off the pink plastic bottles at the local ice cream parlor I decided to ask them if I could collect them once empty. The manager saying 'yes' wasn't terribly surprising although I was surprised at just how enthusiastic his 'yes' was. He carefully explained how he always put the bottles in the recycled bin but he was pleased to know that by giving them to me he knew they would definitely be recycled. He has promised to put them aside for me from now on.

The hairdressers were super busy last night but next time I'll pop in and ask for their bottles. Hair products come in such pretty coloured plastics. I hope that they will be just as happy to help. Well, there is no harm in asking!

TUPPERWARE



Tupperware has a lifetime guarantee. In Australia this means that if a piece is damaged through normal use you can take it back to your friendly Tupperware Lady for a brand new replacement. The damaged piece is apparently sent off for recycling and gets turned into flower pots and the like. In the US I've heard (from the lips of a US Tupperware Lady) the same deal applies, except the piece doesn't get recycled. Instead a black marker gets run across it before it gets tossed in the bin. The thought of all those lovely coloured lids being turned into landfill, when I could be making jewellery out of them, is just too sad!!!

Tupperware users of the world feel free to send your damaged goods directly to me. I promise I will put every last bit of it to good use!