Great Etsy Finds: jewellery

Generally I tend to find my jewellery second hand, in charity shops and vintage stores, but I may have to start buying some on Etsy soon because there are just soooo many great jewellery sellers on there. The shopping options locally for me are currently pretty limited - the basic highstreet chains, a few charity shops with slow-moving stock - so the amount of choice available on Etsy is super-appealing.

One of my favourite Etsy jewellery sellers is Elizaveta who creates just the most awesome, cool and crazy necklaces adorned with toy tea sets, fake fruit, mix tapes, all sorts of wild stuff. Not something I could ever see myself wearing but I still adore her work and thoroughly intend to stick her necklaces in treasuries whenever possible!
Also on my treasury-pimping list is yasminbochi whose matrioshka jewellery looks almost edibly delicious. I am especially in love with these earrings, which I intend to direct my earring-loving sister towards to see if she likes the look of them...
I discovered Yasmin's work when one bored afternoon I (rather foolishly) posted in the Etsy forums offering to give compliments about peoples Etsy shops and was totally overwhelmed by volunteers! I did end up discovering some rather awesome shops, including jkziel who makes great handbags from old books, my fave being this (now sold) "how to get what you want" bag:
... and also TheLolaCollection who makes cute jewellery but also the most incredible collaged plates, like this delicious one, entitled "Flower Bomb":
... great jewellery finds from my compliment-giving adventure were these two incredibly cute pins, the first from twistednortherngal and the second from happyone4ever (how cute are those little scissors?)Looking at all these pictures, I think I may be developing a bit of an obsession with pink stuff!

The Etsy seller whose jewellery I'm actually eying up for myself is paraphernalia. Her necklaces are just gorgeous, so pretty but also so eccentric and fascinating. I love the weird collections of childrens clothing, but my favourites are this sweet bird and awesome goldfish:
... the latter is a very firm favourite and is sitting right at the top of my Etsy birthday wishlist. (Is it bad of me to have already started Etsy shopping for my birthday even though it's still almost a month away?)

My Pride and Joy...

... for the whole month of April was the big mobile I was working on for my friend Neal. Not the most helpful of chaps, he didn't say what he actually wanted it to look like just that it shouldn't be girly, and that it should be "awesome". Oh, and he refused to approve a plan or a work-in-progress shot, he just wanted a parcel to show up one day. Haha. Not nervewracking at all, no no.

I have recently been making lots of brooches using different layers of coloured felt, like this flower brooch:I thought of how chunky the layers make the piece, and how it might be cool to do an abstract version of it... My girly instincts made me want to embellish it somehow with sequins or little buttons or something but I decided (much more sensibly) to go for a simpler look with loads of bright colours providing the interest. So, I got out my stash of felt, picked 16 colours (I snuck some pretty purple in there but no pink!) and made a big mess on the kitchen table cutting out all of these:
I layered the different colours and made two of each piece, so they could be sewn back to back. While sewing them I was fascinated by how much they reminded me of butterfly wings but seeing them in pairs I was also a little worried that the mobile might end up looking like a bunch of weird creepy eyes, following you round the room...
Getting them all sewn together was rather exciting as I got the first real chance to see what the mobile might end up looking like, whether the pieces were as satisfyingly chunky as I had hoped, how the stitching did or didn't work with the design, and how all the colours and shapes looked together:I then had a real Blue Peter moment, working out a layout for the pieces and clothes-pegging the trial strands to an old coat-hanger for a bit of product testing on my balcony (slightly breezy so a great chance to see it spinning) - you can just see the blue pegs in the top of this picture, and the tiles are my neighbour's roof:... then finally it was time to sew it all together, and see how the whole thing looked.
I was so chuffed with this that it was rather a wrench parcelling it up to Neal. He seems to like it so: phew! Lots more pics of the finished mobile & the work-in-progress can be seen on my flickr page.

Swapping swapping swapping

My newly-formed supplies swap group on Flickr is only a week old but is already 25 UK Etsians strong and there has been a flurry of swappage.

So far we have swapped 1 pile of felt, 1 mystery beaded thingummy, 3 sets of beads, 1 piece of velvet, 1 devil duckie, 2 packs of sculpey, 2 reels of wire, 3 tubes of glitter glue, 15 chandelier crystals, 16 snap cards, 2 bundles of wool, 1 button ... and a couple of other things, too!

Exciting parcels being recieved all over the country, and potential for so many awesome new items to be produced... I may actually clap my hands with glee if someone posts a picture of something actually made with swapped-for supplies, it would just make my month.

I seem to be accumulating quite a lot of swap points - or UKE's as someone suggested we call our currency - as I've sent out yet more supplies... this time some glitter glue to LittleMissRiver that had been lying neglected in my stash for three years or so and that was clearly never going to get used...
... and a whole bunch of these crazy snap playing cards to Rosehip71. I think I just thought these were irresistably mental, I don't think I ever knew what I was going to use them for!
I got my first swap parcel this morning from greygoat - 15 gorgeous chandelier crystals (I will have to take a picture on a day when there is some light - so overcast today!) which I immediately found myself oooohing over when she posted them to the group, wondering what I could make with them... As I am hoping to make some mobiles soon (you know, should I ever finish spring cleaning and mucking about on Flickr and get back to actually making stuff) I think the crystals will make great weights / decorations at the bottom of my sewn pieces.

Thinking of mobiles, I may put off cleaning the fridge for a little longer (defrosted the icebox yesterday, yawn) by finally blogging about the custom piece I made last month...

Sewing, sunshine and swaps

Right, I have done basically no crafting all this week and have instead been alternately engrossed in dull chores & tidying, and out enjoying the glorious sunshine. I have some sewing planned for this afternoon but it is in fact entirely uninteresting mending - several buttons fell off a dress of mine, a pair of my tights has a gaping hole, and I have been employed by a friend of ours to hem & mend her sons' school trousers (my life is all glamour).

I have managed to find the time to bully lots of lovely people into joining my swap group on Flickr. It's all very exciting, there are already a whole bunch of unwanted supplies posted and several swaps have already taken place! I have already sent out a weird and mysterious decorative beaded piece to greygoat...
... a bundle of felt to my fellow felt addict Kezzaroo...
... and I shall shortly be parcelling up these big fat beads to Sakura:
It will be great to see what gets made with these things that were languishing unloved in my spare room!