Playing with fire

My soldering kit arrived last week, and so on Monday, when littlest girl was at pre-school I decided to go for it.

Must admit I was just a little scared of this thing...

And it's only a little one. People use bigger ones on creme brulee. Why did it scare me so much? A few goes of turning it on and off, and I felt lots happier.

And who'd have thought you need so much stuff? I unpacked and unwrapped all my bits and bobs, read the instructions on the pickle, and made some up. Checked out the flux, filled the torch, and then it was......time!!

Oops - with all my excitment I'd (ahem)  forgotten to put any thought into what I would actually be soldering. Silly me!

A few little wire rings formed and filed later, and I was ready to go. I know the join is supposed to be super clean and fitted.

Wow - such fun. I'm addicted. Watching the solder flow was great.

 

Anyway, hammered and textured the rings and linked them all together and hey presto...

I'm keeping this one for me, but no doubt will be making something similar for the shop soon.

Can't wait to learn more, and get practising. Onwards and upwards. 

My first ever treasury....

I managed to nab myself a treasury on Etsy... my first ever.

Feel free to have a click on the pic above and leave a comment. (ah go on, go on) - I'd love to know what you think!

Oh and make sure you're standing to attention and saluting while you do.

Snowflakes

Well it seems to have stopped snowing, and yes, I know it was a pain, and yes, getting anywhere was difficult BUT I am kind of missing it a bit. So here are my snowy etsy finds....

Love this gorgeous snowglobe effect bead.

Yum!

These flakes of silver in resin look just like snowflakes.

Click on the links to take you through to the etsy shops!

Featured Etsy Seller - Nico Designs

My first featured etsy seller of 2010 is Erika - aka Nico Designs.

Erika is a stay at home mum who sews for sanity, and she makes some lovely stuff which she sells on etsy and via her own website.

Her makes are eco-friendy too; items combine new, repurposed, recycled or upcycled materials, and any scrap or remnants are used in other projects or donated to keep them from a landfill.

She also has a fab blog - with some really nice tutorials. I love this upcycled hat - how cute is that? Go take a look!

Give away results.....

Cannot believe the response I had to this competition. Thank you all so so much for taking part.

 

All things considered, including all the tweets etc.. there were 232 entries on my list. I was going to pick a name out of my woolly hat, but that would have killed a tree, so I listed all the entries out on a spreadsheet, and used random.org to select a random entry from that list. Took AGES, but it had to be ultra fair.

Drum roll please...................

And the winner is The Eco Cheap Mom, who chose the second necklace (which she named "Bird on a Wire"). Congratulations to you - I really hope you like it.

I'll be doing another giveaway to celebrate another milestone. Maybe 50 etsy sales, or 100 blog followers - whichever comes first ( I think we all know which will be first!!) so stay tuned.  

Also in case anyone is interested, I'll be loading the silver and amethyst necklace up on etsy shortly!! You'll have to go look to see what name I chose. 

Give away closed

Wow! What a lot of entries.... the give away is now closed, but bear with me while I get the draw sorted. I'll blog about the winner this evening.

Thanks so much for your interest!

Giveaway alert!!!

Well I did promise that when I got to 50 facebook fans I would do a giveaway....oops I'm now on 57 so it's time I got myself organised and got on with it.

I have been meaning to get this started for a couple of days but just could NOT decide what I should giveaway. Some people suggested a gift certificate, but I decided (finally) to offer a choice between 2 necklaces.  They are quite different, so hopefully you will like 1 of them!

First up is the amethyst and silver necklace..

Sterling silver wire wrapped around amethyst nuggets, linked on a sterling silver chain, with a toggle clasp.

I do like these nuggets - they're quite irregular in shape, size, and shade. Amethyst is the birthstone for February.

Choice number 2...  a double brass chain holds a brass swallow and bloodstone beads.

Bloodstone is my birthstone (as well as aquamarine - March seeing as though you asked) and I was never that keen on it when I was younger, but I really like the variety of colours and the splashes of red that appear in the stones. Maybe it was just the name that put me off, jasper sounds better. It does seem to go very well with brass too. 

 
I went for an asymetrical design as it just seems fun, and nice and easy to wear.

Sooooooooo how to enter......

1) First of all choose which necklace you would prefer, and leave me a comment here, with a name for that necklace. (I have such trouble thinking of good names for the etsy shop!)


2) For a second entry into the draw, blog about this giveaway with a link, and let me know!

3) For a third entry into the draw follow me on Twitter (redbirdjewels) and Tweet about this giveaway - I'll add your name in again for every tweet (but please no more than 1 tweet per hour!! - I won't count it!)



I'll put all of the entries into a hat (I have my woolly one ready) and will pick the winner on Sunday 17th January at noon.

Ooooooh my first giveaway - I'm really excited!!!

Do you remember those gorgeous lampwork beads I bought from Josephine Wadman? I blogged about them a couple of months ago and promised I'd let you know what I did with them....but forgot...until now.

The first thing I made was this necklace with sterling silver swirls:

I loaded this into my shop, and it went within half an hour! Crikey didn't even get a chance to load up the matching earrings before it was sold...

 

So inevitably I've only just loaded them up into my etsy shop... (oops).

Then I made a little pendant with hammered sterling silver drops.

I'm really happy with them and just can't get over the blue! I think I'm going to have to learn lampworking next.

Yay 2010

Happy New Year to you all. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. Ours was great, even though my 5 year old had tonsillitis on The Big Day and didn't care if Father Christmas had been or not. Poor little thing!

So lots new for me; my computer well and truly died, so I've got a new one in the sale and it's brilliant; a complete a revelation. So maybe it won't take me half an hour to load stuff onto my folksy shop anymore!!

But the big, big thing in my life is that I have now stopped working. I had been doing 3 days a week, but now I'm home full time and loving it - mind you this is the first week, and today was a snow day. The plan is to spend more time with the kids, to get on with more of the stuff I like to do, to have fun. Hurrah. I'm sure 2010 is going to be a good one. Hope yours is going well so far!