Reuse, Revive, Recycle

November 8, 2010 – 9:03 pm

Sometimes you find a necklace that you would love to love, or love parts of, but other things about it isn’t quite right. Sometimes necklaces break, leaving it’s parts stranded without a string or chain to belong to. This one is a combination of those two.

The large green enamel dragonfly was originally from an Accessorize necklace, hanging squarely at precisely the wrong length. The brass butterfly is left over from a broken Pilgrim necklace that I think I only ever liked for that butterfly anyway, and the little brass heart is also a spare part from an old thing.

The chain and connectors are from my closest bead shop and it’s all put together with brass wire and a few swarovskis, both crystals and pearls.

Enamel dragonfly on brass chain

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Wedding stuff: the Silver Clay Hen Party Necklace

November 1, 2010 – 11:02 pm

I had been informed of, and had even supplied some information to help facilitate, my husband-to-be’s stag party, but for some reason it never occurred to me that the girls could have the wild, crazy and totally unorthodox idea to kidnap me on the same day. Therefore, when the door bell rang at 8 on the Saturday morning two weeks before our wedding, I was really, really annoyed as I stumbled out of bed, trying to get the dog quiet and softly cursing my fiance’s best man – the guys were not supposed to turn up until nine o’clock! Instead, the kitchen filled with laughing ladies handing out croissants and coffee and after getting dressed in first my normal clothes and then having a verrry pretty veil, blonde fake braids and a white lace shirt put on I was taken away for a day full of surprises and great amounts of fun!

Our first stop turned out to be fencing! Due to my darling packing the bag I had with me, I wielded my sword dressed in shades of shocking pink from head to toe. Also, when you fence, you get a giant plastic bra to protect your boobs. I was real pretty. We were instructed in lunging, charging and attacking and I reckon we were pretty good, all of us – we met each other two by two in duels until everyone had fought everyone else, and Y won!

After we were done with the noble fighting, the sun had come out and allowed us to have a lovely picnic on the lawn where even more ladies joined us. After wine, cheese and song we left for the next station: a silver clay workshop set up in Y&K’s flat!

Silver clay is clay made of extremely fine particles of metal mixed with organic binders and water. You shape and decorate it, dry it, burn it and polish it and end up with a pure silver artifact, for example a piece of jewellery. The girls all made pendants for me, and my assignment was to make something for D. Luckily he wears cuff links so it wasn’t hard to think of something =)

Here’re the adorable things they made!

10 silver clay pendants

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Actually, working with silver clay is not very different from working with sugar paste. It dries and gets stiff pretty quickly, so you have to know what you are going to make once you take the clay out of the package, and you have to work kind of fast and get it right if not on the first then on the second or third try or the clay will loose it’s elasticity and not form or pattern as easily, just like sugar paste. The hardening is more complicated though – silver clay is first dried in a veggie drier appliance (I’m guessing this step could be “let dry over night” if you had that kind of time), then burned with a gas torch for three minutes and then tumbled in a small polishing tumbler for a while to get silvery since the burning makes it all white. It was a lot of fun and as you can see you can make beautiful things right away, all of us were newbies!

After being crafty we went home to H&A where Ida had produced a glorious Lebanese buffet and we drank wine and chatted. Later on a belly dancing instructor turned up and gave us a dancing lesson and a part of me wants to publish photos of that just to show how much fun we had and a much saner part of me will never show anyone photos of me in a belly dancer’s costume! It’s a highly recommended pastime though and if you combine it with an hour or two of fencing earlier in the day your body will ache in totally new and interesting ways…

Thank you C, I, E, K, C, H, Y, S, L & Sis! You are all gorgeous and very precious to me!

By Emma | Posted in Hobbies, Necklaces, Wedding | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Wedding stuff: the wedding bouquet

October 4, 2010 – 9:05 pm

Here’s another thing I didn’t make – my wedding bouquet, that was made by my mother-in-law! I was not very certain I would have a bouquet at first, I mean – it doesn’t do anything. You just carry it around and it occupies your hand which, if your wedding happens to be on a rainy day, you really need for the umbrella since you will be holding your husband/to be/’s hand in your other.

On the other side, flowers really are very lovely. So, flowers it is.

I wanted romantic summer flowers tied in a not-too-sleek way, something a little sprawling and unorganized. Visiting the local florist I chose white, pink and blue as my colors to add to the beautiful greeny-blue of blueberry leaves that the woods in Sweden are colored by. The white would be Alstroemeria, a small amaryllis lily that keeps very well. The pink in different shades would be Ranunculus and the blue, after some hesitation, Iris lilies. I would have loved sweet peas, but as they are not in season in June here they would have had to travel from Holland, and as they are a bit fragile they would perhaps not have looked their best when arriving.

About a week before the wedding my florist called and was so sorry, but none of her stockists could deliver pink ranunculus – they weren’t in season. What? I thought ranunculus was always in season, but apparently not. Backup plan was blush and white peonies and oooh were they gorgeous when I saw them the day before the wedding! Lovely, round and soft and fuzzy. But there was another problem – Irises, as I had feared, are not blue. Some people may call them blue, but to me they are most distinctively purple – and white, pink and purple was NOT what I had in mind. Luckily, my funny florist in this tiny little village also had the spaciest, perfectly blue chrysanthemums in her flower fridge, looking almost like corn flowers, and with that peace resettled on the bridal party.

Not blue...

On the morning of the wedding, my mother-in-law met me at the florist’s, next door to the hair dresser where I was to spend half my day, and was given charge of the masses of flowers. David and his best man braved the mosquito-infested forest and came back with bags of blueberry leaves. The flowers I picked are all not very expensive so I ordered more than enough to make the bouquet, and together with the masses of blueberry leaves the rest went into the table decorations that David’s aunt and florist cousin put together for us.

When we arrived at the venue, David’s honorary uncle came to meet us with the bouquet and this is how beautiful it looked

Wedding bouquet

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I had asked my mother-in-law to tie it the american way with ribbon all around the stems (this is an american thing, yes? From what I have seen, most European bouquets are without ribbons or in bouquet holders. Anyway.) so it had a white and green checkered ribbon also hiding the plastic bag and wet paper it was wrapped in to keep the flowers fresh.

She had also made a corsage for David, and here you can really see the spacey blue chrys. It’s got to be weirdly breeded.

Groom's corsage with blue chrysanthemum, white alstroemeria and blueberry leaves

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Thank you, E!

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Autumn leaves

September 27, 2010 – 10:47 pm

It is definitely getting chillier outside, tea on the couch is a much better option than a glass of wine on the balcony and if this continues I will soon be able to wear my hat when going out without melting – and it is a deliiiiightful hat, my husband bought it for me when we were out looking in shops a while ago. I love saying that, both the husband part and the deliiiightful.

Anyways, leaves are turning yellow on trees and here are leaves in red and gold on mini lemon cupcakes with chocolate-coffee cream cheese topping. The small leaves in two shapes are of sugarpaste colored red and orange and then dusted with wine red and/or gold food dust to give them different colors. Also veined with a dog bone tool and dried in a little bent shape. I think they look really cute and autumny. Next time I think I’ll add cinnamon or cardamom to the lemon flavoured batter, they could have used a little bit of spice to them.

Hope you’re all cosy inside or outdoors and happy springtime, if you are one of those people on the other side of the ball.

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Wedding stuff: the Wedding dress

September 13, 2010 – 10:50 pm

This is not one of my projects. This is a big and scary and hard project of monumental dimensions, in part carried out with the most difficult materials available. This is my wedding dress, and the person who pulled it off is my mother.

My grandmother was a haute couture seamstress, apprentice from the age of 15 and some years later employed by the French atelier at NK in Stockholm. Her job interview consisted of hemming a skirt – 6 meters of silk crepe, roll hemmed by hand. Those of you who’ve tried anything like it know this is no mean feat. She got the job and went on to sew the most glamorous things through the 30s. Some of the mastery evidently was inherited by her daughter, and now I will blog the dress she made.

I quite soon after starting to look around at wedding dresses realized I probably did not want a full lenght gown and learned that the english term for that is “tea lenght”. Very mid-20th-century. I think every single sketch I made had a boat neckline and full skirt (me not, as previously stated, being of a willowy silhouette). The rest of the design was harder, and shifted between a full lace gown, acres of tulle and applique flowers, inspired from hours and hours spent looking at the most wonderful things on the web.

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The above inspirational photos are of course not mine, they are borrowed from the internet. The lace and tulle dream to the left is Justin Alexander’s model 8465 and the elegance to the right is Stephanie Allin’s design Nina Short of the Bordeaux collection.

Anyway. In March my mother took me, my sister and sister in law to Barcelona to shop for dress fabric (not that there aren’t fabric stores in Stockholm. They are just not as good, and it’s just not as fun shopping there as it is going to Spain). Again, research on my beloved Internet told me where to go: the quartiers east of Placa Catalunya and more exactly to Ribes y Casals, an incredible fabric store that have not one but two really large stores within minutes of each other. Our day there ended with over 30 metres of fabric being bought, 19 of them white silk and lace for various wedding gown designs – I had hoped that having to decide on the fabric would make me chose the design but no, with everything so lovely and being about a third of the price or less compared to Sweden we just bought the lot.

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Fabric store heaven

A few weeks later the design was finally decided and the Seamstress mother and the Undecided Bride daughter could go to work. From lovely Viola Lahger I ordered a Revanche de la femme corset to wear under the dress, as my home made dress doesn’t have the built in corsetry modern bought bridal gowns have. Also, proper lace up corsets are cool. And, surprisingly, not at all uncomfortable – I’ve worn mine full days and partied pretty hard in it. You do want someone to help you tie your shoelaces, though.


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Prototyping and under way

First  we made a muslin though combining already proven patterns and endless fittings and then my mother took her large sewing scissors to the fabric for the under-dress, a creamy white really heavy silk satin. This is a quite nice material to sew in,it  doesn’t slide and is compact and stiff. This can not be said of the material that went on top of it; the sheerest, flimsiest, most water-like silk chiffon we’ve ever touched. It’s the gold creamy stuff in the down right corner of the photo above. I’m almost a bit ashamed I made my mum handle it, but she assures me that she thought it was fun, at least kind of. Sometimes.

While she worked on getting straight side seams on bias in the cob web flimsy, I crafted little roses of it to put on the skirt. I think I made 50 or so of them, and also got some ready made lace flowers to complement them. A button maker (there are professionals who still do this, yes) covered the 27 buttons with the satin and the chiffon to get the color right, and mum and I took turns fastening the flowers to the skirt. I made the draped silk crepe chiffon belt by arranging it on a 10 cm wide strip of satin, sticking pins in it and then fastening it where the pins had been.

I have no clue, nor do I really want one, of how many work hours there are in this dress, but it was a lot of fun as well. True to form, the last stitch went into the dress not a full hour before the ceremony began…

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Details from the dress: the buttons, the belt, the chiffon and lace flowers.

But we made it! and here’s the result:

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and of course, there are more pics of it among our wedding photos.

Thanks mum.

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Old cakes

September 6, 2010 – 7:54 pm

These are some pretty old cakes, long since eaten. I’m gonna post them here anyway, since I keep losing track of the photos.

The black and gold ones were for my old uni union board, well deserving of a nice dinner last year. Our colours are, guess what, black and gold. I really can’t remember what the filling in these were, and I don’t seem to have any photos of them cut, but I’m guessing lemon and vanilla and chocolate butter cream. I bought the sugar paste already coloured, as it’s really hard and messy to get it that black. The flowers are yellow dusted with gold, so they are proper golden and shiny!

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The next cake is from last year. It’s a Christmas cake I made for my colleagues in the shape of a parcel, with a tag stating “Wishing for a peaceful Christmas”, as we were at the time working quite hard to secure our systems before the Christmas rush and really were wishing for no system crashes on Christmas Day. This I know was filled with cassis and white chocolate mousse, very sweet but quite nice. I made the mistake of using a swiss roll recipe for the batter, and it turned out soft and wobbly, not at all suitable for building a cake on! It kept in one piece until it was time to get eaten, though. To create some texture on the quite plain cake I used a patterned roll for the green ribbon, and supported the bow with paper balls until it had dried.

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Wedding stuff: the wedding necklace

August 30, 2010 – 9:22 pm

I got the idea for the necklace from another necklace that just sort of happened a day in front of the tv set. I liked the idea of a ‘random’ pearl necklace with, of course, crystals, and in the beginning there were pendants of hearts both back and front in different colors but it quickly came out way to blingy and a little tacky, so I toned down the multicoloring and lost the pendants and was quite happy with it. The only pendantish bead left on it was a small AB tinted flower.


The whole lot are Swarovskis, which I get at Perles & Co where they are reasonably priced. That said, this is easily the most expensive necklace I’ve ever made.


I can’t remember where I first saw the backdrop necklaces, but I’m guessing a photo of some 30s willowy beauty. Alas, I am myself not of the willowy kind, and a silky 30s gown with open back was very much out of the question (it would also have required me smoking vogue cigarettes with a black ivory cigarette holder and, well, there are a few problems with that scenario).

Vogue 1931 design

The unsuitable willowy style (I own the pattern, just in case I ever turn into one)




Anyways. The necklace is strung on nylon and has an odd shape since you need a strand going around your neck, otherwise it won’t stay on your back. Unless you make it waaaaay longer and move very carefully. The neck strand has a silver heart clasp to allow you to put it on, and this is how it all turned out:


Wedding necklace

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Wedding stuff: the Head pieces

August 23, 2010 – 8:46 pm

I love a certain kind of enamel jewellery. Like Pilgrim’s Velvet series. So for hair jewellery for the wedding I got myself a bracelet, ripped it apart, stuck it to hairpins and put it in my hair.

Hair pins

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I got the coque feathers from ebay – search for millinery feathers. They are glued between two small patches of white felt that were then stiched to the back of the three medium flowers that were fastened together with thin wire and attached to the hair clip. The same for the other hair clip with three flowers, and the largest flower (that I couldn’t find for the photo) I stuck on to a large bobby pin, also with the help of wire.

For the birdcage veil I bought a bit of french netting – sold in hat shops if your craft shop is not amazingly well stocked – and played around with it, after reading a few online instructions. There’re two nice edges to netting, and if you do like me you’ll miss both of them ;-) doesn’t matter much, but try to get one of the nice edges to fall across your face

Birdcage veil and pins

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My veil was not fastened in any way, just put on top of my hair but if you want it stuck properly you can put a comb or hair pins in it, of course. Most people do.

Amazingly, in the 1400+ photos we have from our wedding, the feather hair clip did not get one good pic. I guess that is because people tend to take photos of the bride’s face, not the back of her head. But still…

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Wedding stuff: the invitations

August 9, 2010 – 4:55 pm

One of the first things that has to be completed about a wedding are the invitations. After you decide on venue, ceremony time and other stuff that has to go in the invitation, that is.
We didn’t really have a theme, or a theme colour either. Looking back, I’m guessing the theme was “country chic” and out colour scheme was…erm…”summer ice cream”. Anyway, I never missed the non existing theme other then when we were designing the invitations. If we’d had only the blues or the greens or the pinks to choose from, it would have saved us a lot of time.

We came up with the general design pretty early; “tags” in an inner envelope with a sort of ticket carnet/postcard feeling. Then we ordered cardstock from a couple of different webshops and spent a few afternoons in craft shops in Stockholm and prototyped colours and size for a couple of weekends. The cardstock shades we decided on came from a nearby scrapbooking store, Handarbeta, where the owner Sofia even lent us her paper trimmer, as she had none in stock to sell. It helped us immensely, needless to say.

We did the text layout in Power point and printed “a few” test tags on our printer before we cut the cardstock and printed it, four tags at a time. The tags are cut in different lengths and embossed with little squares on the edge of the top two. We coloured sticker dots the right beige, punched holes through them and tied the tags together with a friendship knot. The green inner envelopes are just folded over to make a snug tunnel to keep the tags in place. The ‘stamp’ is a photo of two of our many ducks cut with shape scissors and the postage stamp over it with the text Emma & David - We are getting married – 12 June 2010 we designed and ordered from My cards.

Our wedding invitations

Our wedding invitations

From My cards we also ordered the stamp in the bottom right corner. It is based on an Egyptian passport stamp and has our names, the date, the place etc on it. We changed the words around a little and printed magnets with the RSVP date on them so people would remember to answer. I don’t know if that’s why, but of our 78 invited guests only one had not RSVP’d on the date!

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Wedding stuff: the Vintage Style Necklace

August 2, 2010 – 7:23 pm

Whoa! Almost eight months since my last post? Really? I blame the wedding. And the moving of web hotels. But mostly the wedding. The wedding was on June 12th, a beautiful though a little rainy Saturday in county Dalarna. Of course, there was quite a lot of crafty things going into this wedding and I plan on blogging them all here, but I’ll start with the most recently created: the wedding picture vintage style necklace.

 

Vintage style wedding necklace

 

In the photo you can see the finished result and the photo I started with. I cropped the photo and turned it black and white with Picasa, printed it on photo paper, glued it to the photo jewellery plate and covered it with a random scrapbooking thing D gave me once, something called “Sepia accents”, a glue-like medium that is slightly pink-orangeish and dries to resemble resin. Above it I made a wire link with two Swarovski beads, some of the one I used to make my actual wedding necklace. Added a dragonfly pendant to the chain and that’s it.

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top | Original design by John Oxton | Illustration by Denis Radenkovic | This design is released under a Creative Commons licence