I’ve had a thing with dots recently. My daughter’s nursery is covered in them. (As is my daughter at the moment; the chicken pox have come to visit!) I find myself drawn to fabrics with them on. I stocked up on stickers from the craft store that were covered in lovely dots.

I just thought I’d highlight some dotty love from the Etsy Blogger street team today!

Top left to right: Miesmama, French Roast, ToteNTots, Jellybeans, JTstitches and JDWolfePottery.

Still in the process of finding good homes for the lovely treasures procured at the Rock and Gem Show back at the beginning of June.

I chose these two stones for their unusual shape and quite spectacular fire. I just get all helpless around Labradorite (as my debit card will no doubt attest to) and when I saw these babies, I knew they were destined to be mine.

With one off stones that I’m likely not to find anywhere again without a very detailed search, I just let the shape of the stones dictate the look of the piece, so Through the Looking Glass appeared without much difficulty at all.

It was the first and last time that I will attempt to polish a piece in the comfort of my own home. I am lucky enough to be able to use my father-in-law’s garage for this purpose due to the nature of the polishing compounds. (i.e. the stuff gets EVERYWHERE) While I use Tripoli for the first round of polishing, I use powdered rouge mixed with oil for the final stages. I’ve found that this produces a lovely finish, but is rather spectacularly messy. I’ve had people inquire after my health in public and shy away for reasons I can’t understand until I get home and realize that my face and arms are covered in livid red specks that I have neglected to wash off after polishing.

However, since the the Rock Star was off at a band rehearsal and the Prawn blissfully sleeping, making the half mile trip up the road to my in-law’s was not an option. Since I have a small mop that I can use with my Proxxon drill, I decided, “How messy can this really be?” Well, half an hour later, after scrubbing the last of the rouge off of the kettle, THAT question had been answered to my satisfaction and I vowed never to attempt it again.

In other news, the third round of the UK Cake Off/Bake Off has begun and this time I’m in on the NOM action! I’m going to have to put my thinking cap on due to the fact that every recipe that I had in mind contains peanut butter, which my partner in bake-atude detests! Luckily, chocolate is on the table, so that makes my quest still fairly broad. I shall improvise. Adapt. Overcome. And try to get some ideas this afternoon at my favorite culinary shop in Milton Keynes.

Occasionally, I like to have a toot for small business, whether it be craft related or not. My long term pipe dream is to be a small business owner myself, but my coffeehouse/performance studio/craft centre/unicorn breeding model doesn’t seem to be the most viable business strategy in this current economic climate of recession, so I may just have to be content to dream a while longer.

I’ve always been rather a fan of the worst kind of sweets; the ones with blindingly bright packaging and more e-numbers than a bottle of Fruit Shoot. Candy for second graders, really. Things that make your cheeks turn inside out with their sheer sourness and turn your tongue every unnatural color of the rainbow. I have many happy memories of lounging poolside with a friend on a scorching summer day, burning lobster red and gleefully chewing sour strawberry taffy that would slip between our wet, chlorinated fingers like sticky serpents. It’s as much a memory thing as a taste experience, so I can be forgiven for occasionally indulging in the most childish of gastronomic experiences.

The Rock Star and I spend last Saturday morning with some of my long lost Western cousins who I’ve not seen since I was 12. After a joyous reunion in Covent Garden, said cousins hurried off to catch a train to Paris and seeing as how we don’t get into the city as often as we like, we decided just to have a mooch around. Of course, a mooch with the Prawn is slightly more of a slog than mooches used to be, so we kept to back streets around the Covent Garden/ Leicester Square area and this is where we ran into two rather fabulous sweet emporiums.

Hope and Greenwood sits directly opposite the Royal Drury Lane Theatre and although the street is quieter during the day, the shop is almost assured “Which way was Leicester Square again?” traffic. It’s lovely 1930’s “jolly good fun” seaside atmosphere is tremendously welcoming and when walking in, it’s hard to know which way to look for all the brightly colored confectionary and beautiful packaging. The piece de resistance, however, is the old fashioned wall of sweet jars brimming full of childhood remembrances. At least, this is what The Rock Star told me, because all of the sweets were rather unfamiliar to my American palette. The Rock Star gleefully asked for a quarter of aniseed balls; one of his favourites. (I can always count on him to finish black, green and yellow candies that I leave behind. Aniseed makes me feel vaguely nauseous due to an encounter with Pernod in college.) I chose a quarter of candy necklaces; another throwback from childhood that I’ve never outgrown a taste for.

After a brief trip into Leicester Square, (“Why did we come here again?”) we headed back down Garrick Street, which we trusted would lead us eventually to our parking garage and came across Cyber Candy.

Being an ex-pat, some of my most favorite sweets are obviously unavailable to me, so when we came across a store that seemed to be stocked to the brim with all of my favourites, it took all of my will not to begin squealing with delight. Tootsie Roll pops. Twizzlers, Some of the sourest candies known to man. They were all there. And all pretty freaking expensive, but to my mind, worth it for the nostalgia. (If I lived in the US, I’d probably not be so excited by a packet of Sweet Tarts, but when you can’t get a hold of things, they suddenly become VERY APPEALING.) The Rock Star was beside himself at the prospect of Twizzlers, which we always bring home from our US sojourns in enormous quantities, only to see them disappear much more rapidly than we hoped. (The same thing happened this time. They didn’t last a week.) I personally am still working on my roll of Sweet Tart Shockers which are delightfully puckery.

I’d encourage those of you that are possessed of a sweet tooth to check out both of their sites on the web from which you can order all manner of satisfying treats!

At the risk of repeating myself from early on in my blog, I thought I’d revisit an old friend and one of my favorite pieces of jewelry.

I developed a deep and abiding passion for the work of John William Waterhouse while at college. Being the artistic sort at a fairly artistic college, it was inevitable, really, that his work would end up adorning my walls, turning my small dorm room into a shrine of idealized beauty. The casual on-looker might have taken the display of Sapphic splendor as an indicator of my sexuality, but the truth is, I wanted to BE those women rather than sleep with them. But, being slightly overweight and possessing troublesome fine hair that wouldn’t grow beyond my shoulders, it became obvious that all of those beauties had some secret that they obviously weren’t going to share will me.

One of my favorites in Waterhouse’s body of work is this; Circe Invidiosa. Waterhouse spent a lot of the 1890’s immersed in myths and classic tales containing photogenic female protagonists such as Pandora, Flora, Juliet, Ophelia, mermaids and naiads. Invidiosa was one of two paintings he completed of the famous sorceress from The Odyssey. It depicts Circe poisoning the waters where her love rival, the nymph Scylla, came to bathe, transforming her into the dreadful sea monster that is detailed later in the Odyssey when Odysseus must decide which is the lesser of two evils to pass by in Strait of Messina: Scylla, the sea monster or Charybdis, the deadly whirlpool.

What I DIDN’T know about Waterhouse’s paintings at the time, (or any of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for that matter) was that they were definitely in two minds about women. While they worshiped at the alter of ideal beauty, they also resented the sexual power that was wielded by females and intended a good deal of their work to serve as morality tales; beware the femme fatale. Women subjugated are a good deal safer. This Victorian sentiment is repeated again and again in the work of Waterhouse and his brethren.

To me, they were just pretty pictures.

The beautiful blues and greens of Circe Invidiosa have always stuck with me so when I came across this giant, beautiful Labradorite teardrop cabochon on eBay sometime back, it was the first thing that came to mind. I was fortunate enough to have a small stash of smaller lab cabs in my extensive collection that fit beautifully into the design and created what I’ve always considered to be one of the most beautiful pieces that I’ve done. I’m always on the lookout for similar cabs at gemshows and on line so that I might be able to create another similar piece once the original is sold.

All of my old posters from college are sitting patiently in my parent’s basement, waiting for the day that I finally get a studio of my own and they can once again be displayed, their beauty for the world to see.

You go, girls.

“Pick a number between 1 and 19.” I asked my husband.

“Erm,…why?” he asked.

“Just do it.”

“Okay…..2.”

So, it is with pleasure that I announce my first Lucky 13 winner: Lisa of Masked Crafts! Masked Crafted is a collective of 4 crafty ladies from Vancouver who pretty much cover the entire craft spectrum with their talents. Check out their blog too!

Congrats to Lisa! The Disky Doo-Dahs will be in the post asap.

The next Lucky 13 giveaway will be sooner than expected to coincide with a feature on Maternal Spark in August, so keep your eyes peeled!

The conclusion of Lucky 13 is nearly upon us! For those visiting for the first time, every 3 months, I’ll be hosting a Lucky 13 giveaway coinciding with the 13th of the month. (A Friday the 13th will bring about a super-duper giveaway, so be on the look-out for the next one of those in February!) This month, I’ll be giving away a pair of Disky Doo Dah earrings in purple, so everyone who wants to get in on a slice of the giveaway action please comment by midnight on Sunday the 13th. The winner will be chosen randomly from all comments.

Today I’d like to feature 3 of my exceptionally talented fellow UK sellers as the beginning of an on-going project to promote other British sellers on Etsy that I’ll henceforth refer to as the Friday Feature, so please give them a little linky love!

First up is the lovely Saysie who’s handy with a needle and can fulfill your bag, coin purse and pillow needs in a wide variety of both cute and beautiful patterns. She’s also recently added some lavender sleep pillows, so if you suffer sleepless nights, hie ye to Saysie for some dreamy relief.

Creamrose does quite astounding things with buttons! Her incredibly cheerful shop offers a wide variety of buttony goodness including hair clips, earrings and rings on top of her large selection of seriously cute fastening devices! Check her out for a little dose of happiness.

In my experience, duct tape’s only function is for fixing things that seemed unfixable by any other method. However, KMC Designs managed some crazy ass wizardry with the substance that I have not before witnessed. Her creations include fashionable wallets, bags and clutches all manufactured from the substance that very well might hold the universe together.

In My Aphrodite news, I’ve got some new items in the shop that are worth checking out! Come on over and have a gander!

Since beginning to sell on Etsy, I’ve definitely gone in a different direction with my jewelry making. Larger, simple shapes have definitely established dominance over the more intricate stone based creations that formerly occupied a lot of my time and prompted much swearing.

Garden Under My Skin is one of my favorite new designs; so much so that I own one myself. (Actually, it was a piece that had a little too much firescale on it that I couldn’t be asked to polish off but that doesn’t notice at all when worn. I wouldn’t inflict that much imperfection on a customer, however!) Since I liked the design so much, I decided that if one flower was lovely, two would be even lovelier, so I set about making two scaled down versions of the original to solder together to create a necklace.

Any jeweler will tell you that firescale (a purplish stain resulting from prolonged exposure to heat) is the bane of their lives. No matter how much flux (a substance that you spread on a piece to make solder run and to protect your piece from firescale) you slather all over your piece at every stage in the firing process, the Purple Peril always seems to appear after the pickle bath. (Acid that you dip a newly fired piece in to clean off remnants of the flux.) Pieces that need firing for an extended period of time are FAR more likely to develop firescale, and Tending the Garden Under My Skin was no exception. I used a technique called “sweat soldering” to join the two flowers. This involves melting solder onto the back of the top piece and then heating both flowers so that the solder will run again and join the the two pieces together.

I spent a fair amount of time with both fine and medium grain sandpaper after firing and managed to get the majority of the Purple Peril to sling it’s hook. After consulting with the fantastic folks in the Etsy forum, I discovered that I was in possession of a tool for matte finishing which I used to gleefully erase all evidence of my marathon sanding session, leaving a beautiful finish. I’m really, really pleased with the result.

In other news, forget ye not my Lucky 13 promotion! The randomly chosen winner of this giveaway will receive these lovely Disky Doo-Dah earrings- a matte polished Sterling silver disc with dyed freshwater pearl and amethyst bead accents. So hie ye to my shop and then get commenting!

In the last year, I’ve discovered a newfound love for tattoo imagery. The number 13 is considered to be highly lucky and many tattoo enthusiasts will seek out new ink when Friday the 13th rolls around. This year, tattoo artist Oliver Peck set the Guinness World Record for most tattoos completed in 24 hours from midnight to midnight on Friday, June 13. (Peck tattooed 415 people with the number 13. The motive for setting this record was obviously for the sheer notoriety, but the fact that his ex-wife Kat Von D held it previously probably had something to do with it.)

At any rate, I’ve been trying to come up with an idea of how to spread a little jewelry love around so I’ve decided to make the number 13 lucky for you too. Every three months, I’ll be holding a little giveaway on the 13th! Obviously, this July 13th is rolling up pretty fast, so we’ll get this little party started. Please have a quick look at the shop and leave a comment here on the blog telling me: Has anything UNlucky ever happened to you on Friday the 13th?

I’ve had my head down of late, trying to fill my shop to the brim with silvery goodness. What with two WeMake fairs coming up at the end of the year towards the Christmas season as well as an extended holiday in the States to visit my parents, I probably need to do the bulk of my work before the holiday madness begins.

I finally got my hot little hands on my silver shipment and immediately began carving lovely shapes out of it including a silver version of the Buzz, Buzz, Buttercup pendant in a medium and small size. I’m really quite enamored of my bee and am happy to be able to recreate the design in a different metal. I’ll be bashing out another copper one as well in the near future as the original one has gone to a nice new home! Also on the cards are the bridesmaid’s pendants for my brother-in-law and future sister-in-law’s wedding in October. (as I AM one of the bridesmaids, I have an extra interest in making them as lovely as possible!) The color scheme of the day is autumnal browns and oranges, so I’ve chosen some beautiful amber teardrop cabs to go with the gorgeous chocolate brown dresses of the wedding party. (I have to lose about 15 pounds to get into mine yet, so maybe I should start working on that, hm?)

Another new addition is the Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang pendant that was inspired by the fantastic UK May Swap. My swap partner was the fabulous Paisley Chainsaw, who’s pop culture pieces lead me to create this little “love gun” for her. I’m not a big fan of guns in general, but one that spews unbridled affection can’t be all that bad.

I’d like again to toot my own little horn about my upcoming feature on Maternal Spark on August 15th that will feature my first ever giveaway!

Thought I’d take some time to catch up on other happenings…

The Etsy UK Swap was a great success for everyone! I was all kinds of pleased to receive this lovely necklace and earring set from Lazy Giraffe as well as a super yummy batch of oaty biscuits to dunk in tea. Of course, it would be foolish to think that either me or the Mr. could be asked to wait for a cup of tea to boil when there were biscuits to be eaten. So we munched into the super crunchy sweetness and munched away until our jaws hurt, grinning like idiots. I debuted the necklace at the Hard Rock Calling festival on Saturday.

I’m now looking forward to the upcoming Cake Off/Bake Off that I’ve let myself in for. I’m fairly handy in the kitchen, although I have to work harder at baking than at day to day cooking. I must wait to see whom I am paired with, but I have a few ideas for baked goodness including:

-Shoo Fly Pie
-Some manner of hugely fattening cupcakes
-Grandma’s Super Secret Sugar Cookie recipe

In happy promotional news, I’ve been chosen for a feature over on Maternal Spark! The feature will coincide with a blog giveaway that I’m planning in the near future, so be on the look out for both of those!