Ahhhh I love it when that happens

Every time I decide to try out a new technique in jewellery making or crafting I end up frustrated. I guess you could argue it's the same for everyone, it's just that some people make everything look a lot easier.

From rifling through my old jewellery supply receipts, it looks like I decided to try my hand at setting stones for the first time well over a year ago. Not one to have much of a stash, I always get to work as soon as things arrive. With this ring, I set the first stone, the big one, and it ended up lopsided. At the time I thought it would be ok, it still looked alright even if some of the claws were a little bit weird looking. I set the second stone, a small one and then dropped the third stone, never to be found, still lurking somewhere deep in the carpet.

About four months ago I reordered the stone so I could give it another go, to be yet again stumped and frustrated. I haven't actually got any of the right tools to do the job, which has probably got something to do with my lack of success. I thought that if I end up hating setting stones, or I really suck at it, what do I do with these tools? I'm sorting through my belongings right now in preparation for the upcoming moving of home, and I found the ring again.


Miraculously I managed to not only successfully set the third stone, but reset the large stone and tighten the grip of the claws on the second stone. It's near perfect. Perfect enough for me! Love it, love it, love it.

Yay! Palm-Size Stuffies!

I ordered the elusive Palm-Size Stuffies book on eBay a couple of weeks ago and was expecting it to take around 6-10 weeks to arrive as warned by the seller. It came all the way from Japan, which means none of it is in English. I thought at the time I bought it, it would be pretty self explanatory as many non-Japanese-speaking crafters have bought this book and sung it's praises for being so... self explanatory. I've already had a flick through it and got a bit scared because it looks a little confusing.

But I will press ahead with it, eventually. I need to stop adding new things to my list of projects to complete. I have crochet patterns, knitting projects, jewellery supplies untouched, recipes piling up in my bookmarks folder, shrink plastic projects, clay sitting in a box waiting to be used, the list is endless. It's OK though, with this book I don't want to rush into anything too fast. I want to buy really nice fabrics and materials to work with. I realised a little while back that the reason why some people make everything look flawless and easy is that they are good at hiding the fact that they try, try and then try again to perfect their work, never giving up until they have the perfect result. So that is what I'm going to try with this book. I'm going to practise first until I'm ready to use the good stuff. This will undoubtedly frustrate me because I'm used to churning things out first time, probably because jewellery making is such an easy hobby.

I laughed when I first saw the package, because of the deco tape that the seller had used to secure the envelope. I've had the nickname Bunny since university, even if it is only used by one person. This book had my name on it :D

Birthday keki

It's been a while since I last updated, so I'll do it backwards just to be awkward. I've been on a complete cookery rush for a while now. Most recently I made little fairy cakes with icing on top. They were edible, but a smidge of a disaster thanks to my inability to convert cooking times with added fan power in the oven, and my inability to create delicious icing. It never ceases to amaze me at how crap I am when given a camera. You may know by now, I got a new camera recently, and it gave me amazingly crispy results. But as I always say, give me a camera get poo, give someone else same camera, get good.

This was taken by Tom. He got the lighting right, the angle right, and it looks rather artsy to me. Maybe I've found a new career for him in photographing all my blog material and jewellery.

I also make his birthday cake entirely from scratch, which I was promised would take only 2 hours and ended up taking 4. I was surprised to find that it was actually edible! Entirely from scratch is probably a small overstatement, I did buy pre-made icing and icing writers. I iced by hand "otanjoubi omedetou" which means happy birthday in Japanese :D

I also bought him a bento box (among other things) and made my own lil version of a bento lunch, with sushi made with canned tuna, flowery shaped veggies and cheese, noodles and hot dogs and so on. I can see why they only make it using leftovers from the previous meal, it took ages to prepare everything because there are so many components that you have to cook and prepare. Next time I might make it a bit simpler.

That's my bento box that Tom bought me for Christmas by the way, I got him a nice manly black one :p