Creativity...

... how does that work?  Yesterday morning I heard a thud behind the door and got all excited because it meant that the new Indian glass beads that I'd ordered had arrived.  I could hardly contain myself at my real job for the rest of the day.  Of course I had to take them to my office so that I could open them up and look at them and touch them while I worked.

Finally, it was finishing time so I made dinner for me and my husband, ate dinner, tidied up and eventually got to sit down with my new shiny things to set about making something with them.  I did the usual, sat and looked at them, put them alongside other beads and bits and bobs to see what complemented them.  Then I had a browse through a couple of books to see if there were any techniques that would suit them better than others.  I settled on a particular technique and gathered all the other bits and pieces together.  That's when I realised my pretty new beads were way too big for what I had in mind.

After a trawl through my other beads, I finally used tiny pink seed and bugle beads teamed up with a few 6mm pink Swarovski crystals.  Still pretty but not what I set out to make.  Here's the end result and tonight I will make earrings to match it.


So, to get back to my original question.  Creativity - how does that work?

New beginnings

I said I wasn't going to do this but here I am. I was never good at writing stories at school so let's hope I've improved as I got older. I have a feeling this blog is going to be a bit of a slow starter but I will make an effort.

I work full time for a company that sells and installs IT Services . I have 2 grown up daughters who have both left home.

About 11 months ago I got married for the second time. First time round was a 'no frills' wedding in the register office with only a handful of close family in attendance. This time round I decided I wanted my day to be special and different although I didn't really want to have more people there.

So... we decided to get married in Finnish Lapland, an absolutely gorgeous place that we both love. We arranged the wedding for the week before our next skiing holiday, which was also in Finnish Lapland, so we had a ready made honeymoon. That didn't leave us a huge amount of time to save up and get ready.

Believe it not, in the end my outfit cost less than my husband's! In fact, if you add in the price of the bridemaids' outfits as well I'm sure his still cost more than the three of us put together. Who says women are the ones who spend all the money? Part of the reason for that is because my daughters and I decided to make what we could ourselves rather than buy everything brand new. And in a bit of a roundabout way that's how I ended up writing this blog.

My first creation for my own wedding was my own tiara. This was quite a lengthy project as I was designing it as I went along. I had taught myself the basics and made a few tiaras from patterns. I kind of had a colour scheme but I had no idea about the design I wanted other than I wanted it to be special and unique. Needless to say it was unraveled and put back together several times before I finally had a design that I was happy with . It's made from loads of Swarovksi crystals in different colours and sizes - clear ones, jet black, peridot, emerald green and erinite - bicones, round ones and tear drops. In financial terms it cost me a lot less than the hand made ones in the shops but if I'd had to pay for the time it took me to make it, it would have cost a fortune. :o)