Hen weekend

My weekend was spent in Nottingham with 9 other lovely ladies celebrating my friend Lydia's Hen. Lydia is the one all in black, sporting the wings.

The other photo shows us all sporting the t-shirts I mentioned in a previous post. Thankfully all of them fitted - sort of .

Oh and thanks for the pics Kaz! :)

Now the hen is over I can show you some of the goodies I bought from some lovely Folksy people, they were birthday gifts I had to give out over the weekend.

Firstly there are these lovely biscuit shaped soaps from 'Bits n Bobs', so unusual and so much fun.

Secondly there was this cute little tote bag and purse from Emily Pickle, I love the fabrics, I would buy tote bags and purses daily if I could afford to. These treats have all gone to their new home in Germany now, I hope Liz enjoys them :)

Finally a few of us hens stayed a second night. As you can imagine it wasn't quite as manic as the first night, and we were all feeling a little bit worse for wear. Having foreseen that we would be a little subdued, and not have any plans, I thought it would be nice to make everyone a polymer hen (hen - get it ???) keyring gifts, and give them a few chocolates :) So here is my little hen - well I didn't want to be left out!

Birds and the Beads...and Spiders?

I am currently spending this week getting very excited, as it is this weekend that my friend's hen party finally arrives! :) Other half is being left to do some much needed weeding, while I scoot off to eat, drink and rock! I am spending a lot of time making piles of things I need to remember to take with me - fairy wings anyone??

Other than planning girly escapades, I have also been thinking about starting up another shop, possibly on Folksy. I don't want to start anything until the Hen party is out of the way, but I would really like to get some of my beads out there. With that in mind I have purchased some lovely little organza gift bags from IslePac. I am super pleased with them, I thought they were very reasonable at 19p each, and they arrived the day after I ordered them, I don't think you could ask for much more than that.

I have also had my clay out again, playing with the big block of Premo Sculpey Frost I had hanging around. I had planned to make a cane I had thought up a little while ago, but it ended going in a slightly more organic direction, which I am very happy with, I just know if I had tried to make it, it would have become a very graphic pattern similar to my other beads, but the patterns on these are much looser and less structured.

I have named the beads Daisy, and as always there is a little bird to match.

I love the quality of the Frost clay, it develops little specks and superficial cracks just like frosted glass, which I found particularly effective when blended with some blues, as you can see in the beads below (Cathy). They still all need a good sanding and finishing but I am hoping that they will come up quite glassy.

Thought I would also share a picture of Geoff. It appears he is now sharing the spare room with me, making messy webs everywhere, he isn't particularly chatty but he doesn't interfere or get in the way either, so we are getting on fine. So for those of you not so fond of our 8 legged friends, don't scroll down :)

Busy! Busy! Busy!

I have been off performing various bridesmaid duties over the last week. I went with 'bride to be' to her first dress fitting, make up trial, and hair trial, was pretty worn out by the end of the weekend, but all went smoothly.

Sunday also saw me visiting the Bed Bar in Woking for an acoustic night, the wonderful Dave McPherson of InMe was playing, he is awesome! We also saw an acoustic set from a band called Midgar, they were also rather good :)

This morning I have been tying up various hen party bits and pieces. Everything is confirmed, and a tutu is now ordered. I also have baileys miniatures ordered for the wedding day, so all the girls have a little dutch courage.

T-shirts arrived for hen party last week, here is a pic!

I am super pleased with how they have turned out. They were screen printed for me by i dress myself and I heartily recommend them if you have artwork that needs to find it's way onto a t-shirt. Very friendly, helpful and reasonable :)

Still no luck on my paper chase :(

Hopefully, I will be getting my creative craft head on again soon, just in the middle of completing some freelance graphic design, pennies from which are going to fund my next craft shopping spree!