amazon_syren

So. I've got company coming over for 6pm tonight.

My living room is, as is often the case, a bit of a mess.

What am I doing?

Crafting. Of course. :-P

I had a bunch of jewelry to repair or recycle --> I turned a couple of my grandmother's old, mismatched earrings into pendants (one for me, one for my sister), and switched out the hooks on a bunch of inherited earrings - from various grandmothers plus Ghost's NPPP (who is doing just fine, but was cleaning out her jewelry box and so sent some stuff my way).
Plus, I've got the Yule Craft Fair coming up in two weeks and, while I've got buckets of stock, I wanted to do some new stuff, too. I made some (sort of) winter-themed earrings, and a batch of fairly whimsical pendants, so we'll see where that gets me. :-)


Earrings:

Persephone - cascades of white shell and clear quartz tipped with snowflake obsidian and accented with six garnet drops.

Memory and Thought - Long, slender dangly earrings. Snowflake obsidian and black onyx, tipped with feather charms.

Hail to the Holly King - Malachite, red coral, and Australian Jasper, tipped with pentacle charms. Because if you're going to name something after an Inkubus Sukubus song, you might as well go all the way.

Scylla - A fringe of white shell and clear quartz hung on a silver (coloured, not SS) frame, and accented with lapis lazuli.

Mountains in the Snow - Chunks of snowflake obsidian accented with white shell and rainbow moonston, tipped with a simple, wire-work spiral.



"Mythical Realms" key necklaces:
These are made out of old house/apartment/car keys that are decorated with short strands of recycled beads and whatever other goodies I can cobble together.

Secret Garden - Steal key decorated with: rose glass flower + recyled silver leaf charm (strand one); grean glass bauble, silver rose spacer bead, palest green jade, and dark green glass (strand two)

Kingdom of the Sun - Brass key decorated with: hematite, fire agate, and red (banded) agate (Strand one); hematite, fire agate, and a recycled amber (I think) pendant (Strand two)

Najara - Steal apartment building key decorated with: red coral, recycled silver charms and spacer beads (one of the charms appears to be someone doing Namaste, thense the name of the necklace)

Snow Queen's Castle - Long, narrow, steal key decorated with: Found ice-blue glass beads, rainbow moonstone, silver spacer beads, silver filigree bead, and a silver ring charm that I'm pretty sure started life as part of a necklace closure

Freedom - Steel key with the word "defiant" stamped into the metal, decorated with: Black lava stone, black onyx, hematite, black glass (wire-wrapped) and silver spacer beads TIPPED WITH a cage charm (strand one) and a feather (Strand two)



Anyway. That's been my morning (more than my morning... the last five or six hours?) It was a good run, anyway. But. Now I need to (a) send a few emails, mostly about modeling stuff; and (b) tidy up the living room, particularly the table that I'm currently using as a desk.


Wish me luck! :-)
Up, up and awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! :-)


TTFN,
Amazon.

All the bath stuff is wrapped and labeled. All the jewelry has labels, although most of those will be stuck on with scotch tape tomorrow morning.

I need to re-pack my show bucket (a large rubbermade tub, fyi). I have a (very, very pretty) new jewelry stand that should hold a fair few peices, plus my copper tree and the earring stand I inherrited (sp) from my grandmother as back-up.

I'm still sorting through the "how" of displaying various heaps of soap, candles, and bath bombs... I need a(nother) make-shift set of risers. I will most likely bring a couple of shoe boxes with me tomorrow (I can pack soap and bath bombs in them and then use them as fabric-covered display risers at the event). That'll work.

Anyway. I'm tired as all get out.


To do tomorrow morning:

1) Pack soaps and bath bombs into shoe boxes

2) Re-pack show bucket and leave the un-needed stuff - screens, tea-tree soap, anything else I find in there that doesn't quite work - at home. BRING scisors, earring tabs, packing tape, clear rubber earring-backs, two pairs of pliers, wire cutters, and jewelry first-aid-kit.

3) Do a eucalyptus inhalation because hoy have I ever got a cold

4) Pick up scotch tape and tissues - this may be an errant on-which I send Ghost, as I think set-up (though not the actual show) starts before most places will be open on Sundays.

5) Arrive at Jack Purcell by 10am, because I have no idea what the set-up is like and I'd rather not wind up with a lousy location if it turns out to be First Come First Served.


Right. Time to get some sleep!


TTFN,
Amazon. :-D

So...
It turns out that one of my Soap Troubles - that I was getting "curds" under a layer of oil rather than "trace" - is actually me being halfway to Hot Processed Soap without knowing it.

Okay.

And hot process soap, if I do it right, means a curing time of two weeks or less, rather than six weeks to three months.

So my current question is: If I bake my current two batches of soap on low heat for half an hour... will they (a) finish doing their thing, or (b) melt and turn into a complete mess that I then have to re-mould?


Soap-makers? What do you think?


TTFN,
Amazon.

Hey there!

So I've spent the last couple of hours working on my Honey-Month-inspired earring collection.

I am now (a) out of silver bees - well, I have one left, but I'd need at least two to continue... I may yet start taking the old necklaces apart - AND (b) more than half-way done.

I have eleven left to do. ELEVEN! (Mwahahahaha...)

~*~

Today I did:

#8 - Raspberry Creamed Honey - 4mm rose quartz, 8mm lapis lazuli, 3mm iolite, 2mm silver, silver bees ("I'll pluck the flight of doves for you")

#9 - Zambian Honey - 4mm mahogany obsidian and 6mm wood + 8mm fire agate + silver bees ("Only the sun will touch me")

#10 - French Rhododendron Honey - 2mm silver, 3mm rainbow moonstone, 6mm labradorite, 8mm cloudy quartz[1], silver bees ("Melting on my tongue")[2]

#11 - Blackberry Honey - 2mm silver, 4mm garnet, 8mm lapis lazuli, blue aventurine chips[3], silver bees ("Yesterday I had daughters")

#12 - Red Gum Honey - 2mm silver, 4mm iolite, 6mm yellow jade[4], 8mm lapis lazuli, silver bees ("The world is not for catching")[5]

#13 - Black Locust Blossom Honey - 2mm silver, 4mm green aventurine, 4mm malachite, 6mm australian jasper, 10mm green aventurine, silver bees ("Against the broad, green earth")

#14 - Raspberry Honey - 2mm silver, 4mm hematite, 6mm rhodonite, 6mm rainbow obsidian, silver bees ("Come shut my wild, wild eyes")[6]

#27 - Leatherwood Honey[7] - 2mm silver, 4mm hematite, 8mm hematite, silver bees, silver (plated) chain, black leather lacing[8] ("I will have you for my own // With a gaze full of the giver")

~*~


So I'm feeling pretty pleased with them, so far.
The only trick, really, is that they are VERY long - shoulder dusters, easily.

I've placed an order for 25 more pewter, silver-plated bee charms plus some additional supplies. I should be able to get these done shortly. :-)


I'm also looking at two sign-up-any-time online courses.
Paranormal Romance Writing
and
All About Herbs

They're free, week-by-week courses and, while some of it is stuff I can do fine on already (character development, culinary herbs), other bits (story arcs and pacing; medicinal herbs and herbal peparations) look like they could be helpful even at the 101 level.


In other news, I've signed up for Camp Nanowrimo and, with any luck (and some stick-to-it-ivness), I'll have a story that is a little bit more like an actual STORY by the end of June. (I figure I can try doing it again in August, for Camp Nano Round Two, and do a Paranormal Romance. ;-)


Anyway. I'm modeling tonight, and I've got a poster to make (and an event to heavily promote) within the next 4.5 hours. (I also need to go for a walk, pick up eggs, eat something, and get prepped for my gig). So here we go! :-D


TTFN,
Amazon. :-)


[1] I confess, I have no idea what this stone is. I suspect it's a quartz. It could also very easily be a jade. It's a bargain bin stone that didn't come with a label, so I'm guessing here.

[2] Because this one is a haiku, I originally wanted to do the beads in a pattern of 5-7-5 BUT that didn't quite look right (and my moonstone beads are a MESS and I couldn't find enough with holes that could take the pins without breaking), SO I ended up doing 2-7-3-5 instead.

[3] I was aiming for both rubble and the invocation of its blueberry taste, despite the name.

[4] I have two kinds of yellow jade. One is yellow jade chips that are almost the colour of old ivory; the other is 6mm yellow jade balls - they are clear and flecked with orange, and remind me very much of honey-amber.

[5] I was going for the deep blue of the night (drawn back home, sip by sip), and the mellow, dark sugar of the taste.

[6] Rhodonite for kisses, jams, and attar; hematite and rainbow obsidian for the Night herself.

[7] Of course I chose this one to do as my last, pre-re-order. :-)

[8] Truth be told, I haven't actually added the lacing yet. And it'll most likely be suede, not leather - the kind of stuff that comes wrapped on a spool in 50m-100m lengths.

I got up at not-quite-seven today. Since then I have made:

Three out of Four batches of cupcakes for tonights birthday show (vegan Ginger Peach, gluten-free Mocha, and non-specialty-diet chocolate-peppermint -- the last of which is still in the oven).

I've also done two more poetry-bits (I'm - FINALLY! - making the beads based on Tithenai's Honey Month poems so that I can do the jewelry colleciton for them) -- 1cmx2cm wooden rectangles with the words printed in black ink on mottled beige card-stock.

This seems to be working really well. The paper is strong enough to handle the cutting a gluing, and it's the right colour to blend (enough) with the wood. I'm going to number each pair so that (a) you can easily look up the poem to-which it corresponds, and (b) because they're one-of-a-kind jewelry, so I may as well make that obvious.

Tomorrow (most likely) I'll be dipping each pair of poetry-fragments into a water-based verithane, and letting them dry (although I'm not sure how to go about that on such a wet day... I may be setting up newspaper and a "clothes line" in the kitchen...? I'll ask Ghost for suggestions).

Then I'll be drilling little holes (very little holes) into the wood using a Dremmel Tool - one at the top of each and, at least half the time, one at the bottom as well.

The idea is to do langly, asymetrical earrings featuring fragments of each poem, plus little silver bee charms and semi-precious stones (and wood and bone and metal) that reflect the pieces they're from.


So Fireweek Honey would be 4mm rainbow moonstone, moon glass chips (maybe), and 6mm fuschia-dyed jade. Plus poetry fragments and silver bees.



~*~


I make so many Very Long Earrings. I feel like I should try to do an entire collection of short pieces, just so I have them available for people who don't do Dangly.


I'm also playing with the idea of necklaces again. The wooden-bits thing seems to be working, and I can see doing larger pieces with two holes in the top and three holes in the bottom and 10" chains coming off either of the top corners so you have a slightly-more-than-20" necklace with a wordy pendant and some dangly embelishments coming off of it.
Or something.


I'll keep it in mind for another project. Right now, though, I need to cook (and cook and cook) and glue words onto little tiny boards. Whee! :-D

Okay.
Perhaps the long wait is over and the rest of our (late) mail will start arriving in short order. Here's hoping.

That said: My essential oils have arrived.

They came wrapped in layers and layers of unbleached tissue paper (or so I'm guess), wound around with elastic bands that had strands of someone's hair attached to it (presumably the hair belongs to "B", who packed everything up -- according to my receipt, which came with a hastily scrawled peace sign at the bottom of it).


I have:

12ml each:
Cinnamon bark (Burmanii, CO2-extracted)
Wild Rosemary
Ylang Ylang (Complete)

5ml of Thyme

AND

30ml of Sweet Orange (which came with its own eye-dropper)


I am very pleased and am now considering making myself a perfume a la BPAL - ideally in a sweet-almond-oil carrier, but possibly done as a solid using cocoa butter as the main carrier with a little bit of coconut oil added into the mix.

I would be mixing myrrh, ylang ylang, cloves, cinnamon, and maybe vanilla. (Part of me is seriously tempted to call such a perfume "Feelin' Lucky", but maybe not. ;-)

I would want to put it in a tin like this one - as it's aluminum and, as such is recyclable and won't (I don't think) be leaching random chemicals into my perfume. At least that's my thought.
Failing that, though, there's also this option which, while plastic, is at least still opaque and, incidentally, a lot clearer on the details of what "one item" actually means.

Anyway.

That's a project for Later (whenever I'm int he mood to muck about in the kitchen - probably February, but possibly sooner than that).



I have got us a rainbow trout for dinner tonight. Will serve it with rice (possibly wild rice) and sautee of fennel, apple, and red onion. At least that's The Plan. We may have wine with dinner as well, but we'll see. :-)


For now, I've got to look up my grandfather's address so I can get his parcel in the mail (finally - it's only two weeks late...).



Up, up, and awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! :-D



TTFN,
Amazon. :-)

I have discovered that, just as a pound of beeswax makes about 30 (maybe more) tea-lights, it will also make about 10 votive (-esque, they're shorter than a standard votive) candles. (I got ten of the little, steel ketchup-holders from the grocery store and used them as votive molds. They're wide enough at the base to be used as a tea-light holder after the candle's been used up, which doesn't hurt, either.

I figure that I can sell them for about $4 each (standard-size beeswax votives typically go for about $5 around here), and still turn a decent profit off of them (per candle, I mean). Which is good to know.

I also made soap. The plan was to do this after having made the candles, because I could use whatever beeswax remained in the pot as part of the soap recipe (thus making it at least slightly easier to clean. In theory).

And I did. (I didn't quite get *all* the wax off, though, which is slightly suck-tastic, but I can work with it).

See, ages and ages ago, back when there was still snow on the ground, I bought a set of 12 silicone mini-cupcake forms with the intent of using them to make both (a) beeswax tea-lights, and (b) miniature/sample soaps.

I think I'm more likely to use them for soaps, really, since I very much like to keep my candles in some kind of a foil/metal liner (I would LOVE to get my hands on a package of foil candy-cup liners as they hold roughly the same amount of wax as a tea-light liner. The only problem is that, most likely, they're a much thinner foil and they might not stand up to the weight of the liquid wax in them. (Possibly I could do 12 at a time and use my silicone liners as back-up until they harden? Thoughts?) That said, if I'm going to custom-order something, I may as well custom-order actual tea-light foils and be done with it.

ANYWAY. That's what's on my mind in that regard.

I did make tiny soaps today, with the plan being to put together four Pretty Little Bags (ideally gold or copper coloured -- will have to check dollarama) with three different soaps in each one (Unscented[1], sweet orange[2], and gingerbread[3]). They are currently sitting, in tupperwares, on my (glass) coffee table. Hopefully they are Doing Their Thing without having to be wrapped, further, in a blanket. they look really, really cute, to be honest (even if I am saying so myself). And, bonus, they're all a slightly different shade of beige. Not massively different, but enough to (hopefully) tell them apart once they're out of their colour-coded silicone forms).



Further to this, I've boiled (30 minutes) then baked (3 hours at 250F) about 2Kg of butternut squash and sweet potatoes[4] and then mashed the hell out of them, adding:

1 large log of soft goat cheese (1.5 to 2 C?)
1/3 C plain 3% yoghurt
1/4 C butter
2 tbsp black pepper
1.5 tbsp dried rubbed sage
1 tbsp garlic-salt


ZOMG they are DELICIOUS!!! (I had a taste, and shared a little bit with Lola the Parrot, who found them quite agreeable, by the looks of things -- she is a cheese fiend, and has enjoyed sweet potatoes in the past).



Lastly: I have taken out the compost, got a new jug of milk (the old jug of milk went off, like clockwork, today. So we are going to mix it with pear cider vinegar and have delicious, delicious fluffy pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning. (I think this will involve getting a container of vanilla yoghurt, along with a new box of compost bags AND a tri-light bulb (ye gods) chez the grocery store on the way back from Ami_B's pierogie party). It will be the yummiest. :-D


Tomorrow is going to be food-tastic, FYI. I've got a pork roast, plus spiffy sparkling cider, plus (as of this evening) a number of Glorious Pierogies to choose from (which will be fried up with mushrooms and garlic and, maybe, a little bit of broccoli),PLUS I will be (finally) making apple pie[5]. With an almond-crumb crust. It will be delicious. At least that is the Plan. :-)
(Plus, hey, if I keep myself busy in the kitchen, I won't be badgering my girl, who is definitely going to be needing some rest tomorrow! ;-)


Anyway. I'm out of here in pretty short order. :-)


TTFN,
Amazon. :-)


[1] Saponified: Beeswax, soy wax, coconut oil, and sunflower oil.

[2] Same mix as the Unscented, but with added vanilla and sweet orange essential oil.

[3] Same mix as the Unscented, but with added vanilla and essential oils of ginger and cloves.

[4] Which can be grown in Ontario! Who knew? :-D <*plots future dream-gardens*>

[5] Apples courtesy of Ghost's parents' apple trees. :-D

Hey there! :-)

So I spent the morning making earrings.

Still to make:

In this fateful hour -- haven't made this one, in part because I have no idea what to use for it -- this may involve a visit to (alas) the bead store for hourglass charms, if I can find them... I'm liking red coral and black onyx? Maybe?

All heaven with its power -- black onyx, moonstone, perhaps some kind of silver spiral

All these I place -- might do a long silver chain with elements from all the other earrings included in it

Between myself and the powers of darkness -- It'll probably involve 8mm black onyx, but beyond that... No idea. Suggestions welcome.



Also, I'm inclined to change The Lightning With Its Rapid Wrath from citrine chips to moon glass[1] chips... I think it would be prettier. The blue glow is remeniscent of lightning (more so than the pale yellow of citrine), plus the afore-mentioned rapid wrath fuses sand into glass, so it would work on that level, too. (The citrine would probably just be switched bodily over to something involving a big chunk of lapis lazuli, and re-named "Honey is the Sweetest" or something, to go with my "Tell the Bees" piece).


This afternoon is going to involve a walk to the bank, the grocery store, and (probably) the bead store. Followed by the ceremonial Paying of the Phone Bill and, probably, some baking. Or similar. We shall see. :-)




[1] Glass that's been cooked up to look (and glow) like moonstone chips.

OKAY!

Bathbombs: Made, bagged and labeled

Unscented Soap: Made, ribbonned and labeled

Business Cards: Are being their usual fucking nightmare (Seriously. Every FUCKING time I try to print them up, SOMETHING is out of fucking wack SOMEWHERE and I end up WASTING these damn business-card forms trying to re-sort out what needs to be tweaked THIS TIME).
... There. Fixed it. (Bastards).

Tools: Still need to be Packed (why I'm packing a hammer to this thing when I'm getting via tool box is beyond me, but still. Self-sufficiency for the win? ;-)

Money Box: REPAIRED! (See above, re: self-sufficiency for the win). Still, it would be nice if I had something to cap the screws with, as they poke through on the inside of the box and are rather on the sharp side. :-)

Change: Acquired! (Woot!) $50 in fives and $50 in loonies. For once, I actually feel like I'm SET. :-)

Lunch: Packed! (strawberries, havarti, goat cheese, veggie-crackers, 2L of raspberry lemonade, sliced cucumbers and baby tomatoes for Meeeeeeeeeeeeee!)


Eee-Hee! :-D Ghost is here. I heard her bracelets from four floors up, and looked over the balcony, and YUP! There she was! :-D



Off we go!


- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-D