And more...

Please excuse the presumably terrible iPhone photos! They look ok to me but I know from experience that they will be on the fuzzy side. I am so in love with pearl knotting that I've carried on with it this afternoon in one of our many local cafes. One of my favourite activities, beading whilst out and about! This necklace is destined to be married with a beautiful Summer Studios pendant I have at home in pale aqua. Gorgeous!

This afternoon's work...

GeoTagged, [N53.42665, E2.24255]

New items in my Folksy shop

New items in my Folksy shop...inspired by yesterday's arrivals, I have used a selection of Czech glass, new and vintage, Gaea's beads and antique brass. I have hand knotted these onto brown waxed linen. I used to do loads of pearl knotting and it was so fun to use this technique again!

Rusty Blues

Vintage Rose

Mermaids' Silk

Still Waters

Look what the postie brought me...

All I can say is, YUM........Thanks Gaea!!

I'm back!

I have so much to share with you! The last two weeks have been super busy - stuff leading up to the wedding, the wedding weekend itself, a few days of fun in Edinburgh and then straight back and off to London to sing in a mini opera at the Tete-a-Tete festival! I got back late last night and I have to say, I was thrilled to be back home. Today I do have several things I need to be catching up with but I can only take it one day at a time - slowly, slowly! 

The wedding was wonderful - we had such a great day, but more importantly, so did everybody else! It was a really relaxed day, the music was totally amazing - I'm so lucky to have such talented friends who were able to sing and play so fantastically for our ceremony - and the weather, after a week of horribleness, was just gorgeous. We even got a little sunburnt during the ceremony, which was outside! 

Here we are, with two of our bridesmaids. I'm in the white! As you can see, I went completely mad and bought an actual wedding dress!! Crazy. I surprised myself. But I was so pleased with it - it is covered with beadwork and has a very 1930s vintage look - in fact, loads of people asked if it was in fact vintage. I made myself some bracelets (which I can't share with you as they've been sent off to a magazine already!) and bought myself a VERY long rope of glass pearls which I have fallen slightly in love with.  It was a beautiful day and I was so happy that so many of our dear friends and family could be there with us. 

Here's a wee video of my choir singing - all friends plus my Mum who I was so pleased was able to sing on the day and did so well in the wee solo I gave her near the end :-) I wrote this piece myself for the ceremony, words by Robert Burns. 

*** I can't get the video to upload right now for some reason, been trying for over an hour! So I'll publish this and come back for the video later on. ***

***25.08.10*** I give up! I just can't get my video to load, on either Safari or Firefox. Does anyone have any top tips for video loading onto Blogger??!***

O were my Love yon lilac fair,
Wi' purple blossoms to the spring,
And I a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing;
How I wad mourn when it was torn	5
By autumn wild and winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton wing
When youthfu' May its bloom renew'd.
O gin my Love were yon red rose
That grows upon the castle wa',	10
And I mysel a drap o' dew,
Into her bonnie breast to fa';
O there, beyond expression blest,
I'd feast on beauty a' the night;
Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest,	15
Till fley'd awa' by Phoebus' light.

I hope you can all understand the Scots words! Wi = with, Wad = would, gin = were, wa' = wall, drap = drop, fa' = fall, a' = all, faulds = folds, fley'd = fleed or flew. Scots can be considered a dialect rather than a true language and so lots of the words are just English words, written out how we would say them with a Scottish accent. (I'm not a linguist in any way, I love language but I am sure there are much more technical ways of putting these things!) It's a very beautiful language/dialect and I would urge those of you who are not familiar with Burns' poetry already to read some or listen to some of his songs. 

I did NOT manage to get my bridesmaids' jewellery finished in time...I spoke to them before hand and just said it was really stressing me out and they told me just to leave it until afterwards and not be silly. I'm so glad they did - I was so calm about the wedding for most of the build up but the two days before got on top of me a bit! I am totally crap at organisational stuff, I get very stressed and tearful and I found asking people to help so much quite difficult and overwhelming. SO, guess what I've been up to today?! I have these three bracelets finished for my lovely girls so far. It is a pleasure making these, I'm so enjoying creating them now that the time pressure is off. I'll leave you with these pictures. Hope you like them!

Thanks!

Thanks for all your kind words about my sister. She's really doing well, coming out of hospital today but the doctors have told her she can't travel back until next week. So although they have had to make the decision to cancel the ceilidh (kay-lee!) for this Saturday, they've decided to make it a postponement rather than a cancellation. And she'll definitely be back for my wedding! So not perfect but things seem to be working out. She has been extremely well looked after in Dresden which my Mum and I are so grateful for. So far as the singing goes, as I'm a singer I have loads of friends who're also professional singers coming along to the big day, and I've asked my friend Richard to sing instead of Trina. I'm pleased to have a tenor singing rather than another soprano as it'll be a totally different sound, even within the same song. So, like I said, everything seems to be working out! 8 days to go and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm getting my hair cut and dyed today and then (you'll be pleased to know!) I'm going to go dress shopping. 

And then onto the jewellery...I'm imagining I'll get something lovely somewhere along the blue to green spectrum so I thought I'd share a couple of green pieces of jewellery I've made recently. 

This necklace just arrived in the post yesterday, back from Beads and Beyond and goes with the earrings from this post. It features lampwork beads by Clare Scott, ribbon from Sowzere and semi-precious stones from one of my favourite shops, Precious Sparkle Beads.  

The bracelet features a Green Girl Studios pewter clasp and a few super sweet lampwork beads by Mika of Pinocean. The Amethyst and Aquamarine stones are again from Precious Sparkle Beads and the bead caps (I love these!) are from Palmer Metals. They are so pretty, I use them all the time. 

Hope you like my new-ish pieces! Have a great weekend. 

Eve's having a giveaway...

...and it's a good one! Fellow beady person and Scot Eve is giving away these lovely beads. Wouldn't you love to get your hands her lovely fire enamelled beads? I have bought three sets now and trust me, they're just gorgeous! And look at the colours here - my favourites, surely yours too?! All you have to do to be in with a chance is hop over to her blog, leave a comment, become a follower or blog about her giveaway. Easy! Why not head over there now?

Some worrying news

I had some worrying news today. My 19-year old wee sister is away with the National Youth Choir of Scotland touring Germany and this morning was taken into hospital as an emergency patient. The upshot of it has been that this afternoon she has had her tonsils taken out and is staying over night in the Dresden hospital where the procedure was done. She has come through fine but obviously it's really sad for her as the timing is so rubbish and it's been a scary experience for her and my Mum especially, who's flying out there tomorrow. She'll miss out on the rest of the choir tour (finishes on the 4th) and will now not be able to sing at my wedding on the 14th. It's also her birthday on Wednesday and she is having a big 20th/40th/60th birthday ceilidh party on the 7th which I hope she will be well enough to come to as they've been planning it for a year now. I am so sad for her and to be honest, it's been quite a stressful day for me too. It is a little selfish, but I am really gutted she won't be able to sing at our wedding. I am completely not Bridezilla-ey but the one thing I really wanted for the wedding was for my sister to sing a particular Schubert song as it is special to both me and especially my partner, who doesn't know this was the plan. I have been and am so laid back about everything else which happens on the 14th - it's going to be a lovely day and I can't wait to see everyone but I'm no control freak who gets obsessed about napkins etc - in fact, I don't even have a dress yet! So I am really sad that the one thing I have had my heart set on isn't going to be possible and for such a sad reason. I hate it when my family are ill as we are all major worriers - I am looking forward to Trina being back safe and sound in Edinburgh with our Mum. I'm so glad she's come through the surgery well but I do wish she hadn't had to have it is the first place, it is just such bad luck and timing for her.

On a lighter note, here are my earrings from this month's Beads and Beyond! They are part of a necklace/earring set called Meadow Sweet - I love the titles BaB give to their pieces, so much better than anything I come up with. Featuring beautiful lampwork beads by Clare Scott, one of my favourite lampwork artists. What do you think?