In the red....

But this time it's not the bank balance - hurray! I was browsing through a car boot sale on Bank Holiday Monday (I love car boot sales hee hee!) and I found this dress and top set. They were slightly off white, slightly different colours, but more importantly are made of viscose, and as every crafter knows, viscose dyes really well! They're really pretty, with lace and embroidery and so I grabbed them up.

Whilst in Hobbycraft yesterday, I checked out the dye section and instead of the usual purple, I found my hand straying to the deep red box. This is how they turned out! I love this red!

I may punk it up a little with some black buttons, and maybe even dip dye the bottom in black too. Who knows!? I have a great Namaste red granny square hoody that would go great with this!

I picked these up for my sofa at the same car boot. Did these influence my choice of dye? Maybe, maybe not!

This is 'my' side of the sofa, on M's side the back cushion is all saggy and squishy because he rests his arm on the top of the cushion. I hate that, so now I won't let him swap the cushions over, because he'll do that to the other side too and it'll bug me. It's all lumpy and horrible.

And here is my first ever piece of smithed jewellery! I've used silver smithing techniques, but the metal isn't silver, it's gilded metal which has the same properties and silver, but is cheap to practise on. I took my mini drill with me last night to get the final polish as I couldn't get into the spiral with the wet and dry. I ended up polishing some of the others pendants too.

I also learnt how to use the piercing saw and cut my own shape from a piece of metal, ready to file and learn the cloisonne techniques on. I think I cut the most complicated shape (a heart) but no-one else seemed bothered about learning how to cut the metal. They just want to decorate pre-cut blanks! It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be and even though I snapped *cough* about 3 blades, I did it fairly quickly There's no stopping me now!

This is a picture of a piercing saw, though it's not the one I used. This is just one from the net!

Here's my pendant now, all thonged up and ready to wear. I think I shall wear it today. Hopefully I won't react to it *fingers crossed*

We had a go at enamelling last night, which is GREAT, great fun. It's really instant gratification and combines my love of colour, glass and melting things!! That's my kind of craft *lol* Here's my practice piece.



I love the retro look that millifoire (did you know that millifoire glass is made like sticks of rock, and means million flowers?) gives enamelling. This is a really tiny piece only about 2.5cm tall. The main colour is supposed to be purple, but I guess it's not a very strong colour because it doesn't come through very well. Yummy!