Thank you!

Just a quick post to say a big thank you to everyone for your lovely comments on my jewellery experiments. They are really at an early stage, but your feedback has given me the confidence to keep going with it all. I would love to do some more enamelling one day (I put a couple of my pieces in my first blog post here), but at the moment with a toddler, hot kilns and leaded enamels seem like asking for trouble, so for now shrink plastic seems a fun and safe material to try.

But the biggest thank you goes to the wonderfully talented Leah for the beautiful hand knitted washcloth and handmade soap which arrived at my place yesterday. The washcloth is so beautiful and intricate, it would have taken me months to knit. I'm not sure I can bring myself to use it as a washcloth, I think I will just admire it for a bit longer first!

Back soon.

Experiments with shrinky dinks

I have been experimenting with shrink plastic for a while, using the plastic which you can ink-jet print on, and also screen printing with gocco screens on the plain plastic and colouring in with prisma colour pencils. The pendant on the bottom left has a polymer clay frame which worked ok, but still looks a bit chunky.



My latest experiment is screenprinting on the underside of clear shrink plastic, so that the design shows through the base. I quite like this effect, like looking through glass. It seems a bit less 'plasticky'. One day I hope I might get myself organised to make some jewellery in quantities I can sell at the markets, but things have been a bit too busy here lately. I'd be very keen to get any honest feedback anyway! The next step is to get working on some screen designs.



We went to the Canberra show with Thomas last weekend, but the only photos I managed to get were of some lovely dahlias in the flower exhibition.



Poor Thomas is recovering from an ear infection which I thought was just grumpiness for a few days. He is still a bit grumpy but getting back to normal now he's on anti-biotics.



And my last exciting news is I discovered that I'd won Leah's bloggiversary competition and will be the very proud and lucky owner of one of her beautiful knitted washcloths. I'm so thrilled - I love this blogging world.