Finding a home is a nightmare. Plus necklaces.

Ugh. Seriously a nightmare. It really feels like that the agencies have NO desire to have their properties let. =___= Da fuq? I've called so many places and they have promised to get back to me on when we could have a viewing, and then I never receive a callback! WTF? It does not make sense. And I seriously doubt that the places have gone, and if they have, it is a case of GOOD MANNERS to let the interested party to know that the property they wanted to have a look, is gone. Oh well. We'll see what we'll get. I really hope that the place I'm going to have a look on Friday is da Bomb! Cos it is in a good location and it's only £700 PCM, and it's a one bedroom with proper kitchen- no studio blah-blah about it! :3 And there is a fireplace! That I hope is actually functional!

I finally got pictures of the necklaces I made!

Weeeee! :3 Btw, that background- thaaaank you Xhanthi! She has an awesome tip for 'Quick and Easy Vibrant Backgrounds' at her blog. (That link is to the tutorial.)

Anyway, these two are available at my Etsy! Here for the green byzantine, and here for the pearl steel. The pearl one I like quite a bit as you can wear it in different styles as you can close it on any ring you want. I'm most likely going to do just a plain one with the 'Mobius balls' (I've only used three rings, so they're not very... bally) as it does look very nice on its own. But I need more rings. Again. (I used a lot of rings for my flapper headdress. Which will hopefully look okay.)

Need to do something about the layout.

Bloody wire.

Almost literally. I hate wire. I just stuck a piece of wire I was working on deep into my thumb. Hurt like a bitch for a few minutes after I did it. Nasty stuff. Wire just gets so damn sharp when you cut it, and I keep poking myself full of holes every time I use it.

I tried taking some photos of Pan in the underwear I made for her ages ago. The plan was to take a few pics of the green byzantine necklace as well, but things didn't go quite according to plan. I just had a short photo shoot around 1pm, and the light was already a bit rubbish so I only took a few photos. So I'll need to do this again at some point as I need pictures of the necklace as I will be selling it. But I almost finished another necklace today! Not the same design, a completely different one, that's why it's taken me a stupidly long time to make it. Mainly because I start just doing a necklace without any plan, and if I come up with an idea, I will follow that idea- except when I happen to come up with a better one and halfway through making it, I make the necklace into something completely different from what I originally thought it would look like. Sooo. Yup. I'm pretty much just making it up as I go along, really. But I will need to take photos of that as well and hopefully I'll have enough time and light at some point during the weekend to get decent photos.

Anyhoo! Here are the photos I took today, and tried making pretty enough to be shown...

Pan is sooo pretty... :3 I even managed to change her eyes to her human eyes today! She's been wearing her second set of eyes which she's supposed to wear when she is in her hoofed form.

Good hearing WTF?

It's a bit annoying when you are the only one hearing sounds that ARE there, isn't it? When you ask 'Can you hear that?' and they say they can't, and look at you like you've gone mad. Frustrating. Thing happens to me all the time, and it was happening in our bedroom some time ago for a few days- my boyfriend couldn't hear ANYTHING, whereas I heard this high pitched really annoying and headache inducing 'iiiiiiiiiiiing....!' It was driving me crazy especially at night when trying to sleep. In the end, I figured out what was making the noise- and it wasn't my imagination, but our battery charger. It was making the noise if it was plugged into the socket. The only way to stop the noise was to make sure to unplug it from the socket, or take the power cord out of the charger. Eurgh. You have no idea how frustrated I was for a few days...

I am going to the London Pygmalion Society Meet on the 25th! Yay! I have this girl at work who I accidentally mentioned to that I'm into dolls, and she got intrigued. So intrigued in fact, that she is the reason I am going to the meet! She wants to see different sized dollies, as she is interested in crocheting/knitting for them, but obviously she's never seen one live yet, so I'm taking her to a meet to see a wider range of dollies than what I can offer. :D Scheewt! Can't wait! Also I'll most likely get to meet all the Oxford dolly ppl! Double-scheewt!

I tried taking some quick pics of my little things I made recently. For some reason, I feel like I shouldn't continue the matching bracelet that I already started, as I feel a bit funny today. To be honest, I've been feeling a bit weird all week. Not a nice feeling, especially because I would want to finish the bracelet. But tomorrow maybe I can finish it. Anyway, pictures of my exploits!

This choker- I have no idea what to do with it. It looks pretty okay when it is not on the doll, but then on the doll it's just... blaaah. Should I take the middle chain off? Should I lower it? Is it all wrong? I don't know what to do! xC

 

This is the necklace I made and I reeeeally like how it looks! I made the hook and the bit it attaches to all by myself, and I'm pretty proud about that! First time I did that! This is made with byzantine weave, with Czech glass beads and rings between each strand of weave. The whole thing is stainless steel and I quite like the colour of it- I might do quite a bit with stainless steel from now on and skip silver altogether.

 

I took these pictures in bit of a haste, and I don't really think they do the necklace justice, it looks so much better in person. :3

I need to get some better quality pliers if I keep making jewellery, as the ones I have are cheap and small, which were okay to try out if I liked this, but now that I want to do this more and I'm sure I will keep doing it relatively regularly, I need to get better tools. I had a damn blister on my ring finger from making the gold and silver necklace...

Anyhoo. I'm off to do something... unproductive now. I think. Adios!

EDIT.
I seriously want to do something nice for my boys birthday. Bake a cake maybe? Make some sort of starter with mushrooms? (I hate mushrooms.) Make awesome main course? Luckily I'm off tomorrow after all, so I can go shopping for ingredients. If I am to do something with mushrooms, I need to scour the Cornmarket to see if they have ACTUAL mushrooms and not just the shit white mushrooms you get in all the normal shops. I would want actual proper awesome forest mushrooms. (How the hell can I be picky if I don't even like the damn things?!!?!?)

Jazz me up.

I'm in the process of making a nice byzantine weave necklace in dolly size. Weee! I got my stainless steel rings from Beadsisters yesterday, so I was able to start doing stuff! But that meant that I put aside my choker experiments. Which was a good thing as I don't have any pink thread to do the next choker... I hardly ever have the need for pink thread, so I have none. Blargh. Need to go into town on Tuesday I think, as I should be off then, and the little sewing shop should be open. 

Pan says hi, with the first experimental choker (that you can't really see fully):

And this is the one that has been put away for the time being:

And what I am working on at the moment: 

You can see the short strands of byzantine, which will be the chain, but between the strands there will be the larger rings with the red glass beads inside the ring. I hope it looks as good as I think it will! xD

I didn't want to just make this a non piccy post, that's why the random in-progress pictures- I didn't manage to take presentable pictures of Pan with the finished choker, so that has to be for some other time.

RANT TIME.
Gooood looord how incompetent do you have to be to leave the front door open to the house that you are showing around, if your main duties in your job involve opening doors, showing people around houses and CLOSING DOORS?!?!?! AAAARGH! So, yeah, uh. We had a viewing for the house we are living in a couple of days ago, and this woman from our agency came to show this random family the house, right? Well, she came, she showed, and she DID NOT CLOSE THE FRONT DOOR! WTF!??!!? If me and my house mate wouldn't have been home, we could have been robbed blind! Seriously! How incompetent do you really need to be to not close ONE frikkin door!? But at least the next day when I called them to shout at their incompetence, they FINALLY, after about three months, called the landlord and got him to come in the next day, to have a look at the washing machine. WOW. All it took was them to fuck up and then we get the landlord to come over? Great. I hate agencies. Complete shite. I wish we could afford our own home. All we need is to win the lottery for that to happen... Sigh.

Damn. I'm annoyed again. I think I'll put some NCIS on and continue with my necklace. Aloha!

Back? Again?

Long time no see bloggy.

I've been working waaaaay too much in the past months- last three months I have been working 6-7 days a week, with 7 being the norm. Doesn't really leave much room for anything especially if you have to commute for about 4 hours a day... But oh well. My choice- need to money as we will be moving to London at the end of the year. Or to the vicinity. Depends what sorta place we find and at what price. We have quite a bit of stuff so we can't just take the tiniest, cheapest box that we can find. Need some bloody space maaan!

I managed to make a BJD necklace a day ago- I'll most likely be putting it up for sale as it isn't quite Pan's style.

It's made with silver plated and gold plated rings if I remember correctly- I ordered them quite a while ago, so I'm not 100% sure about that. And here it is on Pan:

Can't quite see the gold in that picture can you? :/ Pan is also wearing the experimental wig that I made a little while back and that still needs a trim. I'm not that pleased with it as you can see the weave a bit too much, but it's okay for some pictures every now and then.

I ordered more jewellery stuff, so I will be making more jewellery and learning different sorts of stuff! I spent part of my evening today getting rid of this wire that I have by practicing how to make wire bead chains, wire cages, etc. Obviously it turns out that practice is a great idea, as I have not done this shit before. I think I might need to get a better set of pliers though, if I am to make lots of jewellery, as I already have a blister on my finger from making the necklace and some other bits and bobs. Uuups.

My citrus plants are looking quite okay! (Can't remember if I have mentioned them before, but I started growing lemon and orange from seeds that I got from store bought fruit. I think all of the seeds sprung up which was a shock...) The three biggest ones are about 10-15cm, and the smallest is only about 2cm, which is a bit funny, as the smallest one sprung up maybe a week or two after the first ones. And all of them have been growing for... 4-5 months now? Weird. But they are looking quite nice, but I have no idea which ones are lemon, and which ones are orange. Not that it really matters, as I am growing them more for the fun of it, and to have something to look at.

Anyboo, time to go! Nighty-night, good morning, or wonderful day to all!

I hate you L'oreal.

I have to say I've had a horrible day. It started nicely and I enjoyed it up until my hair was dry and I could see the colour that the hair colour had made it into. I already whined about this at AU, but I just feel so horrible, because my hair is completely unpresentable at the moment. I've sent email to Loreal, because the colour is an absolute outrage, when I followed the instructions to the letter and I end up with a greyish brown mess instead of a beautiful brown. You have any idea how badly a bad hair colour can ruin your day? Enough about that, even though I want to go on and on about it.

I've been experimenting and doing stuff. I did a wig and a couple of hair pieces as an experiment. Unfortunately the bit that keeps them in the hair is quite bulky and visible, and I'm not even sure if I like them that much. (Maybe it's just today, and that makes me dislike them. Dunno.) Hair pieces modelled by Ms Nameless, so that she would get some love. (Nanuri 08, if you're interested.)

#1, The Blue Jewel

#2, The Pink Monstrosity

I'm not sure if it just needs something or if I should just put it apart.

Even though you already saw pictures of the wig I made, I just want to spam you with pictures of Pan wearing it. I do have to say, I keep falling in love with Pan every time I see her. She is just so perfect. :3 (Out of curiosity, do you ever get the feeling that "my doll [insert name] is absolutely perfect." Not necessarily the most gorgeous of all the dolls that have the same sculpt, but just perfect for you. Because Pan makes me feel like that every time I see her or photograph her. x3)

On with the spam!

Now this thing here. Originally I was thinking of making it like the other two, but now I don't know. I don't even know where to go from here. Slightly stuck with this one I have to say. I wish I would have some small feathers, because I would so want to do a feathery hair piece. Also, I would like my sewing machine to be able to sew fur- at the moment I have to sew any wigs that I want to make, by hand. And that is very annoying because I'm a perfectionist and a pessimist, which means that I keep thinking that by sewing by hand, it's gonna come apart very easily (not exactly true), therefore I have to make it EXTREMELY WELL. I just get a bit ridiculous with it at times. Takes too long, whereas if I did it with a sewing machine, it would be done in minutes. *Sigh* 

Well, I'm off now, to moan and despair about my hair, and hopefully to also be crafty and productive. (Wish me luck...)

I so need to redesign the layout. Ugh. No power....