Another large project and photoshoot pictures

Hello, it's Berry again! Bloom is currently away :( and I can't wait her to come back. She's finished a large batch of wire rings to add to our already growing selection of cute rings.

Speaking of which, I've finally got round to doing some display pictures of our rings. What do you think?

And yesterday was my friend's birthday. I reconned a silver necklace (which was adjustable, a bonus!) and added some charms of my own.

And last but not least on the news front...

My limited edition all-white Converses are winged their way toward me! I'm planning to decorate them in a similar fashion to my brother's Birthday Converse though hopefully a little better as that was my first attempt at it.

Bye for now!
Bery xoxo

Skully tee!

Yesterday, I decided to make a Skully Cut-out Tee... And I loved it!

I'm quite the skull-themed crafter, aren't I? I assure you, I'm not about to start spouting Shakespeare at you!

After a sumptuous beach dinner (or rather, not-so-sumptuous after the small children had stampeded ¬_¬)

I walked home and garnered a few nice comments from old ladies. That's me, the old-lady-cheerer-upper!

Anyway, here it is:

I apologise for the bad photoshoppery, but I like anonymity and my pose sucked. The skull is cut out of the back (to avoid boobage) and so could be worn by itself, if you felt like it.

You could also just sew some different material underneath to save you the trouble of layering tees, but I like the choice. I reckon you'll be seeing more cut-outs from me soon!

(P.S- I wore my skull necklace with this, as well! XD)

From,

Berry xoxo

Hey Guys this is Bloom here...

Woah Berry, I can't wait to start making some great LEGO jewellery!

So what have I been up to recently?

Well, yesterday morning I woke up to find the sun shining. I went to put on some most summery clothing to find...I had 'no shorts!! What could I do?

I took a pair of icky jeans that were far too non-skinny for me, ( I like jeans to be so tight they cut off the circulation to my feet!) took the biggest scissors I could find, and hacked off the bottom to them. No sewing included as the frayed look is soo in right now, and voila!

One pair of super cool, beachy shorts!

This got me thinking....yes the shorts looked great but what could I do to make them even better?

Ever heard of 'Paul's Boutique'? He took average, every day handbags, shoulder bags, purse bags and he glammed them up, big time!

So that's what I'm planning to do. Hack off the legs of my jeans, gather some random stuff that I find...and before you know it you will be finding gorgeous, vintage shorts!

Time to get crafty!

Love,

Bloom x x x

Another Quick update...

Woah, the updates are really flowing at the moment. This is what happens when my creative muse (more like creative hyperactive inner child) breaks down the barriers of procrastination and lets the world catch up to my creating speed.

Not!

Anyway, here's one of my other pieces which I created on a whim around a month ago. My brother is a LEGO nerd, and although I do love the brick myself, I'm usually more interested in the mini figures.

Tying them to parachutes, creating a Mary Shelley-esque monster from Leia, burglar and storm trooper parts, or making them into jewellery. I've been wearing this ever since I made it on my chain usually reserved for some other charm, which is at the jeweller's.

We're looking into having these available for B+B...

Unlike other mini figure jewellery, no pieces are cut, pierced, glued or drilled in the making of this. Of course, if you wanted to, you could add a body onto a necklace head charm and you'd probably be fine. But we'd make full mini figures differently to the heads.

Any wear on the skull in the photo is due to the constant wear and tear of LEGO play (my head came from a set, but only because it was for my own use) and because I've also worn it for a while.

From,

Berry xoxo

Finally, an up-to-date Craft!

Hello, it's Berry again.

Just wanted to say that Bloom's present part2 went very well. Unfortunately I don't have any finished pictures, but here's a snapshot of it as a WIP:

http://robo.to/Starspangled/395005

(Robo.to is like to vlogs what Twitter is to blogs, sort of. :3)

Anyway, she loved it lots and I'm so glad to have finished it! It took hours to make.

You'll notice that this is stitched with regular, as opposed to embroider, thread- that's because I was sewing a pixellated image and so had lots of 'pixels' layered on top of each other. Using embroidery thread looked messy.

And on to the actual, recent craft! In fact, I only did this a few hours ago... Making it the shortest time from creation-to-blog here!

Drumroll please!

~

A few days ago, I went to my county's biggest fair and show of the year, to sing with my choir. It was lots of fun, and between 'concerts' we were allowed off by ourselves. Of course, this meant lots of freebies! I scored- amongst other things- an awesome fake tattoo of a cupcake (spray-on, not transfer) a plain white baseball cap, and a cool '5-a-day fruit' oversized NHS tee.. As well as some cool pens. More on those things later.

One of the most boring but useful things I scored, however, was some promotional lipbalm. It has no 'nasties' in it, but it was packaged in a boring tin and is odorless and colourless. How can I spruce this up? I thought.

And this is where my hoarding habits finally become useful!

A while ago, I found an amazing vintage comic in my secondhand book store for only 50p, or something like that. I immediately took it home and cut up a few pages for future projects, saving the rest (after reading the storyline, of course). It was quite an obscure story which was badly-written and full of sexist images of women, so I don't feel too bad about defacing it. ;)

As it turns out, some of my cut-up pieces are magnetted onto my inspiration board, and I looked up just as I was thinking... And lo, and behold, look what was born!

From plain old freebie items, that any old boring person would have relegated to a manky old washbag- or worse, the dustbin- I have created a funky item that I would be proud to put in my handbag.

I hope that this inspires you to upcycle your own boring things!

From,

Berry xoxo

Hi Guys =]

Well, here I am at last! It's taken a while but I hope it's worth it. I'm Bloom, the other half of Bloom and Berry. First off, I'll tell you a little bit about myself...

I'm currently studying art and textiles at GCSE level and I hope to go on to do fine art at A level. My favourite things are music, drawing and clothes. I love dresses and quirky things...like X-box rings! I love my friends, family and my cat Tiger.

So, what will you be seeing from me?... Well, I do a lot of fabric printing so I'll be printing reams of quirky patterned fabrics.

I'm also undergoing practice in making wire and bead rings. They are very elegant and eventually I hope to branch out to necklaces, bracelets, etc.

For my GCSE textiles project I'm currently assembling large wire butterfly structures with a variety of patterned and textured wings. Once I have fully got my head around how to make them perfectly then smaller versions will be coming your way!

I'm hoping these especially will become a big hit as I really enjoy creating them! (I LOVE Butterflies =])
I'll let you know of any other projects that I begin and will put up pictures as I go along!
Thankyou so much for all the support.

Lots of Love
Bloom <3>

General Store and Prototype rings of Fail

Today, I created an XBox ring.

A little backstory, here. Bloom (my partner) is an avid gamer and at the moment is obsessed with Gears of War. She and her brother, together against the Horde... Ah, fun times. Anyway, here I am- in the middle of May- wondering what to get her for a super-belated Christmas pressie. And the thought hits.

Super, one-of-a-kind customised Gamer Gear!

I made the ring twice. The first time, after 3 hours wrestling with the white clay (stupid bits of fluff and dirt!) because the XBox controller shape is a bitch to sculpt, my hyperactive oven burnt it.

Along with 3 other prototype pieces and 5 custom orders. I nearly gave up. T________T

But I decided to make the ring again! This time, there were no bits of dirt... But the oven again burnt the ring. Not that it should have, mind you. I had it at the same temperature you use to melt chocolate... It's a problem with either the clay or the oven. :/

But anyway, the ring wasn't that burnt, and I'm going to paint the burnt (white) bits with acrylic tomorrow. But for the moment.. Here's the ring!

And the website's nearly finished, too. But don't tell Bloom, 'cus she hasn't seen the ring yet and it's on the site.

Shhh! ^_^

From,

Berry xoxo

Slightly less old (but still outdated) polymer clay goodiesingsome

Just thought I'd show some more signs of life by uploading some of the (more) recent photos of my crafty exploits. These are a couple of months old, unfortunately, but I'm still quite proud of them all- even if they're a bit further down on my learning curve!

First off, we have my foray into dollshouse-made accessories - teacup charms. I've actually now got a selection of these made into rings, with different kinds of teacups and 'picnic blanket' fabrics.
I'm still making loads of these two favourites- people just love inedible treats! Though I like to think my craftmanship has improved, the basic design is the same. The burgers come with teensy ketchup bottles, too!

This was a one-off piece I originally made for a contest and.. Just to see if I could do it. I spent an afternoon demonstrating for my cousins, and they seemed to like watching the clay turning into yummy sushi! I'm not too happy with this looking back on it, but I'm glad I attempted it- I've learnt a lot about canes and boxes.

One of my other favourites is the apple charm. I always enjoy making this as each apple looks different, just like the real thing! I generally like sculpting fruit charms (my specialities being pear and strawberries), which I think is because of their simplicity and beautiful colours.

That's it for now, folks! I'll try to keep you posted :)