Christmas oranges

So it is nearly Christmas again! This year has been an interesting one and unfortunately I have been ill for quite a lot of it. As a result I haven't been able to post as much as I would have liked to. Fortunately I did manage to keep making things and remained in the habit of taking photos. So over the next few days I am going to backdate my blog with the projects I have done this year. This may seem like cheating to many bloggers out there but this blog was set up as a scrapbook of my projects. It seems a shame not to use the photos I have taken - hope you enjoy! 

In the mean time a Christmas treat - dried orange slices. I have always seen oranges as a Christmas fruit and love them hung on the tree or in garlands. I don't know why I hadn't realised they were so easy before but this year I actually made some and they really are very simple. 

1. Cut your oranges in to equal slices about 0.5 cm wide is ideal (I used 2 oranges which filled a small bowl)
2. Line a baking tray with baking paper (this will stop the oranges sticking to or reacting with the metal tray)
3. Lay your orange slices on the baking paper and sprinkle both sides with icing sugar
4. Put in a cool oven (I used about 100 degrees centigrade) and bake until they are dry and hard (can take some time - the thickest of mine took ~ 2 hours)
5. Hang with ribbon for the tree or garland or put in a bowl with cinammon and cloves for a classic Christmas smell!

Bubble jewellery

The beads in this necklace and bracelet set remind me of bubbles hence the title. There are so many ways to braid wire with beads and each one looks different which means with some very basic techniques you can make endless individual pieces. Here I have used a mixture of bead sizes, shapes and colours and intertwined silver wires (three for the necklace and four for the bracelet) to create a random pattern of spots - so pretty!

Bubble bracelet

Bubble set

Bubble necklace

Blue and green necklace

A new necklace made from silver wire and glass beads.

Pastel horses

I recently started using chalk pastels again and in the process was playing with the movement of horses in my sketchbook. I grew up with horses and trying to draw horses that look as if they are moving is something I keep coming back to. It is actually quite difficult and I struggle to keep the proportions of the horses right. Here are this weeks attempts:

A horse at trot

A horse rearing

These were drawn on textured pastel paper which really made a difference to the way the pastel worked. It is something that I would like to experiment more with in the future. 

Lighthouse painting

Another new painting with chalk pastels over the top:

Iris painting

A new painting in acrylics

Silver necklace with autumnal beads

A new necklace made from loops of wire with beads hung from the joints. 

Photos from Battle Abbey

Nick and I visited Battle Abbey during the week and what a beautiful day for photo taking! Here are a few of my favourites:

A Dove on the Abbey walls

Light distorted by the phone camera lens in the basement

Stunning patterns in the mud floor from

And a doorway that made me think of a secret garden.

Plaited bracelets with beads

After the five and eight strand plaiting last month I thought I would settle with some "easy" three strand braid when I introduced beads. Experimenting with threading beads at different intervals in the plait produced some interesting and quite different results. I like the glass beads with the silver wire especially when the light is shining on them. Here are three variations:

Small round beads make a very tight, neat braid. Here the beads were threaded on every time a wire crossed another. 

Oval beads make a nice open design. The beads here were also threaded on every time a wire was crossed. 

In this case oval beads were only threaded on when the wire crossed to the right so all the beads point in the same direction. 

Seahorse photo frame

As usual I was struggling to work out what to get my Dad for his birthday. I decided in the end to decorate a photo-frame for his bedside table. I went with an under the sea theme as this seemed like it had some possibilities. The seahorse, shell and starfish were made with silver plated jewellery wire and small beads. These were then attached to the frame with PVA glue (which dries see-through so can't be seen). I found a frame that looked like it had sand waves on it and added some extra waves with more metal wire.

The shapes before they were mounted ...

and after.