Skip to main content

My christmas gifts!

I am a big fan of christmas and I love looking out for thoughtful gifts for people. I have a hidden board on pinterest to keep all my ideas! (which you can't see - sorry!).
For christmas this year I spent a couple of months knitting some of my gifts! I knitted five scarves and was still knitting furiously on 23rd December! I got them finished in time though.

I was very fortunate to be given some really thoughtful and useful gifts myself this year including

I got this book from Gary - Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong. As someone who teaches both Psychology and jewellery making I have become increasingly interested in how I can link these two parts of my life together.





Gary is a photographer and he also gave me a calendar he had printed with images of our 2013 trip to Venice. It's a lovely daily reminder of our holiday which is hanging right by my desk.
(I took the dodgy photo of the calendar by the way!)







My niece gave me this lovely box of bracelets and hair clips and temporary tattoos. It was thoughtful of her to put this together for me







My Mum handmade this fabric covered noticeboard for me. It's got a lovely owl print and the colour goes so well in our study.
You can either tuck things in the ribbons or pin them on.

My Mum and Dad also gave me this lovely hair oil from Liz Earle. It's fantastic.











My brother and his wife got me some shea butter hand cream and body lotion from L'Occitane. It's a lovely range and grat to get as a gift








So I was very lucky indeed and luckier still to spend christmas with all of my family, including my two grandmothers (both in their 90s). That's what's best about christmas time for me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making a hollow form silver clay ring

One of the benefits of starting the Make A Ring A Month movement is that I get to choose the theme each month! I had already settled on t exture as the theme for January and had a good idea of what I wanted my ring to look like. And weirdly it has ended up as I imagined it would (that doesn't often happen!). I decided to create a hollow form ring because I am a bit obsessed with making box forms at the moment. If you'd like to learn how to do that I suggest taking a look at this online course  with Tracey Spurgin. I then carved into the silver clay to make the texture. I use the  dockyard micro carving tools .  I kiln fired the ring (I always recommend kiln firing rings as they need the strength of a long hot firing). I fired at 880 centigrade for 1.5 hours. Although I'll add here that I'm pretty sure my kiln is underfiring at them moment meaning that it is heating up to lower than the temperature it states. I need to do a proper kiln test f...

Silver clay on the BBC

If you are reading this blog then you probably already know that I make jewellery with a material called metal clay. It's not a well known material so I was really pleased to see it featuring on a programme on BBC1. The programme is called Countryfile and a metal clay artist called Emma Mitchell was featured, interviewed by Anita Rani. Emma talked about the mental health benefits of getting out into the countryside and getting inspiration from nature and natural surroundings. They picked leaves and other natural materials and used them to make moulds and silver jewellery. It's fantastic that silver clay was featured on TV as it raises awareness of the material. The metal clay world is quite small but I haven't met Emma yet although she is also teaching at the Y ou Can Make It metal clay conference in March so I am looking forward to meeting her there. You can watch the programme here on the BBC iplayer until 6th March 2018 (but only if you're in the UK unfortun...

Ring a month theme for February 2019

I've been overwhelmed by the number of people being inspired by the Ring A Month challenge. At the time of writing, we have 351 members in the Facebook group and 300 followers on Instagram. If you'd like to join in there's still time! Facebook group  https://www.facebook.com/groups/makearingamonth/ Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/ringamonth/ I have decided to announce the theme for the coming month a week before the start of the month. This is to give people time to think about their designs, particularly those that are busy and have a lot to fit in. The theme for February 2019 is .... music and lyrics Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how to interpret the theme Be inspired by A song/piece of music you love A specific lyric from a song  A style of music e.g. classical, metal, rap, funk etc A musical An instrument/s Music artwork (CD/LP sleeve or music video) A concert you went to (or wish you went to!) A music festival Choose ...