Licorice Allsorts - a modern twist on a traditional lolly

Remember the suitcase bonbonniere I showed you a couple of weeks back? Well at last, they're finished.... all 50 plus of them. And in plenty of time to pack them ready for the trip to Adelaide! Well actually, they weren’t quite finished because they still needed to be filled with some of my Dad's favourite things: licorice allsorts and a jigsaw puzzle thank you note. And that couldn’t be done until after a visit to the Central Market to find the best licorice allsorts in town. So which will it be: the traditional striped and layered allsorts? Or the less traditional but very licoricy chunky allsorts? Hmmm.... it was no competition really. The chunky ones are Dad's favourite so chunky ones it will be. As soon as I got into Adelaide on Friday morning, I headed straight to the markets in the city and made a beeline to Blackeby’s sweets stall where I bought a whopping 1.25kg of the chunky licorice allsorts. Yes, you read that right – 1.25 kilograms! That’s 2½ lb......

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QR Codes - What are these Strange Looking Barcodes?

Have you noticed these strange looking square bar codes that are beginning to pop up everywhere? I've seen them on T shirts, business cards, product labels, and bill boards. Gosh, there's even one in the sidebar on my blog! QR stands for Quick Response and the technology has been around for about 15 years but its use is only just beginning to gain popularity. QR codes are big in Asia where they were developed but the rest of the world is just beginning to use the technology. You’ll soon see QR codes everywhere as companies realise how useful they can be. These barcodes can be encoded with all sorts of useful information such as product information, a website URL or even a video. You need to have a smart phone to be able to read the code which will then provide you with whatever information has been encoded to it . So, how do you use a QR code reader? Firstly, download a free QR code reader for your smart phone. I use this one from i-nigma which has versions for ......

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How to Get Your Camera Lens to Focus Sharply on Resin Objects

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words..... but a bad picture often doesn't tell a story at all. I use a point and click camera for the photos on my blog and it does a pretty good job without me needing a lot of photographic skills. Over time I have learned to use a lot of the settings on my camera to improve my photos even more and I've also developed some Photoshop skills to help fix the less than perfect photos. But when I'm photographing my resin pieces, I usually have trouble getting the camera to focus on the surface of the resin. The autofocus function can't work out where to focus on such a non contrasting subject so it doesn't focus on anything at all and you get a result like this: But there's a really simple solution: get the camera to lock focus onto another object in the photo that is the same distance away from the lens. Here's what I mean. Place an object on the surface where you want the camera to focus. Here, I......

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7 Ways to Deal with Large Holed Beads

Making my own beads out of Friendly Plastic and Opals Embossing enamels is something I love to do. But because they're made on bamboo skewers, they have really big bead holes and getting them to sit nicely on the stringing material without wobbling is a challenge. But it's not a problem restricted to my handmade mixed media beads. With the popularity of lampwork beads and pandora-inspired beads you're bound to have come across this problem yourself, so here's a list of ideas that should help you centre those beads on your stringing material so that they sit nicely instead of wobbling around. 1. Insert a Bugle Bead or Seed Beads in the hole Insert a bugle bead  or seed beads inside the bead and thread the eye pin straight through the middle. You can use bead caps to hide the bugle bead if it's showing. 2. Plastic Tubing Use the plastic tubing designed for covering memory wire. You can buy plain clear tubing or velour coated tubing. If you consider ......

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Glossy vs Frosted

It seems I am in a very blue / black / brown mood at the moment..... these are the bangles I cast in the bangle and ring workshops over the weekend. Today I want to spotlight the two cuffs in that pile. I was disappointed with both of them when I pulled them from the mould; the tortoiseshell one was dull and lifeless and the marbling in the blue one was very mottled and not really marbled at all. I hadn't achieved the look I was after in either of them. But I could see a way to improve them both and it just involved a little bit of elbow grease. These two cuffs are going to get two very different looks.... high gloss for the tortoiseshell cuff and frosted for the icy blue one. Let's look at the tortoiseshell one first. This was cast with amber resin and marbled with brown and black pigments. It was rather dull and lifeless when it came out of the mould but it had some great black veins of pigment swirling through it. There's definite potential here so I gave it the ......

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Toothbrush Bangle - Take 2!

So yesterday was a total disaster in the kitchen. But today was a complete triumph! With new toothbrushes to work with I had instant success and by instant, I mean in under 5 minutes. Check out my progress below: Placing the toothbrush into a pot of boiling water. A couple of minutes later, it is softened enough to work. I'm using a tea towel and oven mittens to protect my hands. Firstly, pull out the bristles with pliers - this is quite therapeutic, especially after a hard day at work! It cools down pretty quickly, so I keep returning it to the boiling water. A tea towel is great to protect your hands from the hot plastic plus it catches all the dripping water. I gently bend the ends upwards and around...... and keep reheating as necessary until it completely bend around. Make sure you leave a gap so you can slide it onto your wrist. Now THAT was fun! I hope you'll give it a go. Here's the link to the tutorial at Apostrophy Designs that I mentio......

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