More on the Purple LEDs

A few weeks back I showed you how I was recolouring my little battery-operated LED light sets from white to purple to fit my party theme. It was really successful. Well, today I decided I needed more than just a few LEDs behind my whispy organza curtain. I need a long string of lights that I can wind around the blades of the shutters so there are lots and lots of lights so I bought a 5m length of white LEDs. I was thrilled to find them at this time of the year. Most of our local Christmas Shops won't reopen for business until June or July but I found these at the $2 shop in my shopping centre. I'm so glad that I decided to colour these tonight and not leave it to the last minute because when I applied the same colour alcohol ink that I used last time, I got blue LEDs instead of purple! What on earth is going on here? So I tried a much pinker shade of purple. The LED at the top is Piñata Purple Passion and the bottom one is Adirondack Wild Plum and yet the...

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A Little Bit of This.....

I am being such a Gemini at the moment - I have so many projects on the go and none of them is finished! It really would be helpful if I could just focus on one project at a time but like a true Gemini I am easily distracted by the next exciting thing! I have so many ideas in my head but I just can't finish any of them fast enough. In fairness though, I am working away diligently on the edible mixed media project that I mentioned in my last post and I'm really pleased with how it's coming along. It's time consuming and a bit repetitive, but I love the idea of eating your art and can't wait to share it with you, but it's going to take at least another week to finish this project. I'm also working on bonbonnieres for THE dinner party. Each one is hand cut using a Krafty Lady template - and a great template it is, but at times like this it would be so much faster to have a die to run through the die cutting machine. I'm working on these one componen...

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The Simplicity of a Frangipani - How to Make Sugar Paste Frangipanis

You may not know that I was a keen cake decorator in a previous crafting life. I decorated cakes for many special occasions including Weddings, Christenings and birthdays and each and every cake was a labour of love. Two of my specialties were hand moulding flowers from sugar paste and piping the very delicate and intricate extension work. Despite this, I'm not decorating my birthday cake because of the time factor. So I've enlisted the services of a cake decorator. We sat down together and nutted out what I'd like and now it's all in her hands. But whilst I was looking through hundreds of internet images to find what I liked, I couldn't help but notice how cake decorating styles have changed over the past 30 years. Gone are the frilly, lacy cakes that I specialised in and in are the bright funky cakes. After seeing so many wonderful cake creations, I started to get the bug again. I even visited a local cake decorating supplier and picked up some modelling paste a...

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Turning Chandeliers into a Candelabra

My inexpensive candelabra is in pretty good condition after I cleaned it up yesterday and it doesn't need any repair work - probably from being protected by the layer of 10-year-old dust and candle wax! And now comes the fun part of dressing it up a bit. I don't want to go too over the top but I want to add a bit of sparkle to it. So it's straight to my stash to find something with a bit of bling and what I've pulled out is a few strands of AB finish clear glass beads. I would love to be using real crystals for this but I don't have enough in my stash and when I padded it out with the glass it cheapened the whole thing, so I'm sticking to the glass only. I also chose some silver chandelier components which have birds on them that will work quite well with the theme. You only need to know how to turn a simple loop to make these chandeliers. Firstly, thread all the teardrops onto head pins and turn a simple loop. Thread the remaining beads on eye pins. ...

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Beneath the Layers of Dust

Today I'm tackling the cleaning up of an old candelabra which has been sitting on my buffet for so long that the crust of wax on the candle holders has collected a 10 year old layer of dust! So let's get to it. You can see the crusty layer of wax and dust on the candle holder. When the dust is brown you know the job is long overdue! The easiest way to tackle such a large amount of wax is to pry it off gently with an old knife. Once the excess wax has been lifted off it's time to attack the remnants. You can use a hairdryer for this but I found my heat gun was perfect. The wax melts quickly and at a fairly low temperature but because my candelabra is painted, care is needed to avoid bubbling the paint. Once melted, just wipe the wax away with paper towel and you're finished! This took no more than 15 minutes to do - I don't know why I didn't do it sooner. I know that I can be allergic to housework but it was actually fun to clea...

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Silver and Purple - Delicate and Pretty

This past few weeks I've been designing and creating all the table decorations for the upcoming dinner party and it's slowly but surely coming together. I feel like I've taken a big step forward today by finishing the napkin ring design but its been such a busy day that I haven't been able to photograph the step by steps yet so look out for that later on. I've used one of my favourite jewellery making supplies to create these: silver filigree stampings. I love how versatile brass stampings are; I use them in lots of different ways and I've even blogged about that here . For this project I've used them to form the napkin ring base, with Preciosa and Swarovski crystals to connect them together. The focal point is a Delica flower. It was a bit tricky to photograph the flower so that it didn't just look like a tangled mess of wire but in real life, it looks delicate and pretty - this definitely says "Myléne". Of course, I now have my work ...

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The Purple Backdrop

I'm continuing to work on the decorations for the dinner party in June but I've run into another little challenge with my decorating plans. To add some atmosphere to the dining room I am planning to add a backdrop of organza fabric to my windows which are covered by very stylish shutters. I like the clean lines of the shutters for everyday but for the party I want something with more colour. So the plan is to wrap lights around the slats of the shutters and then drape the fabric over the top of the shutters so that it is dotted with little bud lights. It should look very pretty. So here's the fabric I've chosen - a curtain (Sarita) from Ikea - a bargain at just $15/pair (in the US, just $7/pair). I adore this colour and of course it works perfectly with the theme.... but unfortunately, that's not the colour that they actually are. Here's what they look like in daylight. And at night, they look more like this (without the daylight streaming through, of ...

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