wordless wednesday: speechless with joy

 

 first gallery submission accepted .........

earth day - ebbandflo is doing her crafty bit

I've always been a thrifty gal, my mother's influence from her own rationing and wartime in London experiences have helped shape me as someone who hates to discard. Even my craft studio is built around semi-conservation/upcycling principles - a lot of my crafting materials are stored in those transparent plastic boxes which prepared salads come in. They are ideal since they stack, are easily labelled, are lightweight and the contents are seen readily.


However, I'm not as quick as some sellers of handmade to jump on the eco bandwagon. I've made a few tagging changes to fit in with the Etsy perception of 'being green' (when in Rome, .....) but I'm still uncomfortable with whooping up eco credentials. I try to incorporate green-ness in everyday life and crafting but I'm no eco-warrior. The spotlight above brings together some of my more thrifty, upcycling projects and the new design of felted flotsam cuff above incorporates handspun 'sweepings' (from Yummy Yarn) with brand new wire (it's almost impossible to upcycle wire though my flotsam brooches do use up the odds and ends of all kinds of handcrafting offcuts). I love working with sea glass and am slowly working thru a stash of machine knit wool swatches for felting which my mother gave me.
With a little thought it's possible to work some earth-saving practices into your crafting life!

new balls please!

Spring must be around the corner. I suspect this not because the sun is peeking out from behind the many clouds but my studio got an impromptu clear out last week after I ranted at how messy my desk was.
So this morning (my child-free morning!) I'm starting things off with freshly brewed coffee, some new fuzzy balls to play with (not mr ebb btw, who is the only 'cloud' in my day since he's working from home!) and a blog post about how efficient I'm going to be today (ho hum - catch me on Twitter to see how I'm doing thru out the day).
First off is this blog post (ta da!) and then I'm going to pair the fuzzy balls with some beautiful fluorite beads and silver spacers to make another choker (I really like this length though I will lengthen on request!).
After that I have piles of admin to do.
Sometimes it's just not possible to portably craft 24/7 as the desk time catches up.
... and today is one of those days! le sigh