A Time To Reflect

Hello dear readers, I've not written a blog for 4 weeks now, this is because sadly my father passed away on Valentines Day. I've spent the last 4 weeks spending every waking moment making arrangements, sorting things & clearing the house.  Instead of being surrounded by beads in my spare time this has been exchanged for being surrounded by paperwork & fond, happy memories.

Going through things at my Dad's house was difficult but I found lots of things that made me smile & I realised where I get my passion for handmade items as both my parents had very craft driven abilities and hobbies.  My Dad loved to do carpentry & I found some dolls house furniture that he made me, my mum too was extremely "crafty" and was a great knitter, sewer, embroiderer, you name it she did it!

So whilst going through the things I found my old craft bag where I'd given knitting & sewing a go, unfortunately I've completely forgotten these skills but I'm sure I could pick it up again.  I also found my old box of beads & findings from when I first started to make jewellery 24 years ago!  I had no tools back then so either used my fingers or a pair of eyelash tweezers to bend the headpins.  Below is a photo of one of the first pairs of earrings I made, as you can tell my skills have improved greatly, and having the right tools for the job certainly does help!  As you'll see I used gold plated findings, probably because that was all they had at the craft stall that day.  The earrings are clip ons & it took me a while to realise this was most likely because I wasn't allowed to get my ears pierced until I was 15 so when I was 11 years old most of the earrings I made were clip ons!

Earrings I made when I was just 11 years old! Thank goodness I've improved!