Bag Stuffing For Handm@de

Well, yesterday was quite a day! Deepa from Lazygiraffe Jewellery and Becci from MomentsByMartha arrived at my house at around 11 for some hardcore bag-stuffing action for the Handm@de Craft Fair at the weekend. Lots of Etsy, Dawanda and Folksy sellers have sent in some fabulous samples, you can have a look at my flickr photostream as I have photographed everything that's come in.

Anyway, we stuffed 200 bags with business cards, samples and promotional items, and they are now all nicely tucked into a corner in my living room. Becci made a lovely risotto and I fell off the diet wagon to munch a home-made scone with clotted cream, yum!

Here we are doing the deed, although Becci has managed to escape being in any photos which is annoying!

Good luck to everyone making their preparations this week! Sue from QuercusSilver did a fabulous blog post reminding me of the whole bunch of things that I have yet to do for Saturday!

Finally - all those half-finished pieces...

...are done!!

I had a day to myself today, as I finally got some money out of working tax credits so didn't feel guilty sending my little fellow to nursery and have spent the day watching girlie films (27 Dresses & Sex & The City) and finishing off the massive stash of stuff I had drying, finishing, sanded, sitting around, generally looking messy:

Bow necklaces in a rainbow of colours! I made these using a special technique involving hardening the fabric ribbon and letting it dry to a firm finish. I have them with black, silver and gilt chains in pink, red, purple, blue, teal, green & yellow! These will go on my website, but right now I'm keeping them aside for the craft fair in Cambridge in a week and a half - they are going to look gloriously colourful on my stall, and hopefully will be great sellers!

Bronze Garden Necklace. I only have enough of the antiqued rose charms to make two of these. Again, these will debut at my stall at Handm@de.

This is my all new Hearts & Flowers range of necklaces and rings. I'll be showing these at the craft fair too, after which the whole range, including some matching earrings will be available across all of my shops (after April 4th).

So, I'm pretty proud of what I have done today. I have also ordered some stands for displaying on my stall. I'm bushed! I have to get ready for work now - another evening of selling holidays and avoiding the piles of chocolate biscuits that sit around the office. My diet is going well, I started last Sunday and I have lost 4lb! Pretty much the most I've ever managed to lose through dieting. I just ate three apples though. I'm hungry all the time, which is making me a bit tired, but I am eating enough, and plenty of fruit, veg and grains. I would love to drop a stone by the summer, which I should do if I carry on at this level.

Hope you are having a lovely day, and don't forget we are still doing free shipping and exclusive pieces over at http://www.twinklyspangle.com.

Busy Bumblebee

Well, I had 8 entries to my Confession contest, but there can only be five winners!! So I picked the names out of a cup (sorry, it was all I had on hand - I'm not really a hat wearer!!)

The winners of the earrings are:

Niftyknits
Crafty Koala
Maireisabella
Decorate The Diva
HeatherLeigh

Email me your address to katie@twinklyspangle.com and I'll send the earrings out with the next post!

So, aside from wearing cups on my head, what else have I been up to at Twinklyspangle Towers? Well, my diet is going well, although I did pig out on a jammy crumpet (no butter) a second ago. I also had Italian for lunch but don't tell Mr. Twinklyspangle because he won' let me eat cakes later.

I've also been working hard on promoting my website, http://www.twinklyspangle.com/. We are doing free shipping over there right now, but not for much longer because. *drumroll* the local paper are going to do a little feature on me!! They have just been round and taken a photo of me holding loads of jewellery and wearing some necklaces and stuff - and they will conclude the interview tomorrow. All very exciting, although I'll probably look like a berk in the photo, I'm not very photogenic. I'm also building up stock for my various craft fairs and working on stuff for Handm@de Cambridge, our first Handm@de fair this year, on the 4th of April at the Cambridge Guildhall. I'll be previewing a bunch of new Afternoon Tea necklaces and rings, as well as a Bow range that have just rolled off the drying rack. I've been working on this technique for a while, to stiffen up some ribbon and make necklaces out them. I've finished a batch, but they won't be in my usual shops. They'll be on my website and also at my fairs, after that I may add them to Etsy and Folksy, but you, lovely blog readers, deserve to see them, so I took this preview photo;


This is a deep jewely purple with a gilt chain. I've also got seagreen on a silver chain and a hot pink on black chain. I may go for a burnt orange on an antique copper chain as well, what do you think? Do you like them? Bows are definitely hip right now, I'm seeing them everywhere, so I really hope these will do well at the fairs.

Anyway, I have to go and get ready for work now, I work in the evenings in a holiday call centre. It's aright but I end up drinking too much coffee and getting all jittery. Couldn't sleep last night at all worrying about craft show displays, money and my little boy not eating. I need a holiday to relax and unwind!!

Confession & A Contest

I am a terrible person. I have a confession. (Sign the 'fession! Bonus points if you know what advert this is from!!)

When I was pregnant I joined Babyworld. I signed up for Secret Stork. I received a very cute little white cardi. I didn't send anything out.

I know, I'm awful. I didn't rectify the situation after the birth of my son. In fact, I haven't been back to Babyworld. In case a line of angry women with pitchforks attack me.

So I would like to send a huge apology to the poor, pregnant woman who did not get a gift in the mail. If it was you, please accept my deepest, most sincere sorries. Anyway, I just thought I would publically apologise to the poor lady and hope that somewhere she is living a happy life full of lovely mail days.

You are probably wondering why I am telling you this, as this sort of thing normally stays shamefully in the back of a persons mind. But I need to relinquish myself of sin because I've just joined Swap-Bot and I'm sooooo excited about it!! I would like to point out that I have taken part in swaps since that successfully. I'm not a complete flaker. I have just signed up to three swaps, Pimp My Postcard, Stickers, Stickers, Stickers, Stickers and Kawaii Penpal March. I will most certainly put my all into these and I love making up packages to send.

I also love receiving excellent mail, and I didn't think that my postman was weighed down enough with the daily packages that are arriving for http://www.handmadecraftfairs.co.uk/ (seriously, the guy hates me)

So, in order to honour the occasion, I'm holding a little contest. I have a pair of cute cherry earrings for every person who tells me a secret about themselves that they haven't aired on the Internet before. I have a maximum of 5 pairs of earrings to giveaway - should more people enter than I have earrings, I'll everyones names in a container (it won't be a hat. Hats don't suit me) and pick out five winners. I'll announce the winners here and if you use a username that links back to your blog, I'll contact you and ask for an address to send the earrings to. Simple!

You have until Thursday evening to get confessing!!

More Tea Vicar?

I slept until 12 today! My son is at nursery and I am off work - valuable sleeping catch up time! I'm also having a massive spring clan this week, today I am targeting the kitchen, including all the drawers that we tend to just throw stuff we don't want to look at in - eek.

I've just finished uploading the new necklaces to my website, http://www.twinklyspangle.com/. If you want to purchase one (which, of course, you do) I highly recommend doing it through there. Not only is there an exclusive design, but it's also limited edition, I've only had the pieces to make a few of this design, so if you love it as much as I do, I'd snap one up fast!:

I'm also throwing in free goodies to celebrate the websites launch a few weeks ago, and there is free shipping!

OOhh that reminds me, I wanted to show you the final two pieces of my Cupcake Week challenge. Now, this was fun, but I don't think I'll be attempted it any time soon again - it feels like my teeth are about to fall out from all the sugar.

On Thursday, I made chocolate chip cupcakes:

Then, on Friday, I went all-out girly and made pink strawberry-flavoured butterfly cakes with pink glimmer sprinkles:
Now that the cupcake-making is complete, I'm concerntrating on actually getting the new range of products uploaded, which seems to be taking forever. Right now, long necklaces are available at Etsy, with exclusive designs (and free shipping!) at twinklyspangle.com. I have the most adorable cherrypop earrings to add today as well, but right now, those kitchen drawers are calling my name (in a rather ominous voice)

Afternoon Tea, anyone?

It's been a busy week, but I finally was able to release the first necklace in my new range of jewellery for the Spring!

Aren't they gorgeous! Right now, I have them for sale in my Etsy shop. Click here to check them out. I'm chuffed because they turned out really nice. There are some more designs coming soon, including a strawberry version for my website, and some fabulous bracelets. Now, these are not for sale yet, as I haven't taken just the right picture to show them off, but I thought I would give just a sneaky peek;

They are sort of stretchy charm bracelets in cupcake colours - each one is different and they look fabulous on. I'll be listing them tomorrow. I'll update on my twitter as soon as they are available!

Now, I have three more cupcake pics to upload, here is the first:

Mini Chocolate Cupcakes with Red Noses

I'll upload the other two pictures tomorrow - right now, my eyes are burning from the computer screen overload. I've got the next few weeks off work - I only work full time during busy periods so I'm all about uploading pictures, spring cleaning, scouring charity shops for vintage bead finds and generally pampering myself and doing what I want to do, rather than what I am paid to. I also need to write a press release for my new jewellery range. I'll be hosting a giveaway next week as well for some cute cupcake rings!

Please do let me know what you think of my new pieces!