I'm so excited! It's release day for the first instalment of the "little/big" project that I've been working on! Some of you have been asking what all this mystery and intrigue has been about. And now I can finally reveal: it's a series of tutorials for creating fabulously eye catching iridescent jewellery. It's the kind of jewellery that makes people look twice! Check it out on the Books page at Mill Lane Studio - it's pretty spectacular stuff! But it doesn't end there: there are more fabulous techniques to come so look out for these in the coming weeks too. Later there will be an extended version available in a book, plus it will also be released in a downloadable ebook format for those of you with tablets and smart phones. But you don't need to wait until then because right now, you can buy the printable pdf versions of just the projects that you like. So if you love my iridescent jewellery, and want to learn how to make it yourself, check ......

With all the mad, last minute preparations for CHA I have been spending all of my time in the studio these past few weeks. It hasn't left much time for anything else including my blog and I feel I've neglected you so today I want to share a little sneak peek of one of the projects I've been working on. The Global Display at CHA is a display being put together by 30 designers, each one creating their own individual piece inspired by the arts and crafts of the country they have been assigned. I've created a project inspired by the colours of the paua shell - a gorgeous green and blue shell found in the cooler waters of New Zealand. It is prized for both its flesh which makes good eating and its shell which was traditionally used as adornments in the Maori culture. Whilst I can't share the actual project with you, I thought you'd enjoy a small glimpse of the piece which is a bit of a step outside of the box for me. I've used materials that you probably have amo......

Well, here we at the final day of my Twelve Days of Christmas challenge - it's hard to believe that there are only a few days more sleeps to Christmas. As this is the last card I'll be sharing with you using Magenta's My Christmas Tree / Mon Arbre, Ive made one with real impact - an explosion of colour - like all the twinkling lights festooning the houses in my neighbourhood. This technique is called Faux Carnival Glass and its bejewelled appearance belies its simplicity. I began with a piece of black coreboard the shape of the tree which I coated with Versamark Watermark inkpad and a layer of Franklin Opals embossing powder. In this technique you keep adding layers of powder and heating in between until you have a smooth surface and then you add pieces of Fantasy Film into the molten Opals. I like to give it another burst of the heat gun at this point so that the Fantasy Film warps a little and intensifies in colour. Then add another coat of ink and more Franklin Opals to ......

Got some sequin waste in your stash? Well I'm sure you've seen it used in papercrafting before - maybe you've used it as a stencil to sponge through or perhaps you've attached a piece to your work. But take a closer look at the background of this ATC. It's peel-off sticker waste - what an interesting background! I've used up just about the entire sheet of these oriental script stickers but I just couldn't let the beautiful negative left behind go to waste. It's added a lovely lacy-ness to the background of the ATC and yet the contrast of the black-on-white adds a very strong touch. I've kept the embellishments fairly simple so they wouldn't compete with the background.... just some fans painted with Lumiere paint and an Opals heart, all cast from Krafty Lady art moulds. I love the result so much that I'm going to check the rest of my peel-off sticker sheets to see what other potential backgrounds there might be. I have a lace border sheet whi......

I've been playing with the small donut mould from Krafty Lady (AM183) this past week. Look how versatile it is: one donut, three different pieces of jewellery. This is a gorgeous piece to wear - a mixture of glass beads in turquoise and black and a few silver Bali beads - a great colour combination! The long length of beads is threaded through the donut and then I added a beaded tassel to each end - lots of movement when you wear it! The next piece I worked on is a bracelet using three donut pieces. I found this great twisted silver chain at Michaels and the rings were the perfect size for connecting the donuts. It didn't need anything else - the bright silver chain is the perfect counterbalance for the dazzling donuts. This piece is much nicer in real life. Here's a closeup which shows the dazzle a whole lot better: And the third piece I created is a simple beaded necklace. This time I chose some black AB bicone beads which I've threaded on Beadalon Elasticity. I didn......

I've been playing with the Core'dinations cardstock again this weekend to see how else it could be used and as I rummaged through the Hocus Pocus pack I noticed that there's a nice range of colours in this collection graduationg from dark pinks, to light pinks, salmon and a couple of shades of yellow and thought this might be something interesting to work with. They looked rather nice together but they didn't blend together as well as I'd hoped. But then something wonderful happened...... I tore the edge of the deepest pink and a much softer shade was revealed. The same thing happened with the other four colours I'd picked.... each one revealed its much softer core colour once I tore it. And when they were all laid out together, I had beautiful sunset colours to work with. This was just the look I'd been after! It reminded me so much of the sunset, that I decided it would work well with something tropical. This is one of Krafty Lady's newest art moulds, ......

When I made up the batch of Macquarie and Tarkine Opals last week, I had in mind that I'd make a bracelet using small moulds to make charms. I got quite carried away and just kept adding a little of this and a little of that to stretch it just a little bit further to get the last couple of charms. So this batch has Franklin (clear Opals) in it as well as a little bit of Sapphire Powdered Pearls. Yet how different it looks with the addition of gold and amber beads! Unfortunately, I broke a couple of the thicker casts whilst I was attaching the jump rings so this bracelet is a little bit light on in the charm department but what I learned is that you really need quite thin charms to thread the jump rings through easily (or use much larger jump rings!). Never the less, it's an interesting colour combination and very different from earlier blue/green pieces I've posted....

Another green and blue piece! I created this necklace some months ago when Fantasy Film first became available in Australia. Combined with melted Opals, the Fantasy Film colours change and intensify and the light reflects all sorts of different hues creating a lot of depth and interest. I cast the Opals in Krafty Lady Mould AM222 (Fancy Oval Cab). This is the first jewellery piece I've had published - check out the full article in Issue 15 of Beads etc.... for full instructions on how to make it. I'll post more Fantasy Film and Opals pieces in the future!...

Today I assembled some more of the Opals left-overs into a necklace which I've called "Tarkine Man" - like he's a prehistoric being from the wilds of Tasmania. The casts are moulded from a Krafty Lady Art Mould called Petroglyph (AM023) using up some previously melted Opals from an earlier project. I added Pearl Ex to this batch and it created some interesting variations in colour. Some simple beading, silver jewellery findings and blue/green glass beads work really well with the Macquarie and Tarkine Opals. ...

In the process of tidying my studio over the last couple of weeks, I found some left over Opals embossing powders which had been melted for another project. There wasn't much of any colour in particular, but rather a whole lot of little bits. So, once re-melted and swirled together with the addition of a little bit of Snow Gum powder, I cast the Opals in Krafty Lady Art Moulds and these became the focus of some pieces of jewellery I made this week. I finished them off with the addition of a few shell beads and some turquoise-coloured glass pearls. This was a great project to actually get rid of some of the clutter in my studio. And, there will be more pieces to come using different colour combinations - I'll post those results later....