Blue

Until this week, I'd been so focused on finishing my entries for this year's North American Quilling Guild conference competitions that my market stocks of quilled cards and jewellery have been sadly neglected. A couple of weeks ago, one of my regular customers asked if I had any blue earrings in stock ... needless to say, that turned out to be the one colour I did not have! So, this week I resolved to create a selection of new earrings for my display basket - and I decided to make them all in blue!

I came up with three very different styles: one made using a simple combination of tight and eccentric coils, and two others which utilise die cut shapes as backgrounds. For the shapes, I like to create a 'sandwich' of glued together coloured cardboard layers, topped with pearlised gift wrap paper. By the time you glue the layers together and also coat them with PVA glue on the outside faces, you end up with a very strong and semi-shiny finish which is perfect for embellishing in different ways.

The heart-shaped earrings shown here are embellished with two-tone eccentric coils whose outer rings have been cut and curled. The round ones carry die-cut 'swirls' which I created using an interesting snake-skin effect paper that I have had in my craft room for ages. Before adding the silver rings and earring wires, I coated all the pieces with clear nail varnish to protect them.





Well, I took all three to the market this morning, and my friend who had originally asked about blue earrings was there. She bought the heart-shaped ones, and was very tempted by the round ones as well (although she did not buy them - YET!!) But at least now I have two new additions remaining in my stock, and will no doubt make some more in the coming days.

Meanwhile, I am anxiously waiting for news regarding the safe arrival of the parcel containing my NAQG competition entries in Pennsylvania, USA. To say that I am disgusted with our UK Royal Mail's so-called 'track and trace' service would be an understatement! I posted the parcel on Monday, and according to the Royal Mail's totally useless tracking website, it has been sitting at the UK international sorting office ever since, being "prepared for shipment". I was beginning to despair that my parcel would ever begin on its transatlantic journey, let alone arrive at its destination, until I logged on to the US Postal Service's website today and discovered that it had in fact already crossed the Atlantic and arrived in New York on Wednesday! So there is hope yet, and the wonderful USPS website has even allowed me to register my email address so that I can receive further updates automatically. Why our UK postal service cannot manage to do this is beyond me, and I have experienced a miserable few days believing my parcel to have fallen down a 'black hole'. Well, at least now I know that it's on the right continent!