The trouble with making jewellery ....

.... is that it wrecks my nails. This is purely because, more often than not, I am too lazy to pick up both pairs of pliers when I need to. Normally I'm not too bothered about this, but I'm due to have a manicure this week and I was hoping to have a decent set of nails to take with me .... I wonder if she will notice that a couple are so short that they are almost not there? I've had to cancel twice already .....

Anyway, in a last ditch attempt to save the rest of my nails, I have returned to the gentler art of paper crafting. I spent most of this morning decorating band aid tins to sell at the upcoming Pamper Party and my yearly home sale - here are some of them.

I've made my own templates so that cutting the paper to the right shape for the top no longer takes forever (and far more patience than I possess). I managed to do seven before lunch - but I did get an extra hour crafting because the clocks went back!!

I can't decide whether to include some gift tags with these - I spent the longest while cutting tags this afternoon and have decorated a few (no photos yet) but I think they may just be too nice not to be out on show.

I love the button background in the photo above so much, I took another photo without the tin! I love my button collection - many of them are vintage, from my nan's collection and I save those for very special projects. I recently spent a whole afternoon sorting them from the large plastic box that stored them all into one of those storage units with the drawers in .... bliss!

To bead .....

.... or not to bead, that is the question. Well, it's not really as this week I've spent ALL week playing with my beads. I've been asked to have a stall at a "pamper party" and thought that it would be nice to take a load of hand made jewellery as well as all my usual paper crafts. Of course, this has meant having to buy loads of new beads and charms from my favourite on line site - I can't wait for them to arrive! Anyway, I now have a huge notice board that is slowly filling up with my creations .....

This bracelet is one of my favourites - I love using buttons in my paper crafts and was really excited at being able to use them in jewellery too!

I love this bracelet too, it makes me think of summer sunshine. I often feel the need to make patterns, so that my creations tend to be very "regular". However, I'm learning (slowly) to love random!

Another one of my favourites - I am very partial to pearls and the long pearly beads I used here are particular favourites of mine. I was very lucky to find these on a stall at the Blandford Steam Fair a couple of years ago - these lovely beads made all the rain worthwhile!!