Something a little different...

Will you marry me?

So thought it was about time I blogged this...

Now I can't claim to have made this little beauty, but I can claim the honour of designing it :D

It all began when the other half and I began discussing the whole marriage thing. I'm not sure how other folks do it, but for us we knew we were going to get married, and had even started planning to some degree, before we were officially engaged. As part of the planning thing we decided to go jewellery shopping. Danny and I wanted to choose my engagement ring together rather than it being a surprise... We were spending money and we wanted to make sure I was gonna love the ring forever!

So off we headed to Birmingham's jewellery quarter to peruse the many sparkly offerings. Foolishly we thought it would be easy, I already had an idea in my head of what I wanted; Solitaire diamond, marquise cut, and both white and yellow gold. Easy right? Wrong!!

We went in every single shop and found nothing!

Well, thats not strictly true, we did find that some of the jewellery stores would actually handcraft customers designs... 

Well that just got the ball rolling, before I knew it I'd sketched the ring of my dreams and we were heading back to the jewellery stores, with a different idea in my head!

The shop we chose was ironically one of the first, if not the first shop we visited on our first trip to Birmingham. The shop was Platinum Jewellers, not sure what it was about them that we liked, but something just clicked and it had to be them... We've never regretted choosing them, although they may wish they had said no!

The twisted design I had imagined, proved to be rather tricky and it took them a few attempts to get it right. Months after the process began we finally got the finished ring, we were so happy with it. The only sad bit was, it then went to live with Danny for a few more months till he decided to pop the question.

On 23rd August, 2002 that day finally arrived. 

What a romantic :)

Surrounded by flowers and candles, Danny got down on one knee, retrieved my ring from the lily it was sitting in and said many wonderful things that I could never remember, followed by "Will you marry me?" I said a very teary, squeaky yes and finally got my beautiful ring on my finger :')

On 23rd August 2005, at Lipan point on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, my second ring design joined the first. And so as not to be left out Danny got his own handmade ring, also designed my me.

Just Married!

The ring designing was just the beginning, to be continued...! 

For Movie Nights!

... or days

... or to make the kids an entertaining snack

... or just because you love it!

POPCORN!!! :9

I've been searching for the perfect cinema style popcorn recipe for some time. I've found so many recipe's but none of them gave the taste that I was after, that of the sweet popcorn available at Cineworld... excluding Nottingham Cineworld, I don't know what they do different there, but the popcorn is not good and definitely not a snack I want to recreate!

Anyway, all the recipe's have been good, but just not what I was after... Until one day I entered the words "cineworld sweet popcorn recipe" into google.

*** I know what you're thinking, kind of obvious really isn't it! I have no idea why it's taken ***

me however many years to try putting these words into the search engine, oh well!

The first result is another person searching for the same recipe as me, with someone named Clare providing the following recipe:

• 1/2 cup popcorn kernels
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup white sugar

Put all the ingredients into a large pot and shake over a medium heat until the popping slows. Pour into a bowl and enjoy!!! 

So quick and easy, and more importantly, exactly what I was after! I now sleep peacefully at night... well  not really, but it is one quest completed!

Now go! 

Try it for yourselves... you know you want to!

Happy Birthday Jacob

In honour of my godson's 1st birthday, I thought I'd share the card I made for him when he was born.

I had taken the photos ready to blog and never got round to it, but better late than never right? This is one of my favourite cards I've made to date. Completely original, personally handcrafting each element.

The background was created using perfect pearls in a spritzer bottle, then I sketched out the letters, baby and planets and added definition and shading with water colour paints. Then they were simply stuck onto the background. To add a bit of dimension I used sticky foam pads on the star, the baby and on the planets ring.

Simple but effective I think :D