The Catkin Boutique Blog
Hello, my name is Nicky. For as long as I can remember I've loved designing and making things.
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This blog is my online sketch book for my shop , showing how my ideas and products develop from inspirations, through the making process, to the final item.
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If you have any questions or comments please send me a message. :D
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Here you can see some of my finished items: The Catkin Boutique.
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Thank you!
Bats are regarded as auspicious creatures in the Chinese culture. The Chinese name of bat is bian fu — fu being a homophone for good fortune. They also appear in Japanese art and design. I think they make a great motif with their flowing angular shapes and dark colour. I love catching a rare glimpse of bats, they remind me of late summer evenings sitting in the garden at my old house.
With a nod to Halloween I’ve made a glittery black bat brooch. It’s hand cut from plastic and covered in fine black glitter then resin, finished of with little black plastic diamond eyes. It dose kind of look like the batman symbol, but I’ve tried to avoid that with the more Art Nouveau lines.
Happy Halloween!
New little hand drawn earrings! All made by my self :)
I’m nearly at 100 sales! The 100 person to buy from me will get a free gift! :D
Painting wooden beads. Not easy trying to paint sharp graphic patterns on them :p
And some of my handmade arrows, for the arrow necklace, I worked out a couple of subtly different shaped arrow and have now chosen the perfect shaped ones for my design (seen a few posts ago).
The arrow necklace, I want to make a few more before I list them in my shop. I’m thinking of making a range of colours; peach, mint, powder blue and this pink.
Pliers, hole puncher and scalpel are my most used jewellery tools to, and these cutting mats are really useful to make anything on, the squares are a cm in size, so you can constantly check what your doing is the right size and of course it doesn’t matter if you cut it or cover it in glue, I’m quite messy and so always do!
Once upon a time necklace, make every day a fairytale… sigh
A new butterfly necklace! So simple and pretty, I might make it in a range of patterns, what do you think?
If anyone is looking to buy me a present…
I’m inspired by the Aztec and native American prints seen in fashion at the moment. I’m currently drawing designs to bead weave, using nice pastel colours and beautiful matte seed beads. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to bead weave, i used to make little butterflies using this technique, but it’s proving more difficult to make the straight angels and shapes i want to make now!
