Recycled champagne bottle and silver seed pod

I am planning on spending half a day tomorrow making some recycled glass beads out of the champagne bottles that were purchased for mum and dad's 60th wedding anniversary back in March by Uncle Arthur. I have been meaning to do this for absolutely ages but with it being such a busy time for my business, I haven't had chance. As I didn't go to the craft market on Saturday due to illness (I am completely recovered now, thanks for all your good wishes) and I have restocked my stall last week, I have some time to play around with new stuff til Saturday.

My Uncle Arthur had a stroke recently and is recovering, we don't think he's likely to be able to live completely independently again. His motor functions aren't great, he does get a little confused which is understandable but fortunately, he's still all there and knows who everyone is. I know he'd love to see the beads made up into some jewellery. I want to make jewellery for myself, my sister, Sandy, my mum, Auntie Mary who was so instumental in planning the party and something for Uncle Arthur to give to his grand daughter. For my other sister, Sharon, she makes her own jewellery and so I will give her a few beads so she can make something for herself. Hmmmm, thinking about it, I may need to spend more than half a day making the beads - from that little list, I'm going to need quite a few! I go a little insane if I spend more than three hours on melting recycled glass into beads - it gets a teeny bit tedious! I'll spread it out over 2-3 days I think.

The colour of glass isn't that great (broken shards of the bottles are shown on the right of the photograph above) but I think the new beads on the left that I made at the back end of last week will provide a nice colourful counterpoint. I'm calling the new irregularly shaped beads Plasma Doughnut Nuggets, these ones are made with a brown and gingery frit blend. For the Diamond Anniversary jewellery, I have some smokey quartz, rutilated quartz and opal gemstone chips and I think any of those will also combine well. See how it goes when I have everything on the table in front of me.

For all the people interested in the PMC seed pod bead that I made, here it is all polished up and combined with black waxed cotton macrame.

Finished but unworn necklace

I managed to finish the necklace I was making last week for a special occasion but unfortunately, due to one of my two dayer headaches, I had to miss my mum and dad's surprise Diamond Wedding Anniversary party (that's sixty years!) I just wasn't up to the travelling. I put the necklace out for sale on my stall on Saturday and it got lots of favourable comments.

To make up for DH and I missing the party, mum and dad came to lunch with us on Sunday and we took a walk through our neighbour's snowdrop wood (with Penny's permission of course!)

Here's mum, dad and me, I put the necklace on to show them but as I'm turned sideways, you can't see it!
I heard all about the party, it sounds like I missed quite a do, my sister Sandy and her partner, Chris, drove them down to Sussex where mum and dad did their courting, got married and spent their early wedded life together. They just thought they were going for a day out and meet Auntie Mary for lunch in the pub but when they walked in there was a big buffet and cake for everyone.

Other sister, Sharon and her fiance, Martin, did an acoustic version of the Anniversary Waltz which they danced to at their wedding, Auntie Mary did the flowers just like the ones mum had in her bouquet and also put together a slideshow "This is Your Life" with lots of embarrassing old photographs with copies bound into an album to keep (I'm quite glad I missed that bit actually!) ;-)

An old schoolfriend of dad's he hadn't seen for years was tracked down, one of dad's old workmates and his wife who mum and dad were friendly with for years but then lost touch with also put in an appearance so it was all a huge surprise for them. Uncle Arthur paid for the champagne and mum and dad saved one empty bottle and brought along a full one for us (it's empty now of course!) So I'm going to melt those and turn them into beads in a couple of days time. I will make some jewellery for all the gals in the family as a nice momento though I imagine Sharon will want to make her own so I'll probably just give her some beads.

No-one has ever taken me up on the offer to turn special bottles into beads and then jewellery, there was one e-mail enquiry which came to naught but that's about it. I often mention it on my stall, there's a page about it on my website but it doesn't seem to appeal - oh well, I think it's a good idea!

The only down side was that we lost mum's brother, Uncle Fred, the day before the party. I don't think he ever got over losing his wife, Auntie May, last year. His last words to sister, Sandy a couple of days before was that he wasn't feeling well enough to come to the party himself (he was suffering from liver cancer) but not to change any plans on his account, so we decided to go ahead with the party. It's what he would've wanted, bless him.