Store Now Open!! and Tiger Fish Bracelet

The Salvaged Mutiny Store is officially open! Visit http://salvagedmutiny.etsy.com to see my items. Buy something, add one to your Etsy favourites or just leave me a comment, I’d love to hear from you!! But now on to another craft for National Craft Month… an item that is currently for sale in my store here!...

While in Burmuda, I visited the Aquarium, Museum and Zoo. I also visited the summer event Harbour Nights where locals played music, offered food and sold their wares. There was a lot of hand made jewellery there and I picked up a lot of good ideas. On the way back to my ship on the ferry I designed a bracelet around one of the fish I saw, the Tiger Fish with its brown and white stripes. I found an ethnic style centrepiece and used a tri-band fastening so I could have three stripes working their way around the bracelet. I think my jewellery making skills are really coming along!

My Boots Are Made For Walking!

Alongside showing you my crafts, I promised I’d write about ship life. My current news is a good example of that. The economy has finally hit my profession. I think I mentioned that I work for a production company, not directly for the cruise line I work on. The cruise line dictates what shows they want us to do… and now they dictate how our cast is made up. My production company is expensive (relatively) so the cruise line has decided to phase out my company in favour of cheaper in-house production. They are also bringing on a new show. This means one of our shows has to go, and also 5 members of my cast have to go too. We have a month left together, then we are cut down from 18 people to 11. It’s going to be interesting rearranging these shows around such a small cast… I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

On a brighter note, yet another craft to show you!! I found this tutorial on UrbanThreads.com about how to make a pair of boots out of a knit sweater and ballet flats…. I wanna do that!! Instead of a knit sweater I used an old robe made out of fleece, so I had to adapt the process a little.. but here are my knee-high purple plaid boots! I love them and hope you do too!!!

Finally, I was super happy on Sunday to see that my favourite Costume Designer Sandy Powell won an Oscar for The Young Victoria – she’s one of my costume heroes!! Yay for Sandy!!!

National Craft Month! - Winter Wonderland

March is National Craft Month! I'm going to try to put up a few of my crafts this month, so here is the first...

After reading an article in Bell Armoire Jewelry by Cherie FitzSimons-Orr about her Vignette necklaces, I was inspired to make a twisted wire necklace of my own. I had some white and silver wire and was motivated to use a white and diamante flower earring I picked up in Bar Harbour. With a winter colour palette and a frosted flower I made my Winter Garden necklace. I enjoyed making it so much I want to produce a seasons set, one for spring, summer and fall as well. It will be an ongoing project as I collect together the beads and accent pieces to make them. So keep an eye out. But for now, enjoy my winter offering!

J'adore Embroidery

As I mentioned before it is National Embroidery Month, so I am taking the opportunity to shame some of the stitchy projects I have been working on lately. I also thought I’d show you some work in progress as I may be MIA for the next couple of weeks. We have cast change over on the ship so I am going to be super busy fitting costumes and running shows… so until I can get blogging again check out these beauties!

I was looking at Jenny Hart’s Flickr account the other day and found this great French knots sampler. I had never been able to do a French knot until I read Jenny’s instructions for one so thought this would be a great chance to show off my skills! You can see the results above…

I have also been working on my Rock Belt. My friend left me an old pair of jeans when he left the ship, which I decided to turn into a belt. I cut off the waist band and embroidered images on to it in bright colours. I frayed the edges and added some chains to give it a worn in edgy look. I need to get come better photos of it and maybe get a friend to model it for me. Let me know what you think!

Finally, my work in progress. I am embroidering a t-shirt with a peacock pattern that I was inspired to create by paintings on my ship. We have a peacock on the curtain in our theatre and there are a few dotted around the ship too. I haven’t got too far yet, I’ll show you more once I get some time to myself…

Leave a comment to let me know what you think!

More Stitchy Goodness

It's National Embroidery Month!!! So, in honour of all things stitchy, here is one of my projects.

For Christmas, along with my other crafts for family and friends, I made my best friend Scott this tie. I needed one to wear on the ship and hadn’t brought one with him. I decided to design him a little musical theatre logo as he is a singer and put it on a classy black tie that would go with many of his outfits.

He liked it so much he wore it in our Christmas show! I hope you guys like it too.

Head Bridesmaid

I met my friend Tessa while working on a ship in 2008. It was a pretty hard contract and we wouldn’t have got through it without each other… ships are like that, you make family members while you are there. Tessa is my family. We were lucky enough to work together again at the beginning of this contract for two months.

This month she is getting married to her fabulous fiancée in St. Thomas. I was supposed to be there as Head Bridesmaid, but I’m going to be working… which sucks. As a compromise I threw her a Bachelorette party on the ship before she left.

Along with the shell necklace that I made her I made tshirts for the party, covered everything in pink and made her a garter. Of course it’s blue and white and she has honoured me by saying she will wear it to the wedding! I’m glad I will be there in spirit if not physically, and I know she has a great life ahead of her!

To Ben & Tessa – may they have a beautiful wedding and a happy future.

SalvagedMutiny.com is Launched!!!

My website is finally finished, fully up and functional!!

It only took me two months, three different programs, two accounts and a lot of work to get there, but its finished and exactly what I wanted.

I ended up using Rapidweaver to create it, which meant I had to write the CSS code for it. Now, I’m no computer nerd. I know enough to get me through, and enough to get frustrated when it doesn’t do what I want it to. So I’m pretty proud of myself that I managed to design and execute CSS code with no real knowledge of it, I just picked it up as I went along. And so SalvagedMutiny.com was born! I have photos of my work there, so make sure you visit to see all my craft stuff and designs.

I have A Crafter At Sea there as well, but I think I’m going to keep it open on Blogger too, at least for now, so I don’t confuse people. So come check it out, drop me a line and tell me what you think of it. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts!

www.salvagedmutiny.com

Now I just have to get my store up and running!!