An introduction...

Welcome to my first blog!

I suppose, since it’s my first, I should introduce myself? I’m Rowan (female!), I live in a flat I affectionately call The Penthouse, which is situated with a canal on one side and a train line on the other, in Shipley, West Yorkshire, UK.

I grew up making stuff. My aunt used to save toilet roll tubes for me and I’d turn them into families of toilet roll people. I spent a lot of time with my Grandma; she was a Flortist by trade and art-school trained. She had a chest full of crafting treasures. I think my Mum was worried Grandma was getting annoyed that I used up all her materials. Grandma said she was just glad I had an interest and didn’t want to spend all day watching TV. So we painted pictures of the garden, knitted scarves, crocheted some sort of weird tube (I think it just kept my finger warm), embroidered, decorated eggs, glued, cut, knotted…

I started dabbling with jewellery in 2005. I saw some earrings in a boutique made from scraps of ribbon selling at £8. I was quite disgusted, since little imagination or skill had gone into them, and yet they were so expensive. They weren’t even made from designer ribbon. Or sterling silver wires! Anyway I was unemployed at the time. And skint. So I made some jewellery from bottle tops. I out them on Ebay and couldn’t believe it when they sold and was even more delighted with the feedback I received from the buyer who bought another 3 pieces. I moved on to using bits of toys, which is where my theme centres now - childhood memories.

Skills and ideas develop over time, especially when you aren’t following traditional techniques. I have previously used charms and so forth to create pieces, but endeavour to create something more unique, and so am now working with wood, paper and resin, along with bits of toys I find here and there!

So anyway… I am opening and Etsy shop! I’ll let you know the url once it’s up and running. I’m not adding products until I have internet connection at home (8pm 16th July, hopefully!)… the clock is ticking!