My First Guest - Natalie - NorthShore Days

It's my great pleasure to present my first ever guest at DK's Craft Café - Natalie from NorthShore Days, a girl who tells stories through her fantastic jewellery. She's got a great tutorial for us today.

Hello Everyone, I'm Natalie and I  blog over at NorthShore Days where I share crafts, DIY, photos and funny stories about my 3 loud, cheeky but very sweet kids… 

 

I love white decor and everything beachy and I’m lucky enough to live very near the beach on the beautiful North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand.

 

I'm very excited to be here guest posting for Donata. Dona has been such a great bloggy friend and a wonderful support during my blogging journey...

Today I'll be sharing one of my latest jewellery creation with you all...

 Its such a simple tutorial and I'm hoping you are inspired to make your own. I found this gorgeous tile pendant in the jewellery section of Spotlight and I just love turquoise so had to buy it.

What you will need:

A tile or decorative bead, 3 charms or smaller beads, a headpin, jump rings and long nose pliers.

What you need to do: (following the pics)

Gather all the components.

Snip the end off the head pin as you will be looping both ends of it.

Form a loop by first bending the end of the pin at a 90 degree angle then looping the pin back onto itself - this forms a really neat loop.

Pass the pin through the tile and repeat the loop at the other end.

Using jump rings, secure the smaller beads or charms to one end of the looped head pin.

Attach the pendant to a chain using another jump ring.

 Seriously how easy is that? And how cute ....

 

 I love how this necklace turned out, and as I used a copper chain and accents along with the turquoise, it has a real beachy vibe to it

 

I hope you enjoyed my post today. Thank you so much to Donata for having me.

Dont forget to pop on over and visit me at NorthShore Days and say hi...

Take care

xxx

Thank you so much, Nat! You never fail to touch my heart with your creations.Please visit Nat over at her blog and check out her etsy shop XOX

Lampshade Decoration

Here is an excersize on lamshade decoration.

I've had this little lamp shade for several months (I got it for next to nothing at 'Bunnings'). I almost forgot I had it and then I found this simple, but beautiful lamp base at 'Reject Shop' in a basket with 'rejected stuf' for $7.5 :)

I love how these two guys fit together and, in fact, this is already a beutiful little lamp for me.
However, I'd like to give it some personality and make it more of 'my lamp'.
So I thought we could go for an excersize and think of a few things that could be added here. I decided I would use only material I already have at hand and here are the outcomes:

These are wooden buttons with floral prints.

This is a rose made from my son's old polo shirt. If I chose to use roses, I might make them smaller and glue them all around the shade.

Here I tried using shells - and loved it!

Raffia will always give a simple, warm and rustic look to everything. I like that very much, but this lamp base calls for shabby chic to me.

The twine was pre-cut already for another project, but I just wanted to show you what you can achieve with this inexpensive material.
You can always go and repeat along the top line the same (or similar) thing you did on the bottom line, but I wouldn't recommend adding embellishments only on the top (looks kind of heavy).

So, these are only some options I could go with for this particular lamp. For another lamp, I'd probably go with pearls, glass beads, lace... Always try more than one variant (make sure you use some kind of temporary fixing)
My choice will probably be this one:

It looks grat in my room. I'm tempted though to add a little something - if I go for it, I'll let you know :)

Have a great week!

Love,
DK

Sharing at: The Shabby Nest