Con-fusing!

Dear Mr Weil,

I was ever so excited when my parcel arrived from you the other day. You know how much I enjoy experimenting, so I was thrilled to acquire Miss Lisa Pavelka's UV resin and those smashing syringes from Mr Polymer Clay-Pit. With Miss Beauty Perfection's glow in the dark purple nail powder also safely in my crafter's kit, I felt certain I could proceed apace with my plans.

A while ago, Miss Emilly gave me some charming little light bulb things (modelled along the lines of those by Mr Joseph Swann, not the thieving Edison) from Miss Lynne at the Altered Element. Sadly, I put them somewhere very safe indeed (although I suspect Snorty may have half-inched them for his own nefarious purposes), so I have purchased some more.

My idea is this: to make some charming earrings that look attractive during the day, but then glow in the dark. There are two potential ways I can do this and I am investigating both. The first involves making my own small beads from glow in the dark Fimo, forming them into the glowing element of the bulb. This should be straightforward enough, so I'm not practising this. The beads were made by wrapping the clay around a thin copper wire, sectioning off small donuts and baking them on the wire.

The other way of doing this requires some practice, and this is where your goods and the nail powders come in. I drilled into some old glass fuses, one at both ends and one only at the top. The one that had been drilled at both ends had a coil of silver wire glued onto it's base to plug the whole after the rest of the wire had been pushed through the top hole (so I could make a hanging loop).

I then attempted to mix the nail powder and the resin in the syringe, which was a bit of a disaster. Never having worked with the resin before, I was unsure how long it would take to cure in daylight and was rather hurried in my actions. I have now confirmed that it takes ages to set unless you have a UV light, so next time I will work at a more leisurely pace. Once mixed (sort of) I syringed the mixture into the fuses, then popped them on the window sill to set. That took three days, so I shall acquire a UV light to make it all happen just a little bit faster.

The nail powder is beautiful, as it also contains purple sparklies, but I just didn't add enough. Also, with the resin taking days to set, the powder settled out, congregating in the base of the fuse (although interestingly, the glitter remained suspended). Slightly disappointingly, it doesn't glow purple in the dark either, but a ghostly lime green. Its a bit tricky to see as the Boxed Brownie complained bitterly at being forced to work in the dark (and there's just not enough powder, as I mentioned before), but I'm sure you get the idea.

But I'm not disheartened! I have some Fimo liquid polymer clay to experiment and I'm not done with the resin yet. Once I refine the technique on the fuses to my satisfaction, I shall progress on to my bulbs. Once I have done that, I shall write again and let you see the finished results!

Please give my best wishes to Mrs Weil,

Yours faithfully,

Mrs Begonia.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Dearest Terry,

Hope your latest excursion with Oolon wasn't too nerve-wracking and that you didn't need all that gin you packed to cope with his piloting skills. You did remember to take your Brownie along, didn't you, or at least one of those new-fangled gizmos? I always like looking at your holiday snaps, they're funny - all those running feet and blurry images. And you say your Brownie isn't fond of a tipple!

Anyway - (I'd better hurry up, the butterflies are looking aggrieved at me taking so long to write this) - I've been making stuff again. This is part of a watch I picked up ages ago from the Rummage Man. The bracelet was damaged, had been badly repaired and the case was a bit corroded, but it had ever such a pretty movement when I levered it out of the back. I don't know about you, but sometimes I find it really hard to break these objects up, even when they are very poorly and neglected. Maybe its just me, but taking apart something that somebody put together with such love and care a long, long time ago seems a bit naughty and disrespectful somehow. Unless its utterly buggered and then, really, what else are you going to do with it?

So, I jiggered it about a bit, took the pretty blue face off (no point in hiding it away), popped the mechanism back in and pushed the back back on. Then I put it onto some fine black ribbon to make it look all stylish and minimalistic. Well, that was the general idea, any way. I have a couple of other watches in this category - mostly intact physically, just not working mechanically, so I may well be creating a few more along these lines. Watch this space! (Sorry).

Ah well, according to the clock on the tent wall, its nearly time for all good Pixies to go to bed. So I'll be staying up for quite a while longer...

Let me know when you've got something other than that grotty Battenburg cake and I'll pop over for tea.

Love

F.

Roses are, well, pink and gold

Dear Miss Jameson,

Its all been a bit of a frenzy over here at the Circus of late - I've been getting my sketch book up to date, teaching Snorty macrame (he's doing remarkably well, all things considered) and trying to instill some sort of order on my boxes of stuff. And making pretty things, as well, in between bouts of putting things away then getting them straight back out again.


I got this squishy stretchy knitted wire ages ago when Mr Fenwick was having a sale at his emporium. I've tried to use bigger gauge knitted wires before, but they tend to sproing all over the place when you cut them, as well as being a tad unruly when wrestling them into place. But while I was tidying and pondering the other day, I suddenly thought that the finer stuff would make pretty steampunk roses. I also have this lovely Japanese washi paper bought whilst visiting an art shop on Messers Haight & Ashbury's estate in the city of Saint Francis, which just so happens to be exactly the right shades of pink. It has gold dragonflies on it (but sadly far too widely spaced to be seen on little bits like this), so I bunged a bit in the middle, stuffed it with wadding, couched a clock cog on to it and finished with a little dragonfly that you could see.

This is the prototype, and as you know, you always learn a lot when experimenting (except the Prof, who still doesn't seem to have got the hang of not blowing things up even after all that practice). I'd make the centre of the flower a little differently next time and use a longer length of wire for more ruffles, but not bad for a first attempt!

Speaking of explosions, I can smell burning and (come to think of it) I haven't seen the Prof for a while either. Better just go and make sure that the potting shed's still intact...

Be good! Love

Fuschia

Titfers

Dearest Em,

I know that sometimes it takes me a while to get round to things, but you know that hat workshop of Sparkly Jem's you encouraged me to go on after I admired your cracking cranial adornment? Well, I went and only eight months later, I've actually finished the hat!



Rather natty, eh? The fabric was printed by the lovely Spoonflower, on the Colonial side of the Pond. They hail from an area famous for their cutlery inspired foliage, which I believe the company is named after (and so much prettier than the other local herbage, the Prickly Sporkmoss). The cog is from my stash, the ribbon from some other random shopping trip where I grabbed far too many pretty things with no idea of what I'd end up doing with them (although I believe making medal ribbons was on my mind at the time), and the wooden butterfly from a traipse along the Queen of Canada's excellent street of beading emporia. Its lined with a very delicate duck-egg shade of silk and I'm rather pleased with it. Now all I need to do is remember to take my hair-pins with me next time I wear it...

Needless to say, I'm rather proud of it. Doesn't it look chic? Unusual for this Pixie, I know, but every girl needs to have her glam moments, don't you think?

Must dash! Be good (or at least, don't get caught)

Love

F.

Lost and Found

Dear Mrs Foggy,

Blimey, its been a while, hasn't it? I don't know where the time went since your nuptials. It was very good of your Boxed Brownie to send us his little paintings over the aether, although our Brownie is now sulking and has eaten several daguerrotypes in protest (including the one of Mr Mesmer's cravat pin). I have confiscated his gin in retaliation and attempted to convince him that his images will be much more in focus without it. Funnily enough, he won't believe me.

To prove I did do some creative stuff in between then and now, these are some earrings I made for a Canadian friend of ours. She's a very talented jewellery maker herself and over the years we have whiled away many a happy hour in the bead shops along the street the Queen of Canada has designated specially for that purpose. I found the lovely little crystal butterflies on a shopping trip with Miss Emilly, and the little silver hearts. The main challenge was finding some nice posts that weren't for pierced ears. All in all, I think they worked quite well.

And then there was something for Terry; she likes purple and again, she's a very talented jewellery maker (its always a bit nerve-racking making something for other designers, but we all have our own unique style and no-one's sent anything back yet!). Its very simple, just another of those lovely circley bits the Prof found in the circus basement when dismantling the old Babbage Engines.

Last, but by no means least, this necklace was for Miss Emilly, to go with the earrings that I made for her when I was 'sperimenting last summer. I made the ribbons a bit long, but seeing as she's rather handy in that department, she soon sorted that out to her satisfaction.

Life at the Circus since then has somewhat got in the way of making pretty things, but now its the off-season I'm hoping to get the sketch book out again (and the power tools). I even dutifully sorted out the big pile of stuff I'd accrued over the last year, so I pretty much know where everything is and even what I have! Except for the little light bulb things that Miss Emilly gave me; I've no idea where they are. I suspect the Brownie, but he's denying everything and its not as if Snorty would know what to do with them.

Best be off, I think I can hear George chasing the Prof around the workshop. He's a good lion, most of the time, but he does get bored easily and I don't fancy having to give him another bath if he gets in amongst the dye vats again (although he did rather suit that shade of purple).

Please give our love to your wonderful hublet, and ta-ta for now!

F.

'Tis the Season...

Dear Teedles,

You might have been thinking that its been awfully quiet on the Pixie front. Well, you wouldn't have been wrong. Its been terribly hectic both at Pixie School and the Circus, and then there's the sideline I have to take care of at this time of year, if you know what I mean (big fat man, white beard, seriously in need of a new outfit, needs to stop drinkinng all that fizzy brown stuff).

So here are some of the stocking fillers he's had me making this year.

First off is this lovely red and silver pair. The fuse caps came off these ones, so it was really easy to stuff 'em full of beads. I really like these ones; very festive.

And then I real problems getting the fuse caps off any of the other ones, so I had to think outside the fuse. Quite literally, actually. Hmmm, lovely purple swirly beady things. That's two seperate pieces of wire there, one going up through the middle, the other twirling round the outside.

So, thinks me, what am I to do now? Each pair has to be different and I can't get the caps off. Trying to twist them off with pliers makes them go tinkle-crack-smash and heating them in Snorty's firebox just makes the glue go brown (you can't get them out of the oven quick enough to get the caps off while the glue is still molten).

I had some very pretty turquoise wire and I thought, let's do a variation of the beady one, just with wire. And instead of a loop on the bottom, lets have a pretty swirl ('cos its a bugger getting those loops to sit right underneath).

Right, one more pair to go. I got my lovely drill out again, only this time I got one of the bigger bits and drilled a stonking great hole in one end of the fuse.

The advantage of that is that I can cram the little beads up through the hole. The disadvantage of that is that there's this big hole in the bottom. I did think about sticking a big bead over the hole, but trying to handle that with very quickly drying glue would be sure to end up with Pixie fingers stuck in there as well. So I thought the swirl would make a very agreeable alternative. The beads are iridescent, so it sparkles very nicely in the light.

There have been other things I've been working on, but they're super-special secret still (until after the big man has been out on his rounds. And I don't mean the Prof; he's currently helping the Elves. He looks really cute in green, especially with that hat and the stripy stockings).

Ah, my new crystals have arrived. Best get back to the other two pairs of earrings.

Have an excellent festive season

Lots of love, Fuschia

Coppers and Computers

Dearest Emilly,

I do hope your polar trip is progressing well. The post-butterflies have complained a bit about the cold up there, but they think that the coloured lights are very pretty, like the shimmer in their wings in fact.

We had a bit of a party in your absence and while the Prof was pootling about preparing the moonshine and the nibbles, I thought I'd better make some more things for the little gift-shop.

First up is this little item, or "Green Machine" as we've decided to call it. I know you know a bit about the future and these strange things called computers. I believe that some of our current compatriots call them Difference Engines. I haven't had the heart to tell them that the ones I've seen in the future aren't steam-powered. Still, if you take a nice big hammer to them, there are some very pretty things inside. It would be fun even if there weren't pretty things inside; you know me and hammers!

The Prof says this piece is called a hard disc reader head. I know it doesn't look like a head or like it can read, but I thought the ribbons and the little beads made it much more presentable to the library types, particularly Sir JJ and Miss Homewood (and I don't think it would be interested in Sir JJ's secret stash of very nice whisky, unlike some of his other readers. Hic!)

Anyway, its available here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33224817

And then there's this one: Time Flies. Not all of the bits of clock we got from the Rummage Man were in tip-top condition; even though I felt a bit sorry for this watch-face as its seen better days, I still think its very pretty. Its such a lovely colour under that enamel; maybe true beauty does lie within?

The shiny circular piece the Prof assures me is a hard disc spindle thing. No idea what one of them does, but its got some very useful holes in it for putting ribbons through. And the little dragonfly liked it so much when he came to see what I was doing, he asked if he could stay.

Its available here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33225023

Some of the other reader heads that we recovered from more old computers the Prof found in a wonderful yellow boaty called, I believe, in the local parlance a "skip", weren't as pretty as the one above. In fact, the only pretty thing in them was the copper coily; not only is it a very pleasing shape, there's a class of butterflies called Coppers, or Lycaenae.

Well, if there's butterflies involved (however tenuously) you know I'm your Pixie! So I snapped them out of their ugly surrounds, polished them up and added some pretty Chinesey beads and a few cogs for good measure.

They're next to the candyfloss at: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33225252

There is one other piece of jewellery that I've made, but this one has sort of already been commissioned (along with three more pairs). At a different point in the future I found these natty little glass tubes. They had a rather boring wire in them, but I managed to pull the caps off a few and soon remedied that. I've called them "Blown a Fuse", although the Prof looked at me really archly when I did and muttered something about "more like a gasket...". Do you think I should have words with him, Em? Or was he making another odd Circus-type joke, do you think? (For odd, please read not funny)

I await your answer as to whether or not Snorty and I should take him in hand. Give my love to Mr Worthers

Fuschia