Chime time!

Guys, yours truly is an idiot. And I mean the headless chicken- under- stress kind.
I lost my company £300 yesterday, because I processed a card payment that had been declined.
Imagine the situation: the shop is packed with customers, pretty much all of whom demand my immediate attention for this, that or the other. I am on my own, trying to take bets, pay out, manage the gaming machines and promote a tournament all at the same time. A lad gives me his card to process £300, loaded directly onto a gaming machine. I do it, give him his receipt, all is good.
10 minutes later, he comes up with a ticket for £900, lucky bugger. I put £800 back onto his card and £100 cash into his pocket.
Only later did it dawn on me that his debit card had been declined and he had played money that wasn't there.
After my shift, I left without even telling my manager, knowing that her superior would be in the shop later and I might as well confess directly to the big gun.
Which I did.
It wasn't nice, but bless her, she didn't rip my head straight off, either.

After a pretty restless night, I woke up to a text message from my dearest colleague Barbara, a wonderful lady of 60 who has been with the company for 30 years- imagine that! Anyway, I thought she'd let me know there would be a disciplinary next week or worse, so I didn't quite feel too good opening it.

Shouldn't have worried. It read "I got your 300 quid back!"

This angel in disguise persuaded the customer (who was daft enough to come back to the shop to ask how long the refund onto his card would take!) to pay back the dough!! She tricked him into believing the refund would only go through if he made the payment, bless her cotton socks.

I always loved Barbara to bits, but right now, I would think nothing of having her name tattooed across a big, fat red love heart on my forearm. So to express my gratitude, I made her a wind chime.

I felt so light- hearted after receiving the good news this morning that I spent our last bucks on a Dremel- like rotary tool. Hey, the Man has irish ancestors, so he will be fine with eating potatoes for a while! :D And to make the little gift for Barbara, I put it to good use straight away.

I used some more of that fancy potpourri I built into the bat- and- owl- frames, a bracelet for £1 (!) from the charity shop and copper tone headpins. Have a look.

I drilled holes through the disc- thingy, the bamboo and the shell- type thingies

Then I took bits and pieces from the bracelet and drilled holes in the appropriate places:

Assembly with long headpins

Build a hedgehog. com- the next step was to give each headpin a loop

The three middle pins got twisted around each other to form a loop for hanging the whole thing from

After all pieces were assembled, I put a dab of hot glue onto every headpin's... err, head to stop it from moving about and put a bead into the dab.

The whole wind chime:

I loved making it, especially since I had Barbara and her rescue mission on my mind. It was easy and I made everything up as I went along, so this is not a tutorial, but rather a show- and- tell. Hope you like it!

 

Batcidentally in love!

Yesterday was Not. My. Day. It was supposed to be my day off, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I fell out of bed at 7 am. I mean, what the heck? So I went to lounge about on the couch with a coffee, read some blogs and make the most of it... and the phone rang. A dear colleague (luv ya, Barbara!) had an emergency and could not open the shop, so I duly went and did what a girl has to do. Sit in a badly airconditioned betting shop yawning her head off for 7 hours.

After crawling back home (man, I never felt so tired in my entire life!), I thought I'd just go back to where I left things and went about reading blogs, doing more yawning and pretty much being a waste of space when The Man suddenly stirred and shook his leg... onto which a fat spider had decided to climb.
Let's just say I spent some time on the middle floor, hyperventilating and shaking while the knight in shiny armour unarmoured himself in the quest to find the eight- legged freak. He thought it had made its way into his jeans, so he took them off, took his shirt off, examined the stuff properly and still couldn't find the foe.
Turns out the bugger sat under some furniture, but was eventually found out and politely asked to leave the house (with a gentle nudge towards the neighbour's door!)

With enough oxygen in my bloodstream to last me for a week without breathing, I thought I might as well do something useful (who said washing up? Are you kidding?) and get crafting. And that is where I batcidentally fell in love- have a look.

 The man decided that too many owls spoil the broth, so for my second shadow box (I have three of those ugly frame things going on!) I went with another favourite critter of mine: the Common Dozy Bat.
So again, some doodles first:

 Here they are, the prototypes.

After that, again transferring them to cardboard and some cutting- this time I went for an easier option and only cut the wings and bodies. Even lazier, they only got painted with my new brushes The Man got me the other day (together with a beautiful bag of beads, am I spoilt or what?) and his good old miniature paints.

 Heck yeah, he got me chocolate, too! :)

Bob helped me to prepare the frame, which I had spray painted while the bats dried. A piece of firewood ( I had to go into the basement to get it. Not happy.), some more potpourri and a bit of string, here we go:

The final result: (sorry about the lame pictures, it was pretty late and I had to use the flash)

Closer:

CLOSER:

Love them! Honest, the pictures don't do them much justice, if I may say so myself.

Yeah, and that's 2 out of three! The next one, I hope, will be nutty. Err. Any guesses? :)

Linkin' up:

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