Hello from Fizzydrink

new DT member, Ruth

Hi, my name is Ruth Austin but online I’m usually known as Fizzydrink. You can also find me on my blog at www.anotherunfinishedproject.co.uk. I’m really pleased to be invited to take part on the Design Team, as I know it will be motivating and get me crafting during the next 3 months.

I’m a happily married mother to a son of 12 and a daughter of 15, and I also work almost full-time in IT – all of which makes it tricky to set time aside for my hobbies! Things that are GOOD in Ruth’s world are Cadbury’s chocolate, the colour green, cats, shopping, cooking and socialising with friends. Things that I don’t like are whelks, whinging, cruelty to anything, and not getting everything I want the minute I want it!! I love going to crops but they’re mainly a social event for me, as I’m too fond of chatting to get much done.

I have always had some creative hobby or other on the go – as a teenager I loved sketching and watercolours, and over the years I have dabbled in all manner of paper and textile crafts. When my daughter was small I loved making her clothes and I also spent some years on cross-stitch and crochet. Nowadays I still get my hooks and needles out occasionally, but my main crafty interests are in papercrafts and beading.

A few years ago I started card-making and I was quickly obsessed by all the tools, techniques and pretty papers. The first thing I ever bought for it was my Fiskar’s paper trimmer and it’s still going strong! But I discovered that I didn’t like spending hours on a project and then giving it away, so I made a natural progression into scrapbooking, which I love.

My other main craft interest is Jewellery – and I was enticed into this by how pretty all the beads are!! How can I not buy them when they are so beautiful – and then eventually I had to learn to do something with them! I started off with bag charms (and everyone got one that first Christmas), and now make a wider range of things, although necklaces are my favourite.

But don’t you find necklaces are hard to store? If I have them n bags or boxes then I don’t wear them; if I have them on a stand they get all tangled up; if I hang them on my mirror then they slip off one side and behind the dresser!! Oops! After that I had to find a different way, so I asked my husband to sort something out and he put up some coat hooks for me, spaced out to hang the necklaces on. I absolutely love my new storage, and it’s working really well so far!! If you have any inventive ways to store or display jewellery then I’d really appreciate it if you could post a comment and tell me about it, so that as I make more pieces I can keep it all organised!

Thanks for reading my introduction – I hope you’ll find my projects interesting over the next few months and maybe be inspired to try something new yourself.