christmas sales..

The christmas shopping is fully going now, started a bit late but now I've had a few sales over the last few days. I like it :-) Thanks to all my customers who have bought from me so far, I consider myself very lucky to have such nice and appreciative customers!
Check out my "Dragonheart" tea cup, above. I have just listed it in my Etsy store . It's a gorgeous, golden cup, but the saucer almost tops it, both look quite Vintage to me. Hope they will find a good home:-)

What strange weather it was in Melbourne today! So much storm and rain, I can't believe we are officially having summer.. It's Luke's birthday tomorrow, I hope we will get some sunshine.

I'm off to bed,
nightie night.

discount for Aussies

The recent downfall of the Australian dollar is quite shocking, I wonder what that is heading to.. But on the other hand, if I keep worrying about it it probably won't help my store either. I hope that people keep on being interested in buying handmade, one off, and/or recycled pieces.

But since the only currency I can list in on Etsy is US$ it makes it a bit hard to offer fair prices to my Australian customers. And so far, most of my customers have been from Australia.

To make it a bit easier I'm offering a discount of at least 25% in my Etsy store for all Australians.

Just choose "other" as payment method and I will send you a paypal invoice with the discounted amount. Or my bank details, if you prefer to pay by bank transfer.

Happy christmas shopping!

Great Ocean Road

Sadly, my Mum and sister had to leave yesterday but boy did we use the time well! They got to see quite a bit of Australia. We did a trip along the Great Ocean Road and were very lucky, we got to see so many animals. Check out the photos:

First we saw an Echidna, just beside a car park where we had lunch. Apparently you hardly ever get to see them in the wild. And there it was, digging in the ground for ants, ignoring us. We got some great photos.

Then we discovered these wild kangaroos that were just hanging out in someones front garden. Crazy!

And last but not least we saw a few koalas sitting in trees by the road. This one was so close to us, we could have picked it up if we had wanted to. It was a lucky day.

my wedding

I haven't been on here for quite a while. I'm planning to post at least twice a week from now on. I hope I can live up to that!

But I do have a good excuse for being slack: I have gotten married!!!

On November 22nd was the big day. We had a small, intimate wedding with just 25 people in total. It turned out soo nicely! The celebration took place in Ocean Grove, that is a small twon by the sea. We had rented a big house where most of our family members stayed with us.

Even though the planned garden wedding didn't happen (storm and rain) we found a very suitable venue with the living room. We had such a great day with everyone, it couldn't have worked out any better!

In the afternoon we managed to sneak out to the beach between to periods of rain for some photos and I'm glad we did.

I don't want to bore you any longer, have a look:

Yes, I did wear a red dress! I always wanted to get married in red and I'm so glad I did. Everyone loved the dress, especially the groom was very impressed when the well-kept secret was finally revealed.

My lovely friend Katrina did the greatest job with my hair. Here we are, getting ready for the ceremony:

She also made our wedding cake! It looked soo pretty, covered in roses. Not to mention the taste. I'm lucky I had such good help for the day. Here it is:

We had such a great day, I wish I could relive it again without all the stress and nerviousity beforehand. I'm also very glad that my mother and sister were able to come all the way from Germany to spend this special day with us. They are still here and we did so much over the last few days. I'm going to post a few photos of our recent trips to the Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island soon.

Here one last wedding photo, a funny one, of (almost) all the guests (someone had to take the photo)

Floating candles...

I'm really keen to get some more new products happening in my shop. Especially with christmas coming up it will be good to offer some different products. I have just started experimenting with floating candles and am quite happy with the results so far. I just have to find a way to streamline the process of making them a bit better. This is how they look like so far:

I have to play a bit with the colour, same as with my melts. They will be up very soon as well, i have been playing with them for a while and they are ready to go up. I just want to try some different things with the colour, I hope it will work out.

Busy week so far, doing all sorts of things. And it is COLD again in Melbourne. Sooo annoying, i wish it was back to warm. Apparently, the four-year-old I'm looking after didn't quite understand about daylight savings (the clocks got changed to summer time in Australia on the weekend) and his parents explained to him that it is summer now, that's why the time is being changed. He understood that.

Consequently, he dressed himself in shorts and T-Shirt on Monday morning. Unfortunately, it was about 10 degrees and rain. He is not very impressed with summer this year!

Here is a photo of the new Queen-Anne dressing table for our bedroom. I picked it up at the Camberwell market for a song, such a great find! (please ignore that horrible carpet, one day, when I have my own house I will have beautiful wooden floorboards..:-))

my new stuff

Hiya everyone,



I'm back, I'm pleased to announce that all colds, coughs and similar annoyances are finally gone and I'm back to health. (That little stomach bug i had during my short stay in Sydney two weeks ago is not even worth mentioning...)



I am crazily busy at the moment, trying to add lots of new cups to my Etsy store. I found some lovely cups while i was out and about shopping. I seem to get more and more picky with choosing my cups, i only wanted the nicest stuff!

There are also a few things to organise for my upcoming wedding (excitement, excitement!!). We are getting married in November on the Great Ocean Road. It will be a very small, very informal and personal little celebration and we are very much looking forward to it. But even though it's going to be small there is still a bit to organise.

Then we had the pleasure of having to get our car fixed this week. I thought it didn't sound promising when the car made an asthmatic coughing sound and than kind of died. In short, we needed a new battery and a new Alternator. And don't ask me what that is because i don't know and I'm not even sure if i spelled it right.. But we have a new one now anyway!

Anyway, wallet a lot lighter and car in recovery we decided to spend even more money and booked a "delayed" Honeymoon over New Years Eve in Port Douglas, yippieh!! That's right on the Great Barrie Reef and i can't wait to go snorkeling! And lay on the beach! And just hang out! And and and.. It should be good!



Anyway, i better start adding some photos.



I took a few photos of the soy wax melts I'm going to put into my Etsy store shortly. I'm still testing them.. with the weather being so nice in Melbourne lately i have the doors and windows open all the time and any scent would disappear quickly, makes testing a bit hard.

There are my little heart melts, they just need some colour i think.. but the scent of the essential Lavender oil is very nice!

Actually i wanted to add a few more pics of today's finds at the Camberwell market but I'm a bit tired now, i might just go to bed..:-) and admire my new dressing table in the bedroom, photo follows soon!

Nightie night everyone! See you soon!

stilll coughing

After five days I'm still coughing and probably sounding a bit french when speaking since my nose is blocked. Not that there was much of a chance to recover over the last few days, there are always these unexpected things coming up, for example tuesday: After 8 hours of running after Kids AND lots of talking (Kids just don't understand that you might want to rest your voice, they never do it after all!) all I wanted was to go home, lay on the couch and finally shut up.
I wish.. I got home, my fiance Luke was running around between house and electricity meter trying to read it and explaining everything to me. That was very nice of him to sort that all out, I was just so tired.. then he was going to cook dinner, I rang his sister as it was her birthday. We had a quick, nice chat but my voice was getting less and less, the cough increased.

I finished talking, Luke said: "we don't have any water"
Me: "What??"
Luke: "There is no water coming out of the taps."

More running around between house and meters, gentle turning of the water meter tap wich did absolutaly nothing. Strangly enough the meter was measuring water usage although we obviuosly didn't use anything!
Call to the water company, they were going to send someone out. 15 minutes later a guy with massive torch turned up and checked out the meter. Turned out that there had been some repair work on the main pipe that very morning and the clever person that did the job connected our water pipe to the meter of the unit next to us and theirs to our meter!!!
We did have water again but it left us with the following questions:

-Who pays for what water usage from now on?
-Why wasn't our water turned on?
-Does the person that conducted the repair need glasses?? OH YES!!
-What happened to that evening of silence i was planning on?

We cooked dinner(now we had water again), we ate, we were discussing holiday plans in Queensland... as you can see we did all sorts of stuff that night, just being quiet i didn't manage...

I'm over colds and flus!

The last day of august already, isn't winter offcially finished tomorrow??? Or is that later on in september? The last couple of days have been quite mild here in Melbourne, there was definitely a whiff of spring in the air.. Smiling, I tucked my cold-and-flu tablets deeply into the bathroom drawer, surely I wouldn't need them again before next year... last night I got them out again as my nose is completely blocked, my whole body is aching, I'm coughing and there is this general under-the-weather-feeling. I'm spending my Sunday at home on the couch.
And I wanted to go to the Melbourne Etsy seller meet-up today!! Not much point, coughing and sneezing at everyone. I hope I can make it to the next one!
Some things have been happening in my Etsy-store, I've had four sales so far! I'm very proud *beaming with pride* That's definitely a start.
Apart from listing new cup candles and shopping for more cups (there haven't been many tea cups around lately, I must have bought them all!;-)) I'm also working on some new products. I'm currently experimenting with oil burner melts and hey, they are turning out nicely so far. They will be made with pure essential oils. That is going to be my little aromatherapy line.:-) I can't wait to put them up in my shop, just have to do some more testing etc.
I would also like to do some more mosaics, I love making mosaics! Just the process of cutting up glass is so annoying (one day I have to put up a photo of me in my protective gear cutting up glass, looks like I'm going to perform surgery!) and it really makes my wrist and hand hurt. I know there are tools to make the whole thing a bit easier, but they also cost quite a bit. Eventually, eventually..Rome hasn't been built in a day after all.
I'm off now, I will try to kill this cold. First I'm going to drown it in tea and then burn it with hot steam. And if that fails I get the herbal tablets out! That might scare it to death.. well, you can always hope.
Hope you are all well and healthy, see you soon!

it's been a while

Hello everyone (hope I have a few readers)

It’s been a while since i have posted on my blog. Don't know what happened to the month of July, but it's gone. I've been busy working on my Etsy store and I’m now offering custom-made teacup candles where you can choose your favourite fragrance. I have heaps of fragrances available, and they are SO GOOD! Who would have thought that you could put the lovely scents of coffee, chocolate or blueberry cheesecake into fragrance oil. YUM! Now I’m waiting for my first sale, still. Just made my shipping costs a bit lower since they must be a bit of a turn-off, shipping from Australia is so expensive! I guess we are a long way away from everywhere...

My fiancé Luke and I have just been away last weekend to visit his crazy, lovely family up in Newcastle near Sydney. It's been a big weekend with a 70th birthday, a massive family breakfast, lunch with both grandparents, playing with his little cousins and so on.
I also have a cousin of mine currently living in Sydney which is nice. I'm not the only one of my family on the other side of the world.
I went to visit her for a day and we took her two little boys to Balmoral Beach in Sydney, built a big sandcastle that should be able to withstand all sorts of attacks, had fish and chips for lunch (Balmoral seagulls had their fair share too) and enjoyed a lovely day. The Kids must have liked it too, when i was about to leave her three-year-old old looked at me like he couldn't believe it and shouted out in German: "Willst Du etwa sson dehn?!?" Translated and under consideration of his three-year-old slang/dialect it would sound like "Do you leally wanna do home aleady?!?"
Now I’m back in Melbourne, soon back to my nannying work. Yep, can't escape the Kids. But where else would all that great inspiration come from...? :-)
Saying that I better make my way to bed for some inspirational sleep, spent all afternoon sorting my tax stuff out, YUK! But I’m almost over and done with it now.

See you soon, dear readers and have a good night...

Product photos

I finally had a chance to get out my camera and get creative....I love the atmosphere. I was trying to capture that real feeling of cozy twilight magic. I am in the process of designing a flyer and I think these lovely shots will steal the show.

news on the teacup front

I went out on the weekend to do some shopping, for my business of course:-) Any excuse is always good to go shopping!
After scoring some great factory outlet bargains for myself (I love bargains!) we stopped at a big Op-shop on the way home and I found some beautiful teacups which will be turned into candles shortly. What a succesful find, this shop! I have to check out the North of Melbourne a bit more, since I"m living South-East i don't tend to go there very often.
I will upload some photos of my new teacups very soon so you can have a look at my lucky finds.

a bit about me

Hello and welcome to Twilight Spells!

My name is Ruth (my passport tells me that I’m 26 years old, must be right;-) ) and I am the person behind the whole idea. I am originally from Germany but currently living in Melbourne, Australia with my fiancé. Sometimes love really takes you to the other side of the world.. :-)

Melbourne is a fantastic city that offers lots of creative inspiration, although it surely takes a lifetime to get used to the local weather and it’s sudden changes!

I have travelled lots and lived in different countries over the last few years. That has taken me through a lot of different jobs including Paediatric Nursing, Childcare, Kiwi grading, Fruit picking (You’ve got to try everything when you are on a Working Holiday in New Zealand- it was great fun! ;-)), Live-In Care Work, currently I’m a Nanny…

I’m quite passionate about Natural Materials and Recycling, not surprising I guess, having grown up in a German household with it’s four different bins plus all the extra specific Recycling :-)Add a general love for special Vintage/Second-hand pieces, the desire to try all sorts of Arts and Crafts, and the idea for Twilight Spells was born.

About a year ago I started making my first mosaics and was hooked immediately. I especially love working with stained glass, I’m fascinated over and over again by the beauty of light falling through the glass and making it sparkle…

Then, a few months ago I came across soy wax for the first time. I was curious about this different type of wax I had never heard of before and was looking for more information. I learned about all the benefits of soy wax ( I didn’t know that “normal” wax is a by-product of crude oil, not a very appealing thought there!) and couldn’t wait to get started on making my very own soy candles.

And suddenly there was the idea for my Vintage Twist tea cup candles... I have always liked these pretty, old English style tea cups, I just never really knew what to do with them since I’m not much of a collector. But as candles.. Yeah, that seemed like a great idea! I hope that you will enjoy my tea cup candles just as much as I do!

I spend a lot of time hitting the local Op/Charity shops, markets, Second-hand places… All my cups and mosaic candleholders are bought second-hand and therefore recycled. The glass I use for my mosaics are off-cuts from a glass cutting place. I try to reuse and recycle as much as possible in my products.

If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas or just want to chat please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!

I will start selling some of my products shortly on: www.twilightspells.etsy.com
Have a look if you like...

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Regards,

Ruth