MY IMPATIENT FRIEND

That would be you SYLVIA.
It's not your birthday until next week and that's when you open cards and presents, not this week!!!!!!!
Sylvia lives in glorious Devon so I posted her present so that it arrived in time especially with the bad weather all over the country. I rang her to explain about one of the packages but I was too late. the box had arrived that morning and she had opened the lot....I ask you, LOL.
Anyway, I can reveal one of the things I sent her, it's the one I was having great difficulty with because the glue kept failing:

This began as a miniature whisky bottle which I started to colour with black alcohol ink. I then put peel offs around it and went over the whole thing with gold mixative. Once dry, I removed the peel offs to leave black impressions.

I then started to make the top decorations - this was the bit I had problems with. I had to glue 2 metal beads together which formed the 'neck' of the decoration and which also held the wired glass beads. I used some wire through it all to give some stability but it still decided to fall to pieces on several occasions:

I bent 3 metal filigree corners to form feet and stuck those to the bottle - that bit worked well. A small piece of bead ribbon covered some of the neck of the bottle and then I stuck the top bit and waited, and waited and when I thought it had stuck - about 3 hours later - it fell off!!!!!!!

I added some black sticky gems to the bottle and 3 little metal butterflies to each point where the 'feet' joined. I gave up with the E6000 glue for the top and reverted to the trusty Cosmic shimmer glue. This time it seemed ok.

I then hung some little metal butterflies to the top plus a metal heart which states 'made with love'. A few black and gold tiny paper roses (not shown) and a bit of black stickles finished it all.
Sylvia says it arrived intact inside it's makeshift Pringles tube!!!! I had fun making it despite the odd mishaps.