Well.... I’m back in Leeds and I think I need to catch you up with what I’ve been up too. The River island competition was something I spent quite a lot of time working on -our task was to create an accessory made from charity shop items for River island.
So all I’m gonna say is.. What a journey I had to the final piece !!
I originally bought an umbrella from a charity shop and intended to make it into a necklace using the metal structure. This is my sketched idea..

BUT...I had all these metal pieces that wouldn’t attach together in the way I wanted them to so next I went to another charity shop and bought a plastic hair band, some beaded necklaces and some old looking buttons. I then used the fabric from the umbrella to make a flower like thing on the top of the hair band - I intended for the metal structure I had made to be poking out from the top of the flower…

However hitch number 2 !! the metal would not stick to the hairband even with superglue and though I tried loads of ways of clamping it on it just wasnt happening !
Before I came up with my final idea i considered putting the metal bit on a pearl chain and making a necklace with it.

But i still wasnt happy so i went rummaging through the charity shops for like the Hundredth time and decided to use an old pencil case as part of a bag. But having used up all my umbrella fabric i bought another from echarity shop for a pound !
I then used the umbrella fabric to line the pencil case and for the flower on the bag adding the beads as the strap. And here is the final result ......

Even though it was a bit of an ordeal- Im really pleased with my outcome.I think I learnt that you cant always just think of an idea and make it. You kind of have to go through a mental process of experimenting with ideas, some of which you reject before you get to a sucessful idea that your happy with !