A Horrible Feeling - Having My Debit Card Cloned

Image : Community Friend/Flickr 

I found out yesterday that someone had recently cloned my debit card and was using it to top up their mobile phones. What a horrible feeling! It's the first time it's ever happened to me and I felt really angry that someone could do something so despicable. I also felt slightly panicky at the thought of my account being emptied before my eyes.

I only found out when I had a phone call from Cookson Gold saying payment had been declined for an order I'd just placed. I tried to pay again and it was declined again so I checked my account online and saw the five payments taken out without my knowledge. Just small amounts that they must have hoped I wouldn't notice but I think the bank had put a stop to any more debit payments as it must have flagged up as suspicious at this point. It happened once before but that time it was me on a bit of a spending spree and the hold put on my account was lifted after I made a phone call :D

I rang the bank and eventually, after battling with an automated "thing" that didn't recognize my voice, then speaking to a real person, who put me through to another real person who asked if I banked with them -  "yes, obviously" (otherwise why would I be ringing you?) I was put through to someone who checked it wasn't me making the payments to EE T Mobile and O2. I was feeling a little bit frustrated at this point although I understand why they have to double check.

Things were sorted eventually and my card was cancelled and the money refunded within a couple of hours so apart from being without a debit card for a few days until the new one arrives everything is ok now. Thank you the nice man from the fraud department. I do feel a bit lost without my bit of bendy plastic though.......

Now I'm just trying to figure out how it happened. Having my card cloned at a cash point is the most likely explanation but I haven't used one for at least a couple of weeks plus I would've thought they would take larger amounts of money out of the account rather than topping up their phones for £10 and £20 at a time. In shops I usually put the card in the machine myself although I'm not that vigilant at covering up the keyboard when I type in my pin. I'm thinking that it may have been from an online payment where the card number and security code are given but paying online is supposed to be safe. I am baffled but it has made me think that I need to be a bit more vigilant from now on.

Craft Storage - It's A Beautiful Thing

I recently decided to revamp the storage boxes I keep my small jewellery making tools and supplies in. If you are anything like me and struggle to make jewellery in a room that is meant for other uses - the dining room and kitchen in other words - instead of having one of those wonderful workrooms/studios/sheds where you can spread things out, you probably get how important having enough storage space is. The dining room table was only used rarely anyway before I started taking over and now isn't used to eat off at all, just for cats to sit on and things to get dumped on to be put away "later".

This is what I had previously...... 

Perfectly good reinforced cardboard drawers but they were starting to get a bit tatty and they just weren't big enough! As you can see I have stuff everywhere, little bits of stuff and big bits of stuff that does start to get untidy and annoying after a while. Bear in mind the photo was taken when I'd tidied up and not when I was in the middle of making something. Then it would be a mass of tools, sand paper, files and bits of metal and metal dust everywhere!

I can't just spread out as it's a through room to the kitchen so I don't have a door to shut and hide the mess from people. I've already aquired one of the kitchen cupboards for my soldering and enamelling tools and supplies plus a cupboard in the sideboard for "stuff" so I definitely needed to sort my worktable space and invest in more nice drawers :D

I found the wooden six drawer boxes on ebay. They are similar to the Ikea drawers but better quality as they are 100% wood and not part hardboard. I also bought a different shaped six drawer Ikea box also on ebay.

After a quick sand I got my beloved stamps and Stayz On ink out and decorated the drawers.

The boxes were then stained and oiled with Danish Oil. I could've left them plain pine I suppose but I think they look so much better and more expensive when they are stained.

I did manage to mess up one of the stamps........... bottom row 2nd from the right....................

And here is the end result, everything moved over to the new boxes but I do still need to do a bit more sorting out. The brown three drawer thing on top that is full of cabs and bezel wire will be moved eventually and I rediscovered all those "useful" bits of metal and wire you keep, some of them from three years ago, that I didn't want to throw away but didn't know what to do with at the time and shoved into a drawer/bag/little pot that I now wonder what on earth I was thinking and know exactly what to do with. Throw gleefully into the bin.

Oh my God look at all those beautiful drawers I can put stuff in.

I need to stop pretending to be an artist and get rid of the paintbrushes though.................

Copper Bangles with Added Tricky Bits

Why make simple copper bangles when you can make "tricky" copper bangles? That's tricky to me anyway, other people would probably find them super simple! I'm talking about copper bangles with five small sterling silver concave discs soldered to the outside. Not hard to make just tricky.

I wanted to combine copper and silver as I love the look of the two metals together. The fiddly bit was the soldering of the silver discs to the outside of the copper bangles. I wanted then evenly spaced and was about to Google how to divide a circle into five parts when I realized I know how to do this already - just remember the length of wire you used for the bangles and divide by five!

After quite a lot of faffing about with my third hand and my fibre board soldering block (and swearing, mustn't forget that) I got the first disc soldered to the first bangle. Only 14 more to go. I had to pickle in between each soldering too which made it quite a laborious process but I got a little production line going in the end and managed to get the bangles finished with a big sigh of relief.

The main problem I have is that my reverse action tweezers I use with the third hand don't have a very good grip so things tend to move just when I don't want them to. I'm not sure what to do to sort this. If I could find some that had a firm grip I could possibly hold the bangle upright myself in the tweezers whilst I solder.

I recently bought another version of a third hand which looked a lot more sturdy. It has two grippers - for want of a better word - and it's own small soldering block in between. The grips seemed a lot sturdier when I first got it (after I tightened up all the screws about three times), but when I tried it with the bangles I found it even more awkward to use to be honest! It was hard to position and get it to stay in position. Oh well. It's the cheap version so that's probably why. I almost set fire to the rubber that covers the small feet underneath it too. I wondered what the funny smell was........

I also made some more twisted wire bangles with some of the wire I twisted at college earlier this year. These are great to make. The only fiddly bit is matching up the ends. I normally pick solder the join on bangles now as I find it a lot easier and quicker than chasing small bits of solder around when the flux bubbles, especially on twisted wire!

If anyone can help me out with suggestions for tweezers I can use to hold metal as I'm soldering that have a firmer grip than the wooden handle reverse action tweezers that are widely available then please do leave a comment!