Winchester countdown

There's no Tutorial Tuesday this week as I'm rushing about teaching, preparing for the stone setting workshop on Saturday and making some new pieces for the Winchester Handm@de show this coming Sunday (4th July). I may regret organising a workshop on the same weekend as a show, but hopefully not!

So, for the rest of the week I'm going to show you what pretties I've made and also show you a few of the other exhibitors who will be in Winchester. I am really looking forward to the show. It's the second one organised. The last one was at the same time last year, and it had such a wonderful, warm and welcoming atmosphere. Unlike some other shows, every single stall there was stocked with wonderful handcrafted goods made by the people standing behond the tables - no bulk bought cheap jewellery imported from China, no mass produced tat, just beautifully handcrafted goods, most of which were unique pieces. I think that one reason that the show had sucha great atmosphere was that although most of the stall holders hadn't met each other before, we all felt as if we knew quite a few people as we'd read each others blogs or chatted on forums.

The crafts on show this year include ceramics, clothing, pottery, paintings and textiles as well as, of course, beautiful jewellery! One of the stalls that I'm looking forward to visiting is Turned Light. Kathryn Ward creates beautiful lampwork beads like the seaside one below. She uses some of the beads to make jewellery but she also sells her beads to provide temptation to people like me!

I've been working hard over the last few weeks to create new pieces for Sunday. This one is Peacock - a beautiful faceted labradorite teardrop in a rubover setting with balls of silver decorating the top. It took me a while to carefully plan out where to put the silver balls so that they would look fairly random but still create a balanced piece! The labradorite is set in a seat cut into the silver so that the back of the pendant is open to allow as much light through as possible. The stone has beautiful flashes of electric blue in it - and it took about 25 photos to be able to capture them!