BTW - and some help needed please!

Do you remember this gorgeous poppy cabochon from Mindy Macgregor? I wanted quite a simple setting for it with a nice clasp and not too much (if any) silver in the necklace section and so made a plain bezel setting and one of my poppy clasps. It had to be a poppy clasp! After all, they were inspired by Mindy's poppy beads! I sent them off for hallmarking at the end of last week. They're not over the legal 7.78g limit but I wanted my hallmark on them as the cabochon is such a unique piece. Anyway, I set the poppy this evening and then got out the silk ribbons that the postie brought me on Monday and chose a soft navy to go with it. I decided that a silver chain would be too much shine and distract from the poppies, and that a brighter coloured silk would be too much too.

My dilemma is this..... I had planned that I would use the silk double but now I'm not sure. Does it make the necklace too thick, too heavy,too much of a distraction from the poppies?

But does using it single look too little?

I can't make my mind up! I try one way and like that best, until I try the other way! T says it doesn't realy matter as when I actually finish it and put it on the website or on my stall at a craft fair people will only see what I decided to make, not the two options. Please ignore the ribbon hanging down from the cab in the first set of pictures - I had to put it somewhere and obviously didn't want to cut it! I had hoped to show you a photo of each option being worn, but it's too late for the light to be good enough for that.

So, what do you think? Any input would be much appreciated!

On a different topic, my college evening classes started last night. My first evening teaching since having Jamie and being ill. I was a bit nervous before the first students arrived, but it went great and it was so good being back and getting back to normal - whatever normal is! It was great to see so many of my students from before Christmas back again, and to meet some new people to introduce to the addiction that is jewellery making.

Randomness

If you read the title of this post quickly it could almost read "randommess", which is actually a rather good description of my head at the moment! I still don't feel as though I'm in a decent routine at the moment, which I suppose isn't really that surprising as it's only a few weeks into the new school year, this is B's first week at school full-time (he's enjoying it but getting very tired as he gets used to the longer days), and my college classes only started last night! I'm feeling rather restless and finding it difficult to settle down to any one thing, which is unusual for me at this time of year. Usually in September I feel organised at the start of the school year and generally very productive. I guess I'll have to keep reminding myself that we've got a lot of changes going on at the moment with B starting school, T's role at his school changing this year, new college classes for me, and , oh yes! a new baby on the way! I keep having to remind myself that there is a good reason why I can suddenly feel very tired - as if I could ever really forget with my ever-growing tummy and lots and lots of kicks. I think this one's going to be kick-boxer!

So, as I can't even get my mind to settle onto one, or even just a few, topics for this post, here, in no particular order, are a few of the bits and pieces I've been doing this week!

Apologies for the lack of a tutorial this Tuesday - I spent the day preparing for my new college classes. I've got two classes on Tuesday evenings, each with 14 people ready and willing to get addicted to jewellery making, if indeed they aren't already! The first class of the evening is an advanced class with people who have made jewellery before. Some have been to classes at the college before, either with me or another tutor, some have been on intensive courses, some are mainly self-taught so far. The second class is advertised as a beginner's class, but there's actually a mix of mainly beginners who are either brand new or who have been to classes for a term or two and a few more advanced students who can't make it to the early class. Neither class follows a syllabus, so last night we had a chat about what everyone wants to get out of the course, what techniques etc they'd like to learn. I now have a long list of techniques for each class to sort into a programme! One of the things high up on my list, however, is cleaning out the college tools and ordering some new ones. Many need replacing as they've been around and heavily used for so long, and everything is generally so disorganised - and you know how I hate things being disorganised!!!

The other thing I've been working on that took up the tutorial writing time is the new pages that you can see at the top of the blog. I've been trying to tidy up the layout of the blog as the list of tutorials and links on the left hand side was getting rather long! The pages also allow me to list more information for my students as I refer them to my blog quite a lot - of course, they are there for those of you that I don't teach as well!

Most of today's work time has been spent preparing for Artisan. I am looking forward to this weekend so much! I know I'm going to be working, but I feel as if I'm going away on a bit of a girly fun weekend as I'll be meeting up with Michelle and Becky (editor and deputy editor of Beads and Beyond) and also meeting Kerry Bogert who's travelling over from the States, and there are going to be so many beads!! I can't wait! The image above is the page that they put in this month's issue of the magazine to advertise who was going to be demonstrating at the Beads and Beyond stand. I definitely need to get a new picture done - Kerry's is great, mine (down in the right hand corner!) is five years old, taken when I was pregnant with B!! Mind you, the description that they wrote of me is exactly right - I am completely addicted to designing and making jewellery!

I've been knitting lots too this week. I can't show you anything at the moment though as they're all Christmas presents! I'm trying to knit as much as I can from my stash of yarn and doing fairly well at the moment. I've knitted three presents so far, which isn't bad going!

There are lots of other bits of randomness floating round in my head at the moment, but I'm getting too tired for them to make much sense at the moment, so I'll leave you for now. I'll be back again with some photos of new pieces of jewellery tomorrow!

At last!!!

For some horrible reason I have been unable to publish new posts on my blog over the last few days, so that coupled with the fact that I haven't been too well - again - has been the reason for my absence. I've been able to edit old posts (not that I needed to, but I wanted to see if I could or if I was locked out completely), moderate comments and draft posts, but not actually publish them. VERY frustrating!! But this evening the problem seems (touch wood!) to have gone, just as mysteriously as it appeared.

I had written several posts about what I've been up to over the last week, both in the garden (the sun reactivated my usually dormant gardening gene) and in the workshed, and with my boys, but it seems a bit daft now to publish them as they're out of date, so instead here are a few random thoughts covering the last week or so!

• I am ridiculously proud of of having finally planted the empty flower bed in the back garden! B helped - well, when I say help, his contribution was to help choose the plants, play with his cars in the soil and play on the swing. But his company made the job far more enjoyable! There are quite a few clusters of summer bulbs hidden under the earth as well, and I'll add more as time goes on. Next on the list to tackle - a vegetable bed!

• I am also ridiculously proud of the latest Beads and Beyond issue! It's been a while since one of my pieces has been the main feature on the front cover, and this month my Fiesta necklace not only is the main feature but also has inspired the magazine cover colours! I've got another project in there this month as well as Fiesta. Spiced Honey is a 5 page project at the front of the magazine. I didn't (surprise surprise) have time to photograph it before sending everything off, but the magazine's main photo is much better than any I could have taken so here you are!

• This last week has also been really busy for teaching - college classes Wednesday and Thursday evenings, very successful Keum Boo Taster Workshop on Saturday (the feedback tells me it was successful so I'm not blowing my own trumpet!). Didn't have time to take photos of what the students made, though, so I'm going to borrow a couple of pieces back to take photos of them!
  

• Had a great trip up to London last Monday with my City and Guilds college class to have a tour of the Assay Office to see how the hallmarking and assaying is done. It was really fascinating to see everything in real life, and fun to spend more time with my class. I've taught them for over a year now - in some ways the time has gone really quickly but in many ways it seems as though I've known them for years. I will be very sad when the course finishes in May. I just hope that we can find a way of continuing classes somehow. If only I had a bigger workshop then I could teach them all here!

• Had just as much fun with the class today - we spent the whole day enamelling! I took some awful pictures with my iphone (took my camera, forgot the memory stick - dumb!) that I'll sort out for later in the week, probably for after our Thursday evening class as we'll be enamelling again then. Poor girls - they've spent two evenings and two whole days with me in the last 9 days!

• T and B went to a Science Week event at the Oceanography centre today while I was working and had a fantastic time. B has come home with a few souvenirs including a penguin shaped magnet that he loves so much that he's taken it to bed with him!
• T is out having a curry with a friend so I've just watched Twilight - it's been sitting on the shelf for a week since arriving from Lovefilm, waiting for me to have an evening to myself so I could see what all the fuss is about. Let's just say that I now definitely understand all the fuss and am now off to Amazon to see how quickly I can get the books delivered!
  

Night all! Back with some photos and workshop news tomorrow!

A sneak preview

Just a very quick post to show you one of the new designs I've been working on recently. The flower in the middle of the pendant is 24k gold, bonded to the silver using a process called Keum Boo, the process I mentioned I've been teaching at college recently. The way the gold bonds to the silver is almost like magic! I've got several other designs to show you, and some work-in-progress photos too, but you'll have to wait until the weekend for those! The new designs will be on the website in the next couple of days.

By the way, if you live in the Southampton area and fancy learning you to make your own jewellery then follow this link. As from September I will be teaching a new jewellery making/silversmithing evening class aimed at beginners and those with a little bit of experience. I'm teaching it for Eastleigh College (who I teach the advanced course for) but the venue is Bitterne Park Secondary School in Southampton.