Phew! Nearly there!

I'm not going to do the usual "where has the time gone" thing. This is a manic time of year, something that I'm finally getting used to! With jewellery and jewellery supply orders (thank you very much everyone!), craft shows, teaching - and of course two boys with birthdays either side of Christmas* - life has been very busy. I'm nearly there though. I finally finished my Christmas shopping today, I've just got a few more made-to-order pieces to polish and post, I've taught my last session of the year, and my last craft show was on Saturday.

I decided to change my craft show displays this year. I've made a few changes over the last couple of years - new table cloths that don't need ironing for example! - but this year I decided to do something to raise the displays up. I hunted for inspiration on pinterest and flickr, looking for ideas that would help me create displays that I could adapt to different sized tables, that I could easily take apart for transportation, oh, and wasn't too expensive either - and this is what I came up with!

A rare photo of me!

The shelves are oak floor boards that I got at a great reduced price as the box was already opened and a couple of the smaller boards were missing. They're not the lightest things to carry from the car but they fit on the small trolley I've got, and they were already cut to different lengths. And to hold the shelves up? Ssshh...don't tell anyone but they're tin cans sprayed cream! Jumbo hot dog cans to be exact, taller than normal cans and the perfect height. I also added in some painted canvasses and lovely wooden placemats to lay the jewellery out on, and I'm really pleased with the effect.

My new displays obviously helped my jewellery to catch people's eyes as my sales have been good, particularly at the show I did in Southampton on Saturday. I kept having to open up the Etsy app on my phone to take pieces out of the shop! I spent yesterday evening editing photos of new pieces list though, including the pieces below, so if you're still looking to finish your Christmas shopping my shop will be open until the end of this week!

These pieces, and several others, will be in my Daisychain Jewellery etsy shop tomorrow!

*birthday photos coming soon - it's been ages since I've shown you how much my boys have grown!

Handmade Winchester countdown

Just a quick post tonight as I've had a busy day creating the last few designs for my stall at Handmade Winchester this weekend. Well, I say the last few, but I'm sure I'll fit in a few more earrings at least before bedtime tomorrow! Although the event has been running a few years now, and I'm proud to say that I've taken part since the start, this is the first year that it's been a two-day event. It's also the first time that I've done a two-day event for several years, so I'm slightly nervous about the amount of stock that I'll need! If I don't spend all of tomorrow evening in the workshed I'll pop back on here and show you some of the new pieces I'm taking with me, although you'll actually see a couple of them tomorrow as Friday is the reveal day for two challenges that I've been taking part in this month (so many challenges in November!) - the Art Jewelry Elements' Component of the Month, and Erin Prais-Hintz's Challenge of Color.

See you tomorrow, but in the meantime go and checkout the tutorial I wrote on the Art Jewelry Elements blog today!

Challenge accepted!

No BTW post from me today. I've spent most of the day at college, firstly at a small craft fair that one of the ladies from HR (who's also one of my beginner students) organised, and then up in the adult ed office sorting a few things out for my classes and generally catching up with the ladies up there. The craft fair was a small one, 9 stalls with lovely goodies made by college staff, but we had a good trickle of people coming in during their breaks and lots of lovely comments. Beverley had the idea of organising it so that the staff who have creative hobbies could show what they do and raise some money for the college charities at the same time. She was really nervous about it, but all her hard work paid off and it was great. I was particularly pleased (and proud!) that one of my old advanced evening class students who works at the college had a stall with beautiful and beautifully made jewellery and made lots of sales - one very proud teacher here :)

Thank you to the five of you who have accepted my oak leaf challenge! I will be in touch with you tomorrow to get addresses and to give you a bit more information!

Tutorial Tuesday - earring display cards

Yippee! I'm back on the internet! We've had a very erratic connection over the last four or five days. We've tried everything we can to sort it out at our end but we've come to the conclusion that it must be to do with the work that Virgin (our provider) is doing in Southampton at the moment, as the problem only seems to be during the working day! I was very annoyed yesterday as I finally had sometime during the day to get some admin jobs done and couldn't do half of them.

Anyway, at least it's working again now so I can share this very quick tutorial with you. I'm constantly thinking of ways to improve my displays for craft shows, partly to make everything look more attractive, and also so that I can set some jewellery up at home and so reduce the time needed to set things up on the stall on the day. I'm selling alot of stud earrings at shows at the moment and I did have them on brown card folded in half to form a tent. They didn't stand up very well after a little while though, and didn't look that attractive. This is my next idea, and Mum is going to be trying it out for me at her coffee morning on Thursday. I've used a punch to cut out little tags from brown card and I've used watermark ink to stamp a flower on the front. I use the same tags and stamp to make the tags on my gift bags, but a pink flower on ivory card. Dusky pink ribbon has been threaded through the top and holes pushed through for the earwires. I've started making a display board for the tags to hang from, but they actually stand up really nicely as they are so I'm going to leave them like that for Thursday! I'm going to write the prices in pencil on the bottom corner so that they can be rubbed out and the whole tag put in a gift bag.

The tags were very quick and easy to make, and I was especially pleased that I only used materials I already had. even the display board is being made from things I already have around the house. So, a quick question for you - what quick, easy and cheap ideas for craft displays do you have to share?

BTW

Sorry for the silence apart from the tutorial link yesterday - it's taken me a couple of days to a) recover from doing a workshop and a craft show on the same weekend and b) catch up with all the washing that I didn't do at the weekend. It's amazing how many clothes Jamie gets through now he's eating solids!

Both the workshop and Handmade Winchester went really well. All five lovely ladies on the workshop left with smiles on their faces and shiny bangles on their wrists. I love how different each bangle was despite the fact that they started off with the same choice of two thicknesses of oval wire! Handmade Winchester had a slow start but then really picked up in the afternoon. Maybe people came to us once the Farmer's Market closed? Either way, it was again a very successful day - good sales and lots of great compliments from visitors about the high standard of work everyone had on display, lots of people saying that they'd be back for the Christmas fair (Saturday 26th November - put it in your diaries!), and of course it was lovely to catch up with Helen (Blue Fairy Designs), Su (Quercus Silver) and Alice, our lovely organiser (Raspberry). Hopefully next time I'll have a helper with me and be able to catch up with more people - and do some Christmas shopping myself too of course! Typically for me I forgot to take photos of both the workshop bangles and the craft show, but if you visit the Handmade Winchester Facebook page you'll be able to see photos there! Visit http://www.facebook.com/handmadewinchester

Anyway, Bead Table Wednesday - I'm hoping to make some pendants with these lovelies today, either while Jamie's napping this afternoon (he's tired due to his first swim this morning! Or should that be first splash in a swimming pool rather than a bath?!), or this evening after the boys are in bed. They are hollow lampwork beads from Outwest on etsy. Aren't they gorgeous? And big too - look!

I've made some interlinking oval rings for them to hang from, and I'm thinking leather rather than chain would suit them better. What do you think?

Handmade Winchester

It's the third annual summer Handmade Wincester Fair on Sunday! There will be over 50 stalls selling gorgeous goodies, and every single one of those goodies will have been made by the person standing behind the stall selling them. I love the atmosphere of this show. It's definitely the friendliest and most supportive one I do, partly because many of us who show and sell our work there knew each other through blogs and forums before we met in real life at the first show - it felt like a reunion, and the fairs last summer and Christmas were even better!

And if the Fair and the delights of Winchester aren't enough, Sunday is also the Winchester Farmer's Market, the largest Farmer's Market in the UK and, according to the Guardian newspaper, the best in the UK as well. All in all, a fantastic day out!

Tutorial Tuesday - earring display

I was going to share a tutorial for a pair of earrings, but, well, I just need more hours in the day! I had my monthly clinic appointment this afternoon, which went well, they're still pleased with my progress, but it takes up the whole afternoon as hospital appointments can do! At least Jamie keeps the whole waiting room amused, and the staff at the clinic too. They're not used to seeing such young children down there, and as they first met him when he was 6 days old everyone makes a big fuss of him.

So, instead of showing you my new tutorial I thought I'd show you a lovely and simple idea for displaying earrings for craft shows. The craft show I did at Winchester went really well, and it was nice to get back into the swing of things, but I realised that I need a better way of displaying my stud earrings and also my lampwork bead pendants, and this will do nicely for both. Marissa from Sea Flower Studios has written a fool-proof tutorial that you can find here.

photo copyright Sea Flower Studios

I will leave you with that, as I'm off out tonight!! Such a rare event! I'm meeting up with the girls from the advanced class that I taught for a drink. It'll be lovely to catch up with them, especially as I haven't seen a couple of them since before Jamie was born. Whatever you're doing tonight I hope you have fun too!