My 500th post and a challenge!

Who would have thought it? I've waffled enough over the last few years to have written 500 posts! As promised I have finally uploaded some the new designs I've been working on over the last week, mainly daisies with a few baby poppies thrown in the mix for good measure.

There are toggle clasps, hook clasps (and connectors are on their way) in two different sizes and with a different texture than the ones I listed before Christmas. I love this texture - it's made with my favourite hammer (yes, for those of you who are relatively new or who haven't come to one of my classes, I have a favourite hammer!), and I don't know why it I didn't think of using it on the daisy clasps before now!

The poppies I listed today, and a week or so ago, are lovely little baby ones. There are poppy headpins and dainty poppy charms, and the challenge I promised you earlier today is on the poppy headpins. There are 5 pairs of poppy headpins, a mix of silver, oxidised silver and oxidised copper, available to 5 people willing to turn them into lovely jewellery. I'm running the challenge a little bit differently than the Oak Leaves Challenge - this time I'm going to take a leaf out of Lori's book and run a lottery - although I expect that it'll be a lot smaller than the Bead Soup lottery!

To enter the lottery, leave a comment on this post before the end of Saturday 21st and on Sunday I will pick 5 names out of the hat. If your name is picked out:

• grab the poppies button on the left to put on your blog with a link back to this post
• make something beautiful with it and post pictures of what you have made on your blog on the last day of February, Wednesday 29th February. 

You will also need to tell us a bit about your design process, what other ingredients you used etc, and link to the other people taking part. I'll be taking part in the challenge too. You don't have to make jewellery - if you think of some other creative way of using your poppies, go for it! As before, the challenge is open to those of you who are overseas as well.

There's nothing quite like

a new diary to help me feel more organised and ready to tackle the world. I don't know why new stationery should make such a difference, but it does! I know that it might seem like a strange time of year to buy a new diary, but although I left school teaching four years ago I still haven't broken the habit of using academic diaries, so yesterday after church B and I paid a visit to Paperchase as I love their design with a whole page next to the weekly layout ready for my to-do lists. Sad? Probably. Feeling organised and ready to tick off those 'to-dos'? Definitely!

I've been ticking a lot of 'to-dos' off my lists over the last week or so, which is why I've been awol.
I have:

• finished a magazine project and drafted two more
• almost finished painting the garden fence (the fiddly bits partly hidden by the decking railing were not easy to get to)
• finished the wording for a new  masterclass for Beads and Beyond (need to finish the photos tomorrow)
• finished a couple of new designs (need to edit the photos tomorrow to put on here and the website)
• made two Daisy cuffs, a Leaf cuff and lots of bangles for orders
• nearly finished weeding the front garden
• planted more potatoes
• nearly finished my college marking - T is looking forward to getting the dining room table, as my students portfolios are hiding it at the moment!

There's more boxes of marking under the table! Help!!

I've also been making lots of these

as the July issue of Beads and Beyond included a project that I'd written using daisies cut from copper sheet. I decided to offer the daisies on the website for people who didn't have the time or equipment to make their own, and the orders have kept me busy. I need to visit my friendly local motorbike-mad metal merchants tomorrow to buy some more copper sheet. If you are local to Southampton and need any sheet of any metal that isn't silver, then do go and visit the Metal Mart - any woman (and some men!) who walks in there nowadays is greeted with "do you make jewellery?" and I've sent so many students down there for copper sheet for practicing their sawing techniques that they now keep small amounts pre-cut behind the counter! If you'd like me to make some copper daisies for you, then you can find all the information you need here.

This month's Beads and Beyond also included the first of four articles that I'm writing for the magazine on the legal issues of making and selling jewellery. This one is on hallmarking, something that it is easy to forget about when you first start to sell your jewellery! By law, all jewellery sold in the UK that contains 7.78g or more of silver or 1g or more of gold must be hallmarked, whether or not all the metal in a piece is actually soldered together. It's easy to see hallmarking as being an extra, unwanted business cost but to me it's something that is more than a legal requirement, it's a guarantee to my customers that my work is what I say it is, and it's a way of taking pride in my work. The article next month is on insurance for your jewellery business.

My hallmark - my maker's mark, the modern sterling silver mark, the traditional sterling mark, the Leopard's Head showing that my work is marked at Goldsmiths' Hall in London, and the date stamp.

 

To see more of what's in this month's Beads and Beyond, and Cindy Wimmer's gorgeous stamped jewellery on the front cover visit the magazine's website here.

Daisy Daisy

I've been very snug working away in my shed this week, despite the snow and ice! I've been cutting and soldering lots of lovebirds and bangles for orders, but I've also been able to finish some new designs - so, introducing the Baby Daisy cuff and the Full Bloom necklace!

The cuff is made of smaller daisies than the Daisy cuff, but is formed in the same way - pierced (hand sawn) from sterling silver sheet, lots of filing and sanding and then shaping around a mandrel. This is actually an older design that I've improved - I wasn't quite happy with how it sat before, but I'm really pleased with it now.


And I am delighted with how the necklace turned out. I actually started work on this before Christmas, but I didn't have time to pick it back up again until this week. It's one of those rare designs that worked perfectly from sketch to polishing. The chain is attached to either end of the daisy, and the clasp is hidden behind the flower itself. It sits beautifully, and I've got another one part made that is going to be for me as I like it so much! I haven't decided what stone to put in the middle of mine though, but the fun part is sorting through my slowly growing cabachon collection! The only reason the collection is slowly growing is that I keep using them!

The new designs are part of my Bloom Collection and a big THANK YOU to those of you who bought a piece from this collection in the run up to Christmas as I donated 10% of the sales to the Wessex Cancer Trust, a charity that provides vital support to cancer patients and their familes. I am delighted that £25 was raised for the Trust, and I have decided that 10% of all sales of the Bloom Collection will go to the Trust from now on. Why Wessex Cancer Trust? I know that there are many many worthwhile charities out there who need our support, but the Trust was a great help to a colleague of mine and his family, and I have seen the fantastic, often heart breaking work that the staff and volunteers at the Trust do. To find out more about their work visit www.wessexcancer.org!

Too dependant on computers?

Well, what do you think? Have we becaome too dependant on computers? Mine has been rather poorly lately, so poorly that it had to go to hospital (aka a friend's computer-whizz husband) to have not one but four nasty bugs cleaned off it. Now, if the computer gets an 'ordinary' virus then I can usually deal with it, but this time what ever was on here was actually preventing our virus checker from working (but still making it look on the surface as if it was working) and preventing us from getting onto virus and spyware checking sites that could have helped. I really and truely cannot understand the mentality of people who create and release these programmes. How on earth can they go through life with no thought for other people? It's just completely alien! I'm not a violent person (unless you're a piece of sheet silver that needs hammering of course) but I was definitely thinking very violent thoughts when I was wasting my time trying and failing to get the computer sorted out.

Anyway, rant over! I've got it back now, so you will hopefully have seen that I've been able to finally update the front page of my website. I'm trying to de-clutter everything to make it easier for people to find the information that they need without looking at a long list of links in the menu. I've got some more work to do, and planning to get it done this weekend. Jobs for tomorrow include:

• letting you know who won February's earrings and posting a picture at last of the ones you could win in March if you sign up for the newsletter,
• uploading some more new products to the website,
• catching up on the emails I couldn't deal with while the computer was down (an iphone can only do so much)
  
• preparing some information sheets for my class tomorrow evening and
  
• sending out a new newsletter

The newsletter will include details of the next set of workshops, so if you'd like to be one of the first to know when places are available you'd better sign up!

As well working on the website, I've been taking photos today, including those shown here. The pendant at the top was uploaded to the website this afternoon. I cut the daisy from sheet silver and then textured it with the texture that I'm loving so much at the moment. The stone set in the middle is blue topaz, and I'm planning to offer the pendant with a choice of different stones.


The Silver Birch bangles shown above have been popular on the website for a few months now, but I've updated the listing to offer the choice of a shiny of an oxidised finish. Oxidising has changed the look of the bangle greatly, and I love how it has really highlighted the beautiful texture my favourite hammer has given the wire.

It's definitely my bedtime, but I will be back tomorrow with more to show you!

Daisies in progress

As promised, here are some photos! Not of finished work, though, but of work in progress. The first photo shows how I left my desk at the weekend, and I was finally able to get back to it this morning! I've been spending half my workshop time this month working on commissions, and the other half working on designs that I've had planned for ages but didn't have the time to do before Christmas. These daisies will be earrings. I cut out the daisies by hand, drilled a hole in the middle and then threaded through a wire 'stem'. The end of stem that you see inside the daisy was melted to form a ball, and I've soldered the stem in place. The earrings just needed more sanding and polishing and the earwires finishing this morning, and they're sitting in the tumbler being polished as I type. You can just about see a couple of silver birch bangles that need a bit more hammering in the background too.

Yet more daisies! This time for a necklace that I've had sketched out for months. This is how I've left my desk this evening, and tomorrow I want to drill some holes, pierce (ie saw inside the design) some detail and then do lots of sanding and polishing. I've got to do some admin and photo taking tomorrow too, but I'm also hoping to make another pair of daisy earrings like the ones below - these were a Christmas commission, and I liked them so much that they're going to be a made-to-order design too.

Daisy daisy

I realised last night that I never did show you what I wore to the wedding we went to at the end of October, so here it is! I've been wanting to make a larger necklace version of my daisy pendants for a while, so I took the wedding as the perfect excuse to make myself a prototype, and I'm really pleased with it. I was really comfortable to wear, and it stood up well to B wanting to play with it! He's careful with 'Mummy's jewels', but nearly 3-year-olds are only so careful so B is a good tester of my jewellery! Anyway, I have made another to tempt someone (hopefully!) and put it on the website here. It wasn't an easy one to photograph, though, which is why you've got a rare photo of me modelling!

I've also been making lots of daisy pendant bases. I try to keep some of these in stock as they are a popular commission but I have been running low. I even managed to decorate a few and actually photograph them for you to see! I've used onyx, aquamarine and some gorgeous rubies on these three.

The aquamarine one is for my Grandma for Christmas, but I've put one in on the website too. Grandma liked the one I was wearing when I saw her last and asked me to make her one, which was great as I never know what to give her - there's nothing she needs and only so many photo frames and cushions that she can fit into her flat! I think it's safe to post a picture of this Christmas present and Grandma is one member of the family who I know definitely doesn't look on my blog!

10.30pm Okay, who's put gremlins in my computer? The picture of my necklace has flown away! I've promised myself an early night though, so I'll find it for you/retake it tomorrow! Maybe the computer went into shock at the thought of showing you a picture of me....

That's better!

I don't think I realised how tetchy I had been getting until I managed to sit down and start work in the shed yesterday evening! I was definitely in danger of getting into what Nicky calls a funk, and all because I hadn't had much creating time recently. Daft, isn't it? At least I'm in good company. Most of the designers (jewellery or lampwork, or indeed any craft) whose blogs I read or I know in real life say that they NEED regular time shut away in their private little kingdoms (aka workareas) in order to stay relatively sane - maybe it's something to do with all those ideas running round in their heads demanding to be put to good use? I do know that I'm much nicer to live with when I've been "playing" with my beads and silver - in fact, T has been known on occasion to tell me to take myself off into my shed! In the nicest, most caring way possible of course.

Anyway, I promised you photos, and as you can see, I've kept my promise. These are some of the daisies I made on Tuesday. They are still one of my favourite designs to make, which is very good as they are also the design that I sell the most of at the moment! Creamy freshwater pearls and lovely fresh turquoise - they will be on the website very shortly!