Peacocks and Flowers

Tonight has been a night of preparation for my college classes, working out the dates for my next set of private tuition days - and editing photos and writing project descriptions! I'm all written out for now, so I'll just leave you with pictures of the yummy pendants I've made with Mindy Macgregor's beautiful and amazingly coloured lampwork beads and say that they are all available on the website here now!

Indian Peacock

Bright Flowers and A Gentle Spring

Oh, and the next set of tuition dates will be out on Friday!

Enjoy the sunshine with free shipping this weekend!

The Spring sunshine is a time for a new injection of colour into your life! For me Spring means fresh colours, natural materials and textures - and long dangly earrings that can no longer get caught in woollen scarfs and bracelets that shorter sleeves show off to better effect!

Whether your tastes run to the one-off pieces in the Unique Collection, such as the earrings above, or the timeless elegance of the sterling silver and 24k gold designs in the Golden Collection, this Bank Holiday weekend brings FREEPOST on all jewellery orders above £25, UK or International.

No codes are needed, free post will automatically be applied for you, and the offer runs until midnight on Monday 6th May. Have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend!

The earrings shown above, L to R, are: Ebony and Silver, Tropics and Luna

Happy St George's Day!

When we were in Barcelona the other weekend (doesn't that sound good?!) red roses could be seen everywhere in preparation for La Diada de Sant Jordi (St George's Day) today. St George is the patron saint of Catalonia as well as of England, and Catalonians celebrate in a manner similar to St Valentine's Day with the giving of red roses - by the end of the day some 4 million roses will have been sold, many of them along Las Ramblas, the main street running through the heart of Barcelona, and the city is even more filled with colour, music and street performers than usual! Here in England we haven't really celebrated St George's Day since the time of Elizabeth I - on her death King James, the King of Scotland, also became the King of England and celebrating the patron saint of England wasn't exactly in favour, but there are moves to celebrate more. Even campaigns to create a public holiday, but we'll see!

To join in the celebrations I've got a special promotion running on the Daisychain Jewellery website, but only for today and tomorrow. Use the code "St George" on the Daisychain Jewellery website to receive 23% off orders of jewellery designs in the Bloom Collection - from the stunning Daisy Cuff to the sweet and dainty Red Rose earrings there is something for everyone. However, the celebrations end at midnight on Wednesday 24th April so you'll have to be quick!

Happy St George's Day!

I wrote about St George's Day for my post on the Art Jewelry Elements blog on Sunday, with lovely rose beads and components from some of the AJE team - it's over here!

Life begins?!

So here it is, my 40th birthday! Heavens, I just got a chill seeing that typed up in black and white on my computer screen! I still feel 27 years old but according to my passport and my Mum I definitely am 40 years old today. Any you know what? I actually feel relaxed about it. That probably is partly because I'm still relaxed after T took me to Barcelona for the weekend while my parents looked after the boys. We had a fantastic time - Barcelona is such a beautiful city with so much to see and do that despite visiting four times now we still haven't seen everything! Don't worry, there will be photos later, and I'm going to write a new "Barcelona bead shops" post too.

Anyway, my birthday - fancy helping me celebrate? For the next 40 hours, use the code "BIRTHDAY" to get 15% off orders in my Daisychain Extra and of course on my own Daisychain Jewellery website too. So, if you've been waiting to treat yourself, you have until 4pm GMT on Thursday 18th April to make it an extra special treat!

P.S. I have decided to delay the changes to the Daisychain Extra shop that I wrote about here because of this sale, so the shop will be closing temporarily on the evening of Thursday 18th April - but don't worry, when it opens again there will be lovely new designs along with the old favourites!

New Daisychain Jewellery website party - Pinterest competition winners

Only a week has gone past (ok then, eight days!) since my last blog post but so much has happened! I think the next few days are going to be days of multiple posts to try and catch you all up with life at Daisychain HQ, but my priority tonight is to announce the winners of the Pinterest competition that has been running over the last two weeks to celebrate the launch of my lovely new website. To remind you, the rules of the competition can be found here.

So, without further delay the winners are....

First prize of £50 gift certificate for the Daisychain Jewellery website - Kira Withers-Jones with her pin of my Luna earrings.

Source: daisychainjewellery.co.uk via Kira on Pinterest

Second prize of £30 gift certificate for the Daisychain Jewellery website - Linda Landig with her pin of my Dusky Rose pendant.

Source: daisychainjewellery.co.uk via Linda on Pinterest

Third prize of £20 gift certificate for the Daisychain Jewellery website - Sarah Goulding with her pin of my Ever Decreasing Circles pendant.

Source: daisychainjewellery.co.uk via Sarah on Pinterest

Congratualtions ladies! Emails will be on their way to you tomorrow. And a big thank you to everyone who took part in the competition!

Happy New Year!

Ok, so I know that we're a couple of days in already, but I seem to have taken a while to get going this week! I'm blaming the cold that knocked me out for most of the first week of the school holidays, and the travelling around that we did at the start of this week. We spent New Year's Eve with lovely friends in Wales - great company, good food, lots of laughing and relaxing. My favourite way of spending New Year's Eve, although Jayne, if you're reading this, I'm holding you to your promise of never playing the Krypton Factor board game again!

I've had one day back at work this week, but I seemed to spend most of that tidying the workshop up after the pre-Christmas rush. At least that means that I'll be organised and ready to go next week. I like starting a new week, and the New Year, feeling organised. I've promised myself that I'm going to try and be more relaxed this year, as last year, last term especially, got a bit frantic. It took me longer than I thought it would to get used to teaching three college classes a week last term, especially as I hadn't been able to prepare for them at all, or prepare any Christmas stock, while we were away in  New Zealand over the summer, and there definitely were times when my stress spilt over into family life. And one of the reasons for leaving full time school teaching and setting up the business doing something I love was to have less stress in my life. We'll see how I do, but tonight is a good start - T is out, so I'm watching the end of series 1 of Downton Abbey (yes, I know I'm very late to that particular party!) while trying not to eat the whole tub of Belgium Chocolate ice cream!

Trying to be more relaxed doesn't mean, though, that I haven't got any plans for 2013 - quite the opposite! I'm just going to try and get less frantic about them and stop taking on more than I should - although that is usually easier said than done. I've got some new designs to take photos of to add to both my Daisychain Extra and Daisychain Jewellery etsy shops, and more designs sketched out. I've got a new challenge coming for you in the spring, lots of writing planned and new workshops planned. We've also got a fun new challenge planned for you on the Art Jewelry Elements blog, but you'll have to visit there on Sunday to find out more about that!

I'll be adding the first of the new designs to my shops at the start of next week, but in the meantime there are two days left of my New Year sales. This is your last chance to grab some of my more autumnal and wintery designs in the Daisychain Extra shop for a while as I'll be giving them a rest until later in the year - so if you fancy an owl or an oak leaf, get'em while you can!

Thank you!

Thank you to all of you who have helped to make 2012 such a fantastic year for Daisychain Designs!

I've just celebrate 700 sales in my Daisychain Extra supplies shop, I've been kept busy with my Golden and Bloom collections on my Daisychain Jewellery website and I've been delighted with how popular my private jewellery tuition and workshops have been. There are still a couple of places left for private tuition in the first couple of months of 2013, and details of the next group workshops will be available soon.

To say thank you, I have a sale on my Daisychain Jewellery website and Daisychain Extra and Daisychain Jewellery etsy shops. A 15% discount has already been applied to my website, and to get the same discount in my Etsy shops use the code "HAPPYHOLIDAYS" at checkout. You may have noticed that I've made a few changes to my website, and my one-off designs and jewellery supplies are now on Etsy while my website is kept for made-to-order designs and jewellery tuition bookings, but all three of my shops can be accessed from the front page of my website.

I will be taking some of my more wintery items, such as the owl clasps, out of stock at the end of the sale, although I expect I'll bring them back again next autumn, so grab them while you can!