Flower Bangle Challenge names!

Thank you so much for all the entries into my Flower Bangle draw! All the names went into the hat this morning and......drum roll please!.......

The Flower bangles will soon be flying off to:

Sherri Stokey - Knot Just Macrame

Shannon Chomanczuk - For My Sweet Daughter

Jenny - Shyme Design

Keri Lee Sereika - Pink Lemonade

Heidi Post - Ex Post Facto Jewelry

Ladies, I will be emailing you later this evening. You have until Saturday 30th June to decorate your bangle  - good luck!

P.S. I've updated the blog hop button as I realised I'd got the wrong date on it - oops!

P.P.S. The Birthday Sale in my Daisychain Extra etsy shop ends tomorrow - use the code "BIRTHDAY" to get 15% off your order!

Tutorial Tuesday - Adding a photo to your blogger sidebar

Following my post about my Flower Bangle Challenge I was asked by a few people how you add a button to your blog - so here's a quick tutorial!

A blog button is simply a picture that has a hyperlink to a website - in this example I'm using the picture I edited for the Flower Bangle Challenge and I'm linking it to the post I wrote about the challenge. The tutorial assumes that you have saved the picture to your own computer - simply right-click on the picture and choose "Save picture as". It is always best to save a picture to your own computer as otherwise you are using someone else's bandwidth, which isn't very polite!

1. Open up your Blogger dashboard and choose "Layout" from the drop down list for your blog.

 2. This will take you to the Layout page. Click on Add a Gadget.

 3. Scroll down the list and choose the picture option by clicking on the plus sign.

 4. A small window will open up with options for you to fill in. Click on "Browse" to go and search for the picture you want to use.

5. Once you have chosen and opened up the photo you will see a preview of it. At this point copy and paste in the link you want the picture to go to when people to click on it. The link to the blog challenge post is http://daisychaindesignsjewellery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/new-designs-celebration-and-new-design.html. You can also add a title and a caption if you wish. I added text to the picture, but if I hadn't I would have put the blog hop details in a caption.  Save the information you've entered.

6.  The small window will clsoe down. Click and drag the picture to where you want it to be, and then save the arrangement. You can drag the button to the top of the page as well.

7. And there you have it - one lovely button! Blogger has tonnes of different gadgets that you can add to your blog, and for most of them it's simply a case of clicking on the one you want and filling in the boxes!

Thank you so much for all the entries to the Flower Bangle Challenge! Entries to the draw close at midnight BST tonight so you've still got time to get your name in the hat! Click here for details.

bloglovin' - just a little admin work!

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Call for Gallery Submissions

Thank you so much to everyone who emailed me some pictures - such gorgeous macramé work! I now have enough for a fantastic gallery, and the book will be out in the first week of June!

I've mentioned once or twice now that I'm writing an ebook on combining macramé, art beads and wire. I've been designing projects, taking hundreds of step by step photos of the projects and of the macramé knots, photos of tools and materials as well as writing. I've really enjoyed designing the layout of it all, and it's nearly finished! The picture above is of the front cover - well, the current front cover anyway as I'm sure I'm going to keep changing my mind about which projects to have on the front!

I've just got to ask a couple of friends to proof read it for me - and add one last thing.... which is where one or two of you will hopefully come in! I've got a gallery section in the book where I'm showing off not just more of my designs but some from other designers too, as inspiration to show what can be done with a few simple knots. And there's room for a few more. So, do you use macramé in your jewellery designs? I'm looking for designs that use macramé as just one element in the jewellery along with art beads and maybe some wire or other metal components as well - which you probably could have guessed from the name of the book!

If you would like to submit any of your designs, please email me at info@daisychainjewellery.co.uk with a couple of photos, a little bit about yourself (assuming that you're not someone I email already!), a little bit about the materials you've used and links to your blog/etsy shop/website. Photos need to be lovely and clear, and the macro setting on your camera is best for that. You will keep all copyright to the photos, and links to your websites and a little bit about you will be included in the gallery.

Thank you!

New designs, a celebration - and a new design challenge for you!

It has been a whole year since I opened my etsy shop! I started off with a few daisies, a couple of lovebirds, but I now currently have 108 designs for sale, and I've had 314 sales. Thank you so much to all of you who have supported me in this by buying, spreading the word through blogs and magazine articles, and just generally by being wonderful! I opened up the shop as a little side-line after people kept asking if they could buy my clasps, and it has all grown wonderfully. And it is always so fantastic to see what you all make with them.

I'm celebrating with 15% off everything in the shop when you use the code "BIRTHDAY"

at checkout until the end of May!

I've been busy editing photos and listing new designs in my etsy shop this week. Some are ones that I've had ready for a while but hadn't got round to posting, others are newly designed over the last week or so - here's a selection!

I love making my lovebird clasps, love coming up with new combinations of textures to use on the body and the wing. I'm also really really pleased with my new flower bangle blanks. There are three different designs, the poppy you can see above plus two differently textured daisies. The bangles open up behind the flowers so that you can decorate the wire with fibres, beads, wire or anything you can think of and not have to worry about so much space being taken up inside that you end up making the bangle too small to fit over your hand.

And my new blog challenge is on these cute flower bangles!

I want to see what you can come up with, what unique ideas you can use to decorate the bangles. So, I have five bangles, a mix of the different flowers but all oxidised copper, and if you're up for the challenge this is what you need to do.....

• leave me a comment on this post, complete with your email address before the end of Tuesday (29th May)
• grab the flower bangle button on the left to put on your blog with a link back to this post
• make something beautiful with your bangle and post pictures of what you have made on your blog on the last day of June, Saturday 30th June. 

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 as soon as I've made myself a bangle as well!

In the past I've run my challenges as "first come, first served", but this time I've decided to have a little draw. So, leaving a comment will enter you into the draw, and the first five names out of the hat will get a bangle, and this is open to those of you overseas too! Good luck!

Forgive me blog readers...

for I have sinned. It has been 9 days since I have blogged.

Heavens! Has it really been that long?! Time is not just flying by at the moment, it's in a jet plane breaking the sound barrier. I was going to call this post "What a week" but I've got a feeling that I've used that title at least a couple of times before. But it has been a crazy week! T's Dad came to visit, T had to have a couple of days of work with a bad back (very unusual for him, he never has sick days), Ben and a friend have been preparing for the school talent show next week (I taught them some magic tricks!), T's Mum and StepDad arrived for the weekend this afternoon - you get the picture! And Jamie started walking too. Only when he wants to, that is. After all, he can speed crawl everywhere a lot faster than he can walk! He's just this week seen the advantage of being able to see higher up as he moved around the house, which has meant that I've had to clear things away a lot better and Ben can now longer assume that if he leaves a lego model on the table that it is safe from his baby brother! I want to take some photos of him toddling about but that's proving rather difficult at the moment as he just doesn't want to stay still, so you may have to wait a while!

My work has been lovely and busy too. I think that the gorgeously sunny weather has got people thinking about new outfits and new jewellery to go with them, which is fine by me! It's getting to the stage that I need to wither clone myself or get a helper. Any takers? You have to love jewellery and beads, put up with me singing along to Radio 2 and be willing to be paid in malteasers and cuddes from Jamie. The picture above is of the parcels that I took up to the post office today, and there was double that amount yesterday, some etsy orders, some notonthehighstreet and a couple from my website too. I've worked out a system with our lovely local post office that I buy the main stamps I need from them in advance, collect customs labels and air mail labels from them too and do as much preparation as I can at home, usually in the evenings when everything is alot quieter. It makes everything so much quicker at the post office, which is very important as I usually have on if not both of the boys with me! I've sent parcels all over the world this week - everywhere from the Bronx, LA and Dallas to New South Wales, Hong Kong and Vancouver and back home again to Manchester, Cambridge and the Isle of Wight!

Right then, another quick post about some new designs (easier to keep them separate so I don't get muddled!) and then I'm off to catch up with some of the blog reading I've missed in the last nine days!

BTW

A good morning's work! Sawing, filing, drilling and hammering. 

Soldering next!