happy october!

It's October already! There's a chill in the air and I'm looking forward to a possible halloween party and cosy evenings near a fireplace. Well, ok, it's only quite mild out, so maybe the fireplaces will have to wait a bit longer! Also, I have to admit I really like my winter coat, so I prefer wearing that to my summer/autumn light jacket.
Anyway, enough of that. I've had a flurry of posting on Etsy & Folksy. Lots of earrings (see photos of some below) - since I retrieved a bunch of items from Slough (since they're in the process of finding a new curator) I have lots of little earrings. I've added some of those, more to come. I've also got a bunch of rings which I'm going to polish, photograph, and put up on Etsy & Folksy at reduced prices.
Yesterday I organised a whole bunch of boxes and items and I'm definitely getting into craft fair mode! The first one of the autumn is a mere 16 days away - 17-18 October Festival of Crafts in Farnham ! I have a mere FOUR tickets left for free entry. They are actual paper, so I can only post them to you if you're interested. Just send me your address if you are...

brief update

Just a quick one 'cause I have lots I want to get done today! This morning I passed my driving theory test, hurrah! I'm so relieved. So, now on to the harder part - driving lessons. I haven't booked anything yet, so I should get looking.
I'm drooling over the hand engraving course being offered by the Hand Engraver's Association. I think I will try to do it in the spring, when they will hopefully be running it again. It's a wee bit too much to do the course now (well, it starts in November) because it's the busiest time of the year.

bump bump

I thought, I must post something because I must bump that annoying photo of the cheery chef lady further down the page! Ha! Well, I did make the 13 course meal (6 were actually cooked, the rest were more bought or just assembled) and it was enjoyed, so that all ended well! Today I am sorting out lots of bits & bobs. Yesterday I sorted out a package and thought about what I'm doing this week. It's a busy week, I have lots of jewellery to make plus lesson tomorrow and various social engagements. Also, tomorrow I have my theory test for a driving license! Wish me luck - I really, really, REALLY want to pass in one go. Oh please please let me pass straight away! First of all because it would cost me money to fail and second of all because it would be a tad embarrassing to fail the theory bit! Yesterday was full of quizzing about pelican crossing, motorcycles, lights, lines, lanes, etc. I hope I pass! It's going to be soooo useful once I can actually drive and we get a car - I will be able to get to more galleries, not need to hire cars for craft fairs, etc etc. So, I'll hopefully have some good news tomorrow!

oh boy...

See this lady? I don't feel that way about cooking. Cooking is alright every now and again, but I find it rather boring and I'm better at chatting to the cook and setting the table and things like that. Anyway, so it's a novel situation today because I have promised to make my husband a 13 course meal!!!!! That's 13 very small courses. Very small. There will be some weird things, some hopefully tasty things, and some things that I buy ready-made....because there's no way I can cook 13 different things for one meal. Well, I could, but it would take forever! ha! So, that's my story today. Tomorrow I'll be working on my lesson plans for South Hill Park. Oh yes and today I'll put some more earrings on Etsy/Folksy from the Lingerie & Lace collection. I was going to put a photo here, but I just realised I've never taken any photos of these earrings...so I'll add that later....

developments....

I nearly typed, oh it's Friday...but of course it's not, yet! So in an unexpected turn of events, I will be teaching one of the jewellery/silversmithing courses at South Hill Park arts centre starting next week! So, preparations are underway and induction was yesterday. South Hill Park is a lovely arts centre with a grand old building. I say grand old building because it looks like it's old, but I don't actually know the history of the building. I guess I'm going to find out more about it! Yesterday Bev and I were introduced to most of the staff there and they all seem really nice and friendly. I think it's going to be a very pleasant place to work! Bev is also a jeweller and will also be teaching. The current artist in residence, Ciara Lennon, will also be teaching. So there are three of us. I already knew Ciara and Bev from the Berkshire Designer Jewellers group. Incidentally, our current secretary is moving so I've become the secretary of the group. So, I'm busy busy!! Being busy is good for me, I actually get more done when I'm busy. So, that's the update!

phew

As the culmination of months and months of work and planning, I've started adding pieces from my Lingerie & Lace collection to Etsy and Folksy. This collection of tactile silver jewellery is inspired by and handmade with imprints of luxurious lingerie. Each piece is unique – only yours.
Below are some photos of the pieces already up on the sites. I'll be adding more (including another type of ring, small earrings, tie clip and bracelets) throughout the month. Each piece comes out slightly differently, showing a different part or type of lace. It's a great collection for weddings, since the pieces can be 'matching' for men and women, but not the same, so it's not too matchy-matchy, if you know what I mean. Anyway....have a look and maybe let me know what you think?

perfume

good morning....it's Monday again, hurrah. Ok, it's not too bad. It's sunny (sort of) and there's a lot to do this week. In the meantime, here's a photo of part of my perfume bottle collection. I really like small perfume bottles and over the years I've received rather a lot of bottles. Word got 'round that I like these teeny tiny over-designed bottles and my grandmother and her friends found out, which meant lots of donations to my collection! I think over the years I may have purchased a bottle or two, perhaps a total of five. All the others are empty bottle donations or gifts. So I have rather a lot...I think this photo shows about half of the collection. I like the way so much thought and effort has gone into the designs and how they look (in my opinion) so much better in miniature. I keep thinking that I ought to trim down the collection, perhaps only keep the small bottles (not vials) and get rid of all the duplicates. But thus far all I've managed to do is put the large bottles in a cardboard box for storage. I'll sort it out some day....in the meantime, I like looking at the mini bottles :-)

things

This week is flying by faster than you can say September. I can hardly believe it's Thursday already! I sent out my newsletter on Tuesday. Of course I tested it and tested it and all was well. Then I sent it out and the main picture didn't show up! Argh! So I had to send another one after it with the photo...oh dear. Well, lesson learnt and next time I'll attach the photo with super glue...ha! Of course, the craft fairs draw ever closer, so preparation continues. I've also added a page on my website about commissions. Hopefully today I'll add a page about my latest collection. And hopefully today I'll also add a new pair of cuff links to Etsy & Folksy. I'm not sure what to do about Coriandr. I get the feeling that site isn't doing that well. For starters I can't find any sellers on there that have had more than a handful of sales. Also I had a pair of earrings on the main page and the views didn't even increase, which makes me wonder who is looking at the front page! I think it might be better to focus on the sites I know are working - Etsy and Folksy. For now I'll keep the Coriandr shop open, but maybe not for much longer, unless there's a change! What else...I'm still working on a tricky commission that involves lots of stones. I'm hoping to finish the first version of that ring today. It's been a busy week and I have some big-ish news as well, but I want to be 100% sure about it before posting, so that'll have to wait until next week!



ps. if you're in or near Reading, something different to do this Sunday in town:
http://thejelly.wordpress.com/

Slough

So some of you may recall I have several items of my jewellery available at Slough Museum. Alas, alack, the curator at Slough is moving on to bigger and better things. She has an amazing opportunity which sounds fantastic. I think she's going to do great, she has great enthusiasm for art, history and is just a really nice person and easy to work with. In any case, she's moving on and new curator has not yet been appointed. Thus I am collecting my pieces at the end of this week until a new course of action has been decided there.
This weekend we inched a bit closer to finishing the backdrop for my show at Crowthorne. It's nearly finished! hurrah! Just a few more bolts and bit of paint and it should be sorted. Speaking of the fabulous show at Crowthorne (30 Oct-1 Nov) - the normal entry fee for adults is £4 but I have in my possession several discount vouchers for £2 off. So if you'd like to go, please just drop me a line with your address and I'll send you the discount voucher! Also, I have a few FREE entry tickets for the show at the Festival of Crafts at Farnham (17-18 October) - again, simply drop me your address and I'll post one out to you!
(my email is machi at magpienest.co.uk)

busy again...

Just a quick post today. I sent off a big box of many items to get hallmarked yesterday. That means that soon I'll be putting up a lot of new things on the various websites! This month, definitely. I wanted to send out a newsletter this week, but I was just too busy so it's going to be next week instead. So, lots of new things coming up... Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

commission

Here are some photos of a pendant commission. It's with a flower lace imprint and has a gallery through the middle to make it more delicate.

brainwaves

Before I fall asleep at night I think about jewellery. I either go over the design and building of a new piece I'm working on, or I think about new designs. I find it useful to turn the design over and over in my head, mentally building it so I can spot potential difficulties before I actually sit down at my bench. Last night I was thinking about these earrings, of which I've only made one pair. They have sold now, so I was thinking about making some more and creating a necklace, bracelet and smaller earrings to go with them. I will get around to that this year, I hope, but I have a lot to do still with existing collections! I need to make sure I have enough for the craft fairs and I need to replace a whole bunch of different items that have now sold out. I might manage to sneak in a small version of these earrings and put them on Etsy to see if they go down well, though :-) So, it's going to get busier and busier until Christmas!

ps. I'm posting some new earrings on Etsy today - new design and texture!

ruby pendant

I had a commission to put a ruby in a small, silver pendant in the shape of a teardrop. I've finished it and here are the photos:

to continue a theme

And while I was on the subject of cats, my friend has a super cute cat too. He's called Maurice and right now he's a cat teenager so when I do see him, he tries to bite me. But when he was a kitten, he was still all sweetness and light. Here's a photo of little Maurice when he was but a young wee kitten (click on the photo to get a super close up of Maurice cuteness):

Pepe

I really, really like cats and when I was little, we had a cat at home. When we got Pepe, I was allowed to name him because I was very upset about our old cat (who was called Gnoes) passing away. So, having just seen the Romero brothers (classical Spanish guitar), I named our new kitten Pepe. Full name Pepe Romero. Ha!! I think it took about, oh, say approximately one nanosecond for Pepe to be converted to Peppy. He is peppy, and he's very cute. He's a very relaxed cat and he's still going strong. He's now 20 years old and still chilling out in Houston. He's about to move in with my sister in California. Anyway, basically this is just an excuse for me to post some photos of Pepe (aka Peppy). For your viewing pleasure:

nearly the weekend?! wot?!

Ack, this week is flying by! And I still have so much to do! Could it have anything to do with my dear husband having yesterday off? No, no, nevermind that I did no work whatsoever yesterday. Oh, wait, I did post an Etsy purchase package. But that's all I did. So now I am feeling a slight rising panic about when I am going to get everything done. But I have a plan of attack and I'm going to have a very productive weekend getting lots of things done, so next week will be all shiny and new and I'll be ready! Hopefully this weekend I'm going to be building the backdrop frame for the Craft in Focus show at the end of October. That's the only show that requires me to bring a backdrop, so it's a lot of extra work. It would be fabulous to get that done this weekend so it's ready to go and I won't have to worry about doing it too close to the show. So hopefully that'll happen. Plus I had the genius idea of sorting out the garden by ordering 200 flower bulbs. Yes, it was a special offer, a mere 5 quid for 200 bulbs!! But of course now I have to plant them all....and do the weeding first so there's even room to plant them. So, it's going to be a busy weekend.....with hopefully the reward next spring of a ton of lovely flowers....maybe something like this:

Monday...oh, wait, no it's not

So today is September 1st - which means I've been in the UK for TEN years! A whole decade! I'm now officially schooled in the art of pints, bangers and mash, music festivals, London trips, Guy Fawkes day, bank holidays, rubbish trains, good trains, rain, understatement, etc etc etc. It's been a mad, mad ten years. Well, here's to the next ten years, then! And for Lina, here's a photo of the moo cards :-)

mooooooooo

These are the images that I used for my moo business cards:

new earrings

So I mentioned some new earrings which I shall put on Etsy soon (hopefully today)....I thought I'd give you a wee preview here with a photo. I made some with black beads too and of course they can be made in any colour. The pins that the beads are on are handmade because the beads are tiny, so don't fit on the regular headpins.
Also I received my new batch of moo business cards today and I'm really pleased, they turned out really well! Hurrah!
Anyway, here's a photo of the earrings:

curry & a pint

Tonight we're going out for a friend's birthday to have a curry. A curry goes hand in hand with a beer. Or a pint. of something. Pint of lager, pint of ale maybe, pint of cider. I'm just making this up, but I reckon a curry and a pint goes together like a two pints and a packet of crisps. You don't have to, but it's nice.

monday and rulers and coriandr

Hello again! So it's Monday morning, everyone's favorite time of the week. I was happy to see that my earrings made it to the front page of Coriandr today, which is a nice start to the week. It's going to be a very busy week. I have loads to do, including the super exciting task of doing my taxes. At least I can just do them online. Hopefully it'll go smoothly and there will be no grumbling, shouting and shaking of fists. I also need to do some supply ordering, some making things, some polishing things, some thinking about commissions, and some ordering of stickers and business cards.
I was going to write some witty post about how my rulers are my three best friends. They are, during the day. I find it amusing how I have my rulers carefully laid out. Obviously there's the steel ruler at my bench. I can't imagine how I would get by without the steel ruler - for cutting paper, for marking lengths on silver sheet, for checking and rechecking if pieces are indeed square or rectangular as intended. Then by the computer I have my transparent ruler and my Snoopy ruler. Essential for measuring items to describe them on Etsy, Folksy, etc. This process, by the way, makes me dislike using inches - I find it pretty useless to describe things in terms of 19/32ths of an inch. I guess it's what you're used to. I think by now I could probably draw a ruler with the metric system freehand pretty accurately. Anyway, rulers are my friends. The end.

it's friday

It's nearly the weekend! I hope everyone has fun plans. Congrats to Dr H, who won the free earrings I was offering earlier this week. They'll be in the post soon :-)
I'm off to stock up on boxes! I need to buy a decent stock of boxes so I don't run out halfway through the craft fairs.
In other news, I have some new earrings which I will be putting up on Etsy soonish. I say soonish because it seems to me that Etsy is in super slow time, seems like this is mega holiday time! Well, I'm pretty sure it is. Plus next weekend is bank holiday weekend here in the UK, so it's down time. In any case, those earrings will be up on Etsy, Folksy, etc soonish.... !!
Have a lovely weekend...

make make make

I've been busy on the production front. I've made new cuff links that turned out really well (photos soon, but it still needs to be hallmarked). I also made a new large necklace. I need to make it a bit longer, as it turned out a touch too short. Also in the works have been long earrings, post earrings, and more cuff links. Today it's finishing the cuff links and moving on to cuff bangles. I'm working on a plan so I can update my website with a new collection and also send out a newsletter about all the new items and shows. I made a new pair of long earrings, which are on Etsy at the moment. I like the way they turned out, they have a certain Indian quality to them. Here's a photo:

give give give

I'm going to try doing a giveaway on my blog for the first time today! woo! I ran a small "earring bar" at a friend's party over the weekend. I showed people how to make a basic pair of earrings with headed pins and fishhook ear wires. People really seemed to get into it and in the end all the people with pierced ears ended up walking around with new earrings made by their own two hands! It was fun and of course I had to make a some examples. This pair turned out quite cute - sparkly, simple, with a little tiny bit of detail in the bronze coloured decorations on either side of the bead. So, I'm offering this pair of earrings to someone who comments on this post :-) I'll pick someone randomly from the comments and let you know by Thursday. (The ear wires and pin are silver plated.) Here are some photos:

Coriandr and Etsy

(click on photos for a closer look!)
So yesterday I was all excited because one of my earrings was picked for the front page of Coriandr:

Today I'm keeping a close watch on Etsy because I have a pair of cuff links on the accessories showcase:

utrecht

I studied for a year in Utrecht, many moons ago, and I think it's a lovely place with lovely buildings and generally lovely atmosphere. So today, apropos of nothing, here's a photo of Utrecht for you:

socks and tea towels

I wanted to share two things with you. The first is a shop that a friend introduced to me in London. It's a wonderful store with every manner of sock. Yes, it's a sock speciality store! It has socks, leg warmers, toe socks, toeless socks, ankle socks, middle of the foot socks, socky sock sock.... I'm telling you, it's an awesome store. I was tempted to buy lots and lots but in the end I remained somewhat calm and restricted myself to getting a gift for a friend. Anyway, they happily have a lovely website, so you can look at their fabulous socks here (http://tabio.com/uk).
In other shopping news, my friends over at todryfor (you know you need a cool tea towel, so go have a look) now have a blog - check it out (http://blog.todryfor.com/). You'll see an amazingly useful tea towel on there - a list of when what vegetable is in season!! How handy....a multi-purpose tea towel. Can it get better than that?

ouch

Mweh...the pitfalls of bench work: yesterday I added three slices and one puncture to my fingers. snif. I even had to scrounge around for a bandaid for the second time in a week. It's because I'm filing the thin edge of a disc and that gets quite sharp when I'm doing the filing. Then I occasionally slip, and wham, another little slice in my poor fingers. poor me! ok, not really. Something randomly interesting is that in the US, the bits of sticky stuff you put on a cut are called bandaids. That's a brand name, like q-tip or hoover or kleenex. Here in the UK, they are called plasters. Which is fine, but I thought it was interesting, as the word in Dutch is pleister (not sure if that's spelled plijster, but i think it's pleister). Anyway, that makes me wonder if in the US more brand names are used as a generic term than in the UK. So, to test my theory:

UK
cotton bud
hoover
plaster
tissue
sellotape

USA
q-tip
vacuum
bandaid
kleenex
Scotch tape

Ok, I can't think of any other examples off hand, but with the exception of hoover, all the UK ones are not brand names. Anybody have any other examples?

Norden Farm Centre for the Arts

Good news - I will have my jewellery on display and for sale in the foyer cases at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts! That will be from 28 December of this year until 1 March of 2010. The building is worth a visit just for itself, it's quite beautiful. There's a gallery with changing shows and films are shown at the centre as well. The address is Altwood Road, Maidenhead SL6 4PF and if you would like directions to get there, see here on their website.
The opening hour details are:

The Box Office is open 10am - 8pm, Tuesday - Saturday; 2pm - 8pm Sunday.

The Gallery is open 2pm - 10pm, Tuesday - Friday and 10am - 10pm Saturday and Sunday.

The Cafe Bar is open 10.30am - 11pm, Tuesday - Saturday and 10.30am - 10.30pm Sunday.

Norden Farm is closed to the public on Mondays.

Coriandr

So I have ventured into another fabulous handmade online shoppe, which is Coriandr. It's a UK based site with much the same ideas behind it as Etsy, Folksy, etc. I thought I would give it a whirl and see how it goes on there. My shop on Coriandr is http://magpienest.coriandr.com
- please do have a look :-) I'll be adding things over the next couple of days....it always takes a while to list all the items with appropriate photos and such. It's a lovely site, with a nice layout and at the moment not overwhelming amount of stuff on it. It's a pretty, browsable site. Any opinions or experience with Coriandr? Do let me know in the comments....

finished products

So about that ring from yesterday. I thought I'd be tidy about it and also show you a photo of the ring once the stone was properly set back into it. So here it is:

ring reworking

My aunt had a gold ring which she didn't like. For starters the ring shank was fiddly and far too small. Also, she just didn't like the look of the ring...it was very fussy with far too much detail in a lots-of-work-but-little-aesthetic-appeal kind of way. Anyway, so I took off the ring shank and discovered that the ring was, in fact, gold plated, which explained the lack of gold hallmark! I changed the bezel setting to make it less fussy, fixed up the filigree a bit, and put on a new sleek shank. Happily, as it turns out, my aunt preferred the silver look so I didn't need to send off the ring to get gold plated. (I don't have the equipment to do gold plating myself.) So, here is a photo of the ring....the stone is not yet set in the photo, hence the crinkly appearance of the bezel around the stone. I took a photo for my aunt to decide if she wanted it gold plated or not. In any case, here's a photo:

here we go again

Here we go again, down the only road I've ever known....what song is that?? It's some 80s song. Is it Bon Jovi? Oh my good god, I checked google and it's Whitesnake. I had Whitesnake lyrics in my head. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, there is no hope for me.

ANYWAY....moving right along. It's the start of the week again and I have heaps and heaps to do. I need to finish some items for my sister and aunt, go to the post office to send off some earrings that sold on Folksy at the weekend, plan a newsletter, etc. Also the washing machine is peeping that it's finished, so I think today is just going to have to be a mega productive, running around day. So, deep breath and here I go again!

dawanda

DaWanda has some new banners to stick on blogs and so on, so I just thought I'd share one with you. I thought it was cute with the winking or blinking bird. I also like the fact that there are sellers on DaWanda who make stamps, so you could actually order a stamp for your particular needs...probably not a blinking stamp, though. ha, although you could get a blinking stamp....erm...ok, that's probably a linguist's joke...blinking as in 'bloody'...no? oh, nevermind. here's the banner:

a postmodern music video

this video is bonkers, but i like it :-)

Photos

My cousin's wife...would that be my cousin-in-law? Well, in any case, her name is Vivian Keulards and she does some stunning photography. You can see her work on her website here.(www.viviankeulards.nl) I personally like the series of children who are studying ballet. The photos are of the children in ballet poses but in normal environments with regular clothes on. It's quite ethereal and well worth a look. Just look under "portfolio" and then "ballet" to see those photos.
Speaking of photos, I've downloaded my holiday snaps and although I know there are approximately 10,000,000,000,000+ photos of the Sacre Coeur in Paris, I thought my photo turned out quite well, so here it is for your entertainment:

home

I'm home - back from Holland where my family celebrated my gran's 90th birthday. The party was enjoyed by all, especially my grandmother, who just loved having the whole family there. There were 48 of us, I think. I also went to Paris with my parents and had a great time walking around and soaking up the sights. We had fabulous weather with heat and sun and a lovely breeze. We went to several museums, including the Musee d'Orsay and Jeu de Paumes. I had some fantastic creamy chevre and we ate at my dad's favourite brasserie. All in all a very enjoyable holiday. So now I'm back and I have heaps to do, including fixing up a bracelet of my aunt's that is starting to suffer from metal fatigue. I'll anneal it and get it back into shape and send it off hopefully by the end of this week. I have loads of photos so will be trickling them up on this here bloggy and will take some photos of the bits of jewellery that I got. It's always fabulous to get bits of old and broken jewellery from people. I love seeing all the pieces and hearing where they came from and so on.

display unit

well, it's taken a lot of planning and work and sweat and tears, but here is the new display unit: It should be just the right size to fit on the typical craft fair tables. I'll see how it goes in practice in the autumn at the various craft fairs I'm doing! I'm quite pleased with it...

busy!

Well I just discovered that if you type in the blog post title and then hit enter by accident because you haven't had a cup of tea yet, then it publishes the post! Oops. Anyway, easy enough to fix.
Yesterday I had a super productive day because I really needed one. I had so many little bits and pieces to do, I had to get a lot of them done otherwise I would just be overwhelmed for the rest of the week! So I think I might even have photos of a finished display unit today!! Which would be fabulous.
I was also productive at the weekend. A friend of mine came to stay and she knows a thing or two about sewing. She also really likes shopping, so I went with her to London to look at shops. She found some great stuff, but I couldn't find a top that I liked at all. So she persuaded me to buy some cloth from the Berwick Street Cloth Shop (I hope that link works) and on Sunday we sat down at the sewing machine at home and made a top!! We didn't have a pattern or instructions, we just used my oversize batwing top and copied it. It was interesting to do and we did a pretty darn good job, given the circumstances. We made some mistakes, did some bits of sewing in the wrong order and so on, but overall not too shabby for a first attempt. Next time I will make the collar a bit different and make the batwings a lot smaller. On the original top, the batwings don't seem that big because the cloth is much lighter. The part that came out the best, in my opinion, was the band at the bottom, which is the same material but it's stretchy so acts a bit elastic. In any case, here is a photo:

phew

Ok, things are looking up! My new acrylic display case arrived today with no cracks and in perfect shape! So I would just like to say here, in case anyone ever googles this online shop to see if they are ok - The Shop Fitting Shop - excellent customer service. Very friendly and helpful and dealt with the problem immediately. So, thanks to them!!
Plus my boy totally sorted out the Firefox/virus problem and all my bookmarks are back and it's all in fine working order. Plus it's Friday! Hurrah!
So, now I just have to clean the house, make some earrings, make a ring and have some more tea :-) Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

ugh

Oh fabulous...Firefox had some kind of virus in it and now all my bookmarks are gone. I am not happy, as it took me years to build up all those bookmarks to galleries, craft fairs, suppliers, etc. I can't even get Firefox to start today. The whole reason I use Firefox was because it was supposed to be better than IE and get less viruses. I'm hoping that all can be restored using the backups we've done. I really hope so, otherwise there may be some sobbing. Not the best start to the day. Also, I bought a special lockable table-top cabinet and it arrived, but it has huge cracks in it. I'm waiting for the supplier to send another one, which he said he will do. It's just annoying how these things suck up so much time. With all my bookmarks, I could just check everything really quickly. Now I have to type in the addresses by hand and so on.
Anyway, sobs to all that and I hope it all gets sorted soon.

cocktails

I'm working on a modern version of the cocktail ring. It's got the same ethos but it's sleeker and more slimline. It's going to take me a while, because it's a commission that will be done in gold, but eventually there will be photos.
It's gloomy again today, which isn't great but at least it's cooler inside, which is better for soldering!
I've also been painting my display unit and so it's getting closer and closer to being finished. Just a wee bit more work on it to go.
I spoke to my jewellery mentor this morning and got lots of useful tips about setting stones and also about getting stones out of old rings! I've been struggling to get some stones out of a ring that the owner wants reset in something else. Eventually I got them all out with a combination of snips, sawing and gravers. Pf, took about 2 hours just to get the stones out! Who knew that could take so much time.
Anyway, so I'm working on various bits & bobs and shall hopefully have more photos to show soon.

federer and weekend

So Federer has won Wimbledon (again). I sort of wish I'd seen the match, seems like it was an epic one. I was a little sad that Murray wasn't in the final, but he keeps getting better so let's hope he wins it next year! I say I sort of wish I'd seen the final because it wasn't like I was suffering yesterday. We went to friends for a picnic on their allotment and the weather was gorgeous. It was much better than expected - the forecast was for rain but all we had was sun, sun and more sun. And this friend of ours makes the most amazing puddings, of which I especially enjoyed the trifle - delicious!! I was amazed to discover, once I got home, that I even got a bit of sunburn on one shoulder. It's not that I want sunburn, I certainly don't, but it just shows how sunny it was.
Anyway....so having lolled around on a picnic blanket for most of yesterday, I was glad that on Saturday I did actually get lots done. I painted an undercoat on my display module for the craft fairs coming up in the autumn. Now I just need to do another undercoat, then the main paint, then the rest of the decoration. It's a lot of work, but I think it's going to be worth it. The display is going to be different and look really impressive but approachable! Photos by the end of the week if all goes well....

grumble

humph...the new feature for facebook is not working for me on Etsy. I saw a forum thread that lots of other people are having the same problem, so it's probably just a new item bug. Hopefully it will get sorted soon. I have listed about 15 products for free shipping to the US and UK this weekend on Etsy - so a good time to buy from MagpieNest!!
I'm also working on my mailing list - if any of you out there want to be on my mailing list and aren't already, please sign up here. I won't send out more than about 6 emails a year, so you're not signing up for heaps of emails!! :-)
In other exciting news, the skies are darkening and the temperature is dropping. Or rather, it has dropped overnight and it seems like there's a big storm coming. I heard rumours that there were big thunder storms and perhaps flooding somewhere up north and it's heading our way. Fine by me if it's today. Hopefully not tomorrow though, as it's my friend's big annual BBQ bash in his lovely garden. Let's hope it doesn't rain down on us tomorrow!!!

hmm and FREE SHIPPING to usa and uk

So there are some new widgets on Etsy! First of all there's a free shipping promotion just for this weekend. I'm joining the promotion!! So it's free shipping to the UK and USA this weekend - from now until Monday morning. Free shipping available on almost all my items, just not the very small ones. Contact me if you have any questions!! I'm working on adding this option, so will be adding it throughout the day.
Secondly there's a new connection with facebook. I'm going to be testing that today...I think how it works is that my activity on Etsy will show up on my facebook profile. I'm going to add something very soon, so I'll see how it fits together. I think it's a good idea, but I've yet to see how it pans out. In other news I am delighted that the fan we ordered has arrived. I am a lot more comfortable today at the computer than I was yesterday!! Such an improvement. Plus it's a quiet fan, so it's not making rattling noises, which is a plus.
And lastly, I'm in negotiations with a fabulous independent store in town to sell my new collection there and will be hopefully letting you know about that when I hear more from them!!

new cuff links

I put these cuff links up yesterday on Etsy, Dawanda and Folksy for the first time: