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: