today today...

is my last craft fair of the year - get ye down to Farnham for mulled wine, mince pies, and an amazing array of homemade goodies perfect for those last-minute presents!

In other news, I'm shifting around my online presence a bit. I'm moving off some sites and possibly on to others. I have now stopped using DaWanda because it wasn't working that well for me and I just don't have the time to keep on top of Etsy, Folksy and also DaWanda. Plus I think DaWanda works better if you're also fluent in German and French so you can use the other parts of the site. So hey ho, I'm focusing on Etsy and Folksy. This way I have shops that are in good shape and I can offer PayPal or Google Checkout and dollars or pounds. So hopefully this will make things a bit neater and easier to manage!

In the meantime, I'm working on finishing custom pieces before Christmas - hopefully all will go well and it'll all be finished by this Saturday - here's hoping! And here's a photo of one such custom job....

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:

back in the swing of things

After a couple of weeks of holiday and a long weekend, I'm getting back into the swing of things. I'm feeding items back on to Etsy, Folksy and DaWanda. I'll be adding new items this week and next. Just letting you know I'm working on it :-)
I am amazed, but we are having a sort of heatwave here. It's nice that it's warm but it's not so nice to have it so hot when I want to sleep. Anyway, I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts. I've ordered a fan though, for the bedroom. Almost all the fans were out of stock, so I'm guessing that there are a lot of people with the same idea! Reminds me of several years ago when there was a really hot spell and we decided to get a small inflatable pool - they were all sold out, which is why we have a purple plastic hippo in the back which although it's supposed to be a sandbox for children, is also a good paddling pool for cooling your heels! ha!

spring, erm, summer cleaning

So I'm doing some sorting out of stock and boxes and inventory and so on. This means a trimming down of my online shops until I know what I want to put back into them and what new items I want to add. Hence a wee bit quiet on the online front. I figure this'll be a good time to do it - it's lovely weather and summer so people are out and about. It's a kind of quiet, outdoor time of year. At least, it is if the weather stays this way, which I'm really hoping it will. Wouldn't it be great if we had a whole summer of this? That would be so nice. Also very unlikely. Anyway...so I'll be blogging but my shops are getting a dusting out!

tra la la

I'm having a pretty darn good week. I had some more sales on Etsy and DaWanda and in new countries, too! I get a bit giddy when I have a sale that is going to a new country. This time it was Japan and Norway. Oo er! :-) I sold these cuff links, which in a way are going home. They are made with Japanese paper that I bought either in Yokohama or Kamakura, and now they are going over to Tokyo. Kind of a nice idea :-)

dark at 4pm

oh yes, it's winter alright...dark by 4pm....
I've been putting up loads of new items on Etsy, Folksy and Dawanda...check it out :-)
Finished a ring for a friend today and have been working on two new necklaces...photos soon to see what people think of them...
hope everyone's having a good winding-down-to-Christmas week!!! Nearly the holiday....

13 days til Christmas

Oooooh it's miserable looking outside today. Drizzle and about 2 degrees C. brrrrrrrr. Yesterday I managed to get to the post office and post heaps of things (ok, 11) on Etsy, daWanda and Folksy. That involved a lot of picture-taking as most of it was new stuff that I hadn't photographed at all yet. So we'll see how that goes online. I still have some little earrings and a pendant and some more things to add, but that will go up slower since I have to wait until after tomorrow - which is the last craft fair for me for this year!!
I suspect I'm going to be rather on the tired side after this last craft fair so the plan for Sunday is fun - sort out some holiday things. We're going to go find a Christmas tree and make lists of what we need to have in the house so we actually have food when the shops are closed. So that's pretty relaxed. Over the holiday I've promised myself to make time to make two things - one is the ring with a big pearl that is going to be my gran's 90th birthday present - I think it's safe to say that because I don't think she reads my blog, ha! The other is a gold ring that I've been meaning to make for myself as a replacement-of-sorts for the ring that was stolen at the beginning of the year. I've been meaning to get around to it, but because it's for me there has always been something more important to work on! So it will get done this holiday!!!

Wheeeeeeeee I'm joining yet another networking site....the DaWanda one on Ning...Of course, I can't be super active on all things - Indiepublic, Etsy forums, blog, other people's blogs, facebook, etc etc and this one as well. So I just flit between them all and do a bit of all of them every now and then. Otherwise I'd spend ALL my time behind the computer, instead of the 99.999999% of my time I spend behind the computer now. hmmmmmmmmmm
I dreamt of ring designs again. I really must write them down in my idea booklet because otherwise I will forget them all.
Yesterday I applied to another craft fair - Gift - which is in Surrey in November. A friend of mine went there and said it was brilliant, so I'm really hoping I get accepted. I also like the look of the items they have on their publicity materials. Anyway, we'll see. I'd give you a link or something, but they don't appear to have their own website and what there is, is limited and not very exciting looking. I hope they put up something more later in the year. They probably will, it's only in November after all.
It's back to dreary-ness today after a relatively sunny day yesterday. It's gloomy, but now that I have flowers (thank you Marianne!!) at least I can think of the rain as being good for the garden. I realise I write quite often about the weather. I think I am quite affected by the weather even if I don't go outside all day. When it's so gloomy I find it hard to get going. I'm laughing though because it's such a British/Dutch thing to do - talk about the weather. Nice safe topic. Although not always safe. One of my aunts gets all annoyed if you mention the weather, particularly over the phone. She thinks it's a waste of time to talk about the weather when you're phoning each other half way across the world (she lives in Qatar). Well, she does have a point. Unless it's exciting weather, like a hurricane or lots of snow or a flood or something.

So I've made a bunch of cuff links and a pendant, but the thing about larger items is that I need to get them hallmarked. And in order to do that, I need a decent amount of things to send all at once. Which means a general slowing down of the whole process. But then when I get them all back, I have loads of stuff all at once. So I better get moving and get enough together to send off for hallmarking. And not forget that they need *all* components in order to hallmark. Last time I got a note scolding me because I didn't realise this and sent some cuff links without the bars on yet, thinking I could add those later. Oopsie! They have to have the whole finished item to make sure that you don't do something naughty like add cheap tin bars on silver cuff links or something.
Anyway....ok...must go do stuff.

This morning I had a peep at my Etsy store first thing, as I am wont to do, and one of the items has a huge amount of views. It didn't yesterday. I looked through the treasuries, and was very surprised to see that some of my items were in treasuries - but not that particular one! So I wonder where it was shown when it got so many views. Hmmmm it's a meeeeeeeeeeestery.

I'm working on posting things on DaWanda, which is going to take a while. I can't quite figure out the pinboard do-dad. It's like the hearting on Etsy, but I don't seem to be able to see where my favourites go, or who favourites my shop. And the English forums on DaWanda seem to be rather....slow. I posted a question and didn't get an answer or even a response. On Etsy it only takes about a nanosecond before someone answers, if only to say that they don't know, ha!!! Anyway, so I'm kind of wishing I had kept up with my French/German so I could join those forums. I can read, understand, follow the conversations, but I can't really write much beyond the basics. I used to be able to, but it is tragic how quickly one can lose language abilities. sigh.

Yesterday I was quite productive and made cuff links, earrings, and even a pendant. Photos to follow soon, of course. Also got feedback for the cuff links with the Japanese paper which I posted about before. The recipient was very happy with those, so that is very good. Today I need to send a ring off to an engraver, send off some rings, make some more cuff links ready for Japanese paper, and post more on DaWanda. I already posted some new earrings on Etsy, using a technique I learned at my lessons from my fabulous teacher. Here's a photo:

I couldn't sleep last night so I finally got a start on opening my DaWanda shop!!! It's here. I will be adding items, of course, and figuring out how to add links to this blog and so forth. I am still getting the hang of the format. It's obviously similar to Etsy, but everything is slightly different. It is very useful that it's in Euros, makes it super easy for the rest of Europe.
I made some new earrings yesterday which I will be photographing soon, maybe even today depending on how it goes.
I also got a very kind email from the woman who ordered the gold ball ring and the sheet ring. It's so fantastic to get encouragement from people who know their jewellery. She has just been to Metalab, which is in Australia and her favourite jewellery shop. She also recommended my work to them! Have a look at the website, it has some beautiful things!