New Ashgate Gallery

My jewellery is part of the Spring Exhibition at the New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham until 28 April. I went to go have a look yesterday. Lots of interesting work! Had a mooch around Farnham too, which was fun. This is a picture of the gallery and a photo of the main street in Farnham. And one more photo - a steeple in the middle of Farnham.

16 - 17 October Festival of Crafts

Festival of Crafts is this weekend at Farnham Maltings in Farnham! You can see details here on their website: http://tiny.cc/2v9t5!! Looking forward to seeing and meeting lots of people!! I will be ready, with a new stand, new business cards, new postcards, and of course lots of new lovely jewellery. See you all there!

Happy October

It's October - welcome to three months of fabulous craft fairs. First up is the Festival of Crafts at Farnham Maltings. Not only is Farnham a lovely town, the Maltings is a great building (are a great set of buildings, technically, I think). There will be loads of fabulous crafts on display. You can see many of the exhibitors here: http://tiny.cc/5sal5
I will have new items on show, including my gold ball hoop earrings (sterling silver with 18k gold ball):
Thankfully I'm mostly over my horrendous cold of last week!So it's back to getting ready for classes, making more things for fairs, finishing my stand...and so on. I'm unveiling my new stand at Festival of Crafts as well....nearly finished....

plodding ever closer to craft fairs...

So now it's 2 weeks until the first of my autumn craft fairs - Festival of Crafts at Farnham Maltings. I'm still making things and will be sending off a hallmarking package soon.
I went to the Goldsmith's Fair on Monday but was too ill to enjoy it - just helped my friend and then went home again. Yesterday was worse, felt awful and had to get another friend to cover my evening class for me. Today is a bit better, after the long sleep and lots of medicine! I'm going again to Goldsmith's Fair on Friday so will have a proper look around then. What I did see all looked very impressive! In the meantime I have one more class to teach tomorrow and I have a lot to make!
My new website is finished apart from some tweeks here or there: www.machidewaard.co.uk. There's a new logo - same as at the top of this page! New layout and several new pieces of jewellery. It's neater and hopefully simpler for me to maintain!! I also sent out my latest newsletter - if you'd like a newsletter, you can sign up here.
In other news, my friends over at ToDryFor have been very busy indeed - and are opening a shop in Oxford! A real bricks & mortar shop! It's all super exciting and their opening is going to be in a couple of weeks (I'm crying into my tea that I can't make it to the launch, boo hoo!).
Here's a photo of my new gold ball stud earrings:

mini pliers

Look at these super cute tiny pliers - a freebie from Walsh's at last week's Jewellery Symposium at Farnham Maltings:

inspirational week

Last week was packed with inspiring trips and new lessons and things. On Monday I went to International Jewellery London, which is a massive all-things-jewellery show at Earl's Court in London. The trip in was the usual London excitement, with the tube being sort of functioning - it had rained so hard that the gutters were overflowing and the water was gushing out of the cracks in a brick wall like a giant waterfall. I still got to the show, though, and was dazzled by the huge selection of gemstones and beads in what was only a small section of the event. There was lots to see and I got some useful information about boxes and display gear.
On Wednesday things got even better with my first evening of a 6 week course about hand engraving. The course is offered by the Hand Engravers' Association and in the first evening I learned a ton of things - even though I got home at 11.15pm I could hardly sleep for thinking about all the useful tips and things. I'm already looking forward to the next class this Wednesday evening!
And then to top off an already exciting week, on Friday I went to the Jewellery Symposium at the Maltings in Farnham. I took the chance at lunchtime to look around the New Ashgate Gallery, which had some amazing work in it. I went to three workshops - Reticulation & Heat Scarring, Keum Boo and lastly and most exciting, Polymorph and making a flocking machine. I'm going to try out all the things I learned as soon as possible! Polymorph is amazing stuff - you can heat it in warm water and then shape it to anything you like and then it cools and hardens to be like nylon. I can see the tool possibilities already!!
And last, but certainly not least, progress is being made on my brochure! I'll be updating my website, sending a newsletter and offering a brochure very soon...hopefully all by the beginning of October - so watch this space!

So much going on...

It continues to be super busy chez magpienest. Yesterday I did a private craft fair which was ok but to be honest a bit disappointing. Ah well, can't win them all! At least I met a bunch of interesting people and two ladies in particular really liked my jewellery and are hopefully going to come to the Desire show in Winchester to see me. I had good news as well, I've been accepted to Festival of Crafts in Farnham! Hurrah! So I'll be putting up links to that soon on my website. I have a bunch of commissions on the go with the related research. I'm searching for a particular stone, which I may have a look at in Brighton because I'll be there for a friend's wedding. Also have a mock tension setting in the works. For another piece, I thought I was going to photo etch it, but in the end it made more sense to photo etch brass and then use the brass through the rolling mill to imprint the image on to the silver. It worked beautifully, so just need to tidy up the silver and transform it into cuff links and a pendant.
In other news I couldn't sleep and came up with a (I think) pretty good idea for my 3-day summer course I'm teaching over at South Hill Park in August. If you're interested in that course, let me know. The brochure is being printed, so it's not out yet. I believe it's going to be 17-19 August, but I'm waiting for the brochure to be 100% sure!! There will be two summer 3 day courses, one for beginners (taught by Bev) and my one, which is for people who have already been taking the jewellery courses.
Tomorrow I'm going to South Hill Park to do a resin in jewellery workshop - should be good and something different for me. I've used resin a bit, but not extensively, so it will be interesting to see what other options there are!
Right now I need to go off to the post office yet again but happily it's a beautiful day out, so it'll be a pleasure.

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....

ONE MORE

One more craft fair to go - this Tuesday evening there is a Christmas market at Farnham Maltings in Farnham, Surrey. Open 5pm - 10pm! Last chance to get your handmade, unique pressies straight from the makers. 150 stalls and mince pies and mulled wine from the bar. See you there...

www.farnhammaltings.com