Whiteknights Studio Trail 2022

Whiteknights Studio Trail 11 & 12 June 

11 – 12 June 2022 Whiteknights Arts Trail at the Museum of English Rural Life. 11 – 6 each day.I'll be there, next to the cafe with all the cakes, ha! I'll be alongside Ursula Waechter, a ceramicist. 

New Jewellery on Not on the High Street

 I've been tidying up my Not on the High Street shop by adding new packaging and gift tag options. I also added these four new pairs of earrings:

 

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....

fun photo

I just like this photo. It's a super close up of some laser hallmarking on a clasp for a piece I did which is part silver and part 9ct gold. You can't see this detail with the naked eye!!

birthday fun

I'm preparing a massive feast for the birthday boy. I've cleaned, set the table, blown up the balloons and made a couple of the courses already. A couple of things need to chill or freeze, so I did those this morning. Now I have to think about the order in which I'm going to make all these things, otherwise the meal could take a very long time indeed. I'm making 13 very small courses. There will be lots of leftovers, so I think we'll be eating from this for a while!
I'm nearly ready for next term as well - plan at the ready! I've got a goal, some lesson plans ready to go, lots of examples and now I just need to type up some more instruction sheets and make a couple of example items.
Making progress on the wedding rings as well - white and yellow gold line wedding bands. I got the bits and pieces I need in the post today and will be making the 'mock' version in silver first. I almost always do that for large commissions to make sure that the sizing and look is exactly right before I plunge into the gold side of things. Massive package went off to hallmarking yesterday, too, so things are progressing once again.

end of financial year

So today I got around to doing my stock take, which means taking everything out of boxes, counting, and then putting it back in the boxes. So I've been relisting items on Folksy and Etsy since I now am sure of exactly what I have! I still have a bit of commission work to do, having been rather slowed down for a week because of my bruised hands. They are healing quite well, but man is it a pain to have big, painful scabs on my hands! I'm going to get back to the bench tomorrow and see how it goes. Today it's all paperwork and relisting. I'll be listing some newer items soon too. I've added the 18k yellow gold crossover post earrings for the first time. I only have one pair, so while the craft fairs and shows were on it didn't make sense to also put them in my online shops. I guess I could put up a gross photo of my bloodied hands, but I think you'd probably prefer a picture of the gold earrings, so here they are:

some new earrings....

Hello hello, just a quick post. I managed to squeeze in making some new earrings in between trying to get a million other things done. I just wanted to try out something new. Here are some pics, they are up on Etsy too.

gold ring

Remember the gold ring I cast and was going to clean up? Well, here it is: First here it is before and then two pictures after:
BEFORE:
AFTER:

progress

Custom jobs have been sent, lessons start tomorrow, orders are being placed (by me, for more materials), etc. etc. The year is well and truly underway. Today the plan is to finish this ring, which is a gold cast ring. I made it in silver first, approximately right, but hollow so I couldn't shape it quite the way I wanted to. Then I cast it, since I only need one I used cuttlefish, and now all I need to do is clean it up. As you can see, quite a lot of cleaning up needs to be done. Hopefully it'll go well and I'll be able to finish it today, which means I'll have a photo of the finished item later today.

phhhhhhhhhew

Phew - last craft fair of the year over. Christmas tree decorated. Snow falling. Temperatures falling. Presents ready to be wrapped. Only a couple of custom jobs to do before the weekend. Rage Against the Machine single purchased*. And commissioned piece turned out really nice....here's a photo of it - 18k yellow gold peek ring with ruby:
* there's a group on Facebook trying to get everyone to download the single "Killing in the Name" by Rage against the Machine so it can beat the latest Xfactor dross to be Christmas number one. I support the sentiment - a "handmade" song over a manufactured bland one!

gold

Here are some photos of my bud hoop earrings - now available in 18k yellow gold: