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:

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!

street art

I just got back from a fantastic weekend in Berlin - such a cool city!! There are lots of things going on, lots of new things and it's got such a creative vibe. I saw a lot of little boutique stores with new ideas. And the street art was really impressive. There were HUGE murals and lots of impressive graffiti. I like graffiti when it's creative, ie not just a tag. So I took lots of photos of these things and here are some of them:

new new and so on

Many new things afoot for MagpieNest, most of them long term plans. It's going to be a busy year with lots of ideas finally being realised. I have loads of ideas, but it takes time (a lot of it) to make the items and then get everything around it all properly ready. As you can see over on the right side of this page, I have lots of craft fairs coming up in the autumn. I'm also increasing the number of shops that carry my items. I will be putting a 'commissions' page on my website because that is becoming an increasingly large part of what I do. I have done commissions that are a design specified by the customer; I have also been asked to take stones from existing jewellery or just loose stones and make a new piece with the design up to me. I've made brooches and clip on earrings and toe rings and engagement rings and wedding rings. I've also made rings smaller and larger and necklaces longer and shorter. In short, I've been gaining a lot experience! So I'm now able to put a page on my website about commissions with confidence! I also know by now what I am not an expert at doing - but I know who to refer people to if they need unusual or other services.
I'm especially excited about my display unit for all the craft fairs. It's built and I just need to decorate it. I think it's going to look pretty darn good - it's different and it's friendly. It makes it easy for people to look and try on the jewellery while showing clearly that there are separate collections. I also have to make a backdrop for some shows and I have that finally planned out now and just need to purchase the pieces for that. I hope to have photos soon!!

prjeto gallery and things

Over the weekend I had the chance to visit the Projeto Gallery in Silsden, up in Yorkshire. As you may know, I have some of my pieces there and finally had the opportunity to have a look in person and this lovely gallery. The gallery is on the lovely main street and has a wide variety of jewellery and prints - something to suit most tastes, I'd say! I spoke to Paula, who runs the gallery, and there are many plans afoot. I also dropped off some new items - new for Projeto - the silver bud collection and the star collection. Paula felt they were just right for the gallery - so if you're ever near Silsden, do pop in! It's also down the road from one of the best bridal wear shops in the country and Paula is planning on working with that shop so brides can get not only the best dress but the best matching piece of jewellery. A good match, I think :-)

custom job

These are some photos of a custom job I did at the beginning of this year. The cuff links are made in the exact shape the customer wanted - she has a pendant that her boyfriend really likes, so building on that she wanted something the same shape but for him. These cuff links were the result. And, best of all, when I ran into them together somewhere unexpectedly, he was wearing them! That's the best compliment I can get :-)

designer tea towels

I know I've mentioned this site before, but if you haven't had a look before or recently, go check out www.todryfor.com - they sell amazing designer tea towels. Some of the tea towels are even especially commissioned for todryfor, designed by up-and-coming British artists. You can see under 'new' that there's quite a few different designs available now. I actually like the tea towel that has the Barbican on it - first because I love London and second because the Barbican center is really odd and reminds me of Planet of the Apes.

working...

I'm working on another lace imprint bracelet with a hinge and padlock clasp. Incidentally, I've called the collection with all this lace imprinting "Lingerie & Lace" because it's made from old lingerie printed into the silver. I've even made separate boxes for it and have a whole separate strategy for the collection. I'm speaking to some different vendors about the collection and will be telling you all more about it hopefully later this year. It's not yet available in any of my shops - this lingerie & lace collection is actually the top secret project I mentioned in a bunch of posts earlier this year. I have earrings, bracelets, rings, tie clips, cuff links and pendants thus far. I'll reveal more when I can!

ha...

This is one of my favourite ever jokes. I have it hanging next to the computer monitor because it makes me laugh so much.

finished ring

This is the finished engagement ring: It's 18k white gold with two dark sapphires and a large medium blue sapphire.

oldie

Bringing out an oldie to show you...my mom bought this beautifully embroidered jacket in the photo below and I made a pendant to match it. I made it a while ago, so my sawing was a bit shaky compared to now, but still not too bad. The pendant is pure silver and the stone is turquoise.

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!

Festival of Crafts

Hurrah - I got a letter from Farnham Malting on Friday saying I've been accepted for the Festival of Crafts show there in October! It's 17&18 October in the lovely building at Farnham.
I had a fabulous weekend - lots of sun and warmth and activities. My cold is nearly gone, I think, as I've been up for over an hour now and only had to blow my nose twice so far! ha!

I saw a great band on Saturday night - Televised Crime Wave. If you get the chance to see them live, don't miss it! Good indi music with lots of jumping about. They were really nice and friendly too. Plus, if you followed that link, they have a great pic of a cat on guitar as their background image......

yech

I have a nasty sore throat which I'm hoping will go away very quickly indeed. Yesterday I made some new earrings, some stock earrings, and started on another bracelet. Today there will be fun-filled trip to the dentist, hurrah. It should be fine, hopefully. That's pretty much all the news here. Not very exciting, so I'll make up for it with a couple of photos of cute bunnies. :-)

new bracelet

I'm making some new earrings and I'm going to work on another one of these. It's a lace imprint bracelet with a hinge. It has a dimple clasp on the inside and a padlock clasp on the outside. The padlock is a mere 9mm and it's attached by a safety chain. I'm quite proud of this here bracelet, as it took quite a lot of work. I'm happy with how it turned out and it fits and works well. Plus it looks good on. Sooooooo I'm hoping lots of people will agree with me :-) So here are some photos. It's 22mm wide and just over a millimeter thick.

pro pro pro crastination

If I didn't procrastinate so much, I'd rule the world by now. Still, there's plenty of time left in the day. So I keep telling myself, anyway! ha! Well...the bank holiday weekend was lovely and warm and summery so I guess I am in a mellow warm and summery mood. Bit too mellow! I just had some caffeine though and will be doing LOADS this afternoon. Oh yes! Plus over the weekend I went to little shop in a museum and I need to give them a call to see if they want to stock some of my jewellery. So at least I did something over the weekend! And we worked on my display unit as well - I'm really looking forward to that being DONE. We're doing some more hammering and gluing on that tonight, so hopefully soon it'll be photo-ready!
On another note, the Projeto gallery have been working hard on their website and have a number of my pieces available online as well now. Check it out here.
Also, for those of you in the Reading area, the Caversham Open Studios is next weekend (5-7 June) and you can see art and artists in the area. I'd love to have participated, but I'm at a wedding for part of the time so it would have been too hectic. Hopefully next year! You can find more information here.

nice weather????

Hey hey it's supposed to be nice weather for this bank holiday weekend! woo hoo!!! excitement...
It was amazing this morning, all blue skies, warmth, sun and a slight breeze. perfect. Now it's cloudy but hey ho at least it's not raining. Sooooo I just had a lesson which was useful as ever and I've borrowed a tool to see if it'll help me with a problem I've been having with one of my designs. The tool is called a bull stick, hee hee...for some reason that sounds funny to me!! It's a scorper type tool and has a very sharp edge that you can use to carve off tiny slivers of metal. It's particularly useful for opening up holes to set stones in. So I'm going to see if it helps me and if it does, I'll be purchasing one of those. Hm, I've just checked and here's a photo of the scorper itself...and then you buy the handle separately because there are different shapes of wooden handles. So the bit that's at the top of the photo is the part that you put in the handle - the other end is the part that you shape so that you can do the carving. Hm. Total cost would be just over 10 quid...although there's a set with a handle that has a chuck and a whole bunch of different scorpers...and that's just under 20 quid...which would seem to be better value. Hm. So many tools...it's very hard not to just buy loads and loads of tools. It's so tempting! There are a couple of tools that I couldn't do without now (pendant drill, 3rd hand tweezers) but some that I thought I would use lots and haven't (drawplates). It depends on the type of things you make and the style you have, of course. In any case, I'm going to try this bull stick and see how useful it is...
Hope you all have a lovely bank holiday weekend and that it is fun! I'm going to be at home doing hopefully lots of fun stuff, but also a bit of working on my display for all the craft fairs.

me versus the bracelet

I've been battling with a bracelet that looks amazing in my head. The picture I have in my mind is fabulous - a real stunner of a bracelet. However, that stunner is taking a while to actually become reality!! I've been struggling with the hinge - the hinge part works fine but it's been a lot of fiddly-ness to solder the hinge on to the rounded sheet. There's been swearing, frustration, and some (read: lots) resorting to the brute force and ignorance approach. After what feels like a long battle, though, the bracelet is nearly completely formed. I just need to polish it and smooth out a couple of kinks. I'm really hoping that the finished product will match the picture that I have in my head!!! The goal is to finish and photograph it today. Then I need to do some pendant bails, but after that I will immediately start making another one of these bracelets. I have a good feeling about them and want to get the making of it down pat - plus now I know what not to do! ha! So, sorry to keep you in suspense but a photo should be appearing soon. It's a wide bracelet with lace imprint and a hinge on one side and a tiny padlock on the other side as the clasp.

Monday again!??!

So it's Monday again...seems almost impossible. I thought it was just Friday. Pf. Well, it's lovely British weather again, ie raining and dismal. It doesn't even remotely feel like it's summer or even near it. However, on Saturday I did get to experience a small sliver of something sort of resembling summer. I very unexpectedly won free tickets from the Guardian to The Great Escape festival in Brighton! I entered the competition on a complete whim and was totally surprised to win. So hurrah for the Guardian! The Great Escape is a music festival in which lots of small (and small-ish) bands play in venues all across Brighton. It's sort of like the Camden Crawl, but no queues. And a bit bigger, I think. In any case, off we went to Brighton on Saturday and lo and behold, there was sun there! So we walked along the beach area and the pier and the Lanes (the windy shopping streets) and we walked into Choccywoccydoodah's Brighton store - if you are unfamiliar with this fabulous chocolate store, do have a look at the cakes on their website! Of course we also saw lots of bands...we saw bands from Japan, bands featured by Artrocker magazine and bands we knew. Of the latter, we saw the KASMS who were fun and good and jumped around a lot. We also saw the Joy Formidable - they were FANTASTIC!! They were so very good that they played and we listened and when it was over I was thinking, what?! over already?! more more more!! They were truly brilliant.

My friend took this photo in Cuba or Indonesia, I can't remember. I save it because someday I want to get it printed on canvas for her. I keep wanting to do that, but I don't want a tiny canvas, so I'm forever on the lookout for a place that would do a good job but not too expensive. If anyone has any tips...let me know :-)

deliveries and things

A funny side effect of working at home is that I've gotten to know the postmen and delivery guys. They are all men, no postwoman yet on my road. I don't really know the postmen, but it is at the point where they recognise me even in town! I think I probably get more packages than most people, considering I buy almost all my metals, tools, stationary and so on online. There's a postman for regular post and another one for special deliveries and then there's a whole host of guys that work for the private courier companies. I would prefer not to have to pay for couriers, but sometimes it's required - like if I buy so-called "hazardous" materials. They aren't really hazardous if you use them correctly, but I think it's required by law to send corrosive type materials by courier. I guess it's to avoid accidents.
Anyway, so today I got one special delivery - engagement ring back from the Assay Office. I also got a courier delivery - some silver and a whole bunch of clasps. And I got regular post - a Metals Directory which I wasn't expecting, it was free from one of the suppliers I use. So, busy day for post. And I'm off to the post office very soon to send out a bunch of stuff.
Phew, who knew there was so much to write about post...

book

On a whim, I've just bought this book about hot and cold connections. I am hoping it will be a good, solid, technical book. The problem I have with most jewellery books is that lots are all pictures for inspiration, which I just don't want because I already have too many ideas and not enough time to execute them all. I also don't like the ones that are beginner because they are just too simplistic and are just about the very basics. I am hoping this is a book that is more advanced, very practical, and not just pretty pictures to fill up space. According the reviews, that is a reasonable thing to hope for in this book. So, I'll see when it arrives!

painting

So in my profile it says my mom is an artist. She is, and she works mostly as a painter and at the moment mostly with watercolour and collage. My mom used to work mostly in acrylics, but is very versatile in the mediums she uses. In any case, you can see lots of her work on the website I built for her, which is here. But the reason I'm writing this now is that she got a commission to make a painting of the view in Yokohama - of the harbour area. So here are some photos of that painting! The first is the whole painting and the second is a close-up of the middle. I really like this painting because of the colours and the 3-D feeling of the pier in the middle. I also like the collage use of pages of old Japanese books to subtly add a little detail.

Reveal in Henley

I'm going to be at Reveal - a showcase of crafts - in Henley-upon-Thames from the 10th to the 13th of December. If you've never been to Henley, this is a good reason to go! It's a lovely place and has lots of super cosy pubs, perfect for hiding from winter weather. Plus there's an amazing teddy bear store. And now there's also a fabulous craft fair showing the work of a varied selection of artists from the Oxon/Berkshire area.

South Hill Park Christmas Fair

I just got a letter to say that I've been accepted to the South Hill Park Christmas Fair for this year! Hurrah! It's 14 & 15th November. I know it's a looooong way off, but now's the time to put it in your calendar.
Also, I sold another large star necklace yesterday - this one: (they are all slightly different so I need to update my main website and put some photos of another one up!)

random stuff

So the work went really well yesterday - engagement ring is nearly done. I just need to do all the final polishing. The white gold is harder than I expected, as in I think it'll take longer to polish. It looks really good though, the ring is shaping up nicely and really has an art nouveau feel to it - which is what the aim was. After this I just need to get it hallmarked and get the stones set.
The pouch that I put up a photo of yesterday seemed to work really well, it did catch pretty much every last little filing. That was its purpose, so that's good.
I'm also going to finish a craft fair application and send that off tomorrow. I would do it today but the local post office is closed Wednesday afternoons.
As soon as I get the engagement ring polished I'm also going to add more things to Etsy. So, that's pretty much the plan for now.

bank holiday

The end of the bank holiday weekend - luckily not too bad, since there's another bank holiday at the end of this month! hurrah! So even though it was a holiday yesterday and the boy was home, I did work on the engagement ring. The boy even made me a leather pouch to catch all the gold filings. I don't have a traditional jeweller's bench in the sense that there's no half circle cut out of it with a leather bit underneath. Initially I didn't want that because that would mean giving up a lot of table area. But now I have a detachable thingy (technical term) so I can put it up when I'm working with gold. With silver it's not as important to catch every last little filing, so what I normally do is just brush off my apron before I stand up. It's a big, heavy apron that I always wear when I'm working, so it catches most filings and extra pieces. But it's not quite good enough for gold, so I have a new solution! It seemed to work really well yesterday, so I'm happy! I might just keep it up permanently if I like it after working with it for a full week. This week will be a trial week for the new pouch attachment, then! And here's a photo: (Hm, it doesn't look so great on the photo, but it works really well because it's cinched at front and back so the filings stay in the pouch.)

repairs

Sometimes I do repair jobs. Actually, come to think of it, I do them more than just sometimes. Friends have broken rings, beads missing from necklaces, brooches where the pin is bent out of shape, etc. I actually quite like doing these odd jobs, because I usually learn some useful new tips. Also, they are usually quite quick jobs which is nice to do in between longer ones. Just over a year ago, my aunt sent me some rings which belonged to my grandmother - my dad's mother. One of the rings is beyond repair. It's been repaired before with what seems to be a cheap metal like tin and the filigree is crushed and distorted. It also seems to be missing part of the original ring shank. Then there's another ring which is quite art deco and I think my mom would like it - I need to resize it when she's here. Then there was one other one. This one is gold and had three pearls set in an unusual flower setting. I would have never chosen this ring myself, since I prefer much less fussy jewellery, but it has a certain charm. The three pearls had long since dwindled to one. I guess the other two had fallen out because it looked like they had been replaced with little plastic beads. (That would be the work of my ever-resourceful great uncle.) In any case, the ring intrigued me, so I asked my mom to source the appropriate pearls in Singapore - not an easy task, since they are 2mm no-hole pearls. I cleaned out the ring and carefully poked out the old pearl and the beads so I could resize the ring. It now fits me and I've replaced the pearls and here's how it looks:

back to the rain

So last week was amazingly lovely weather and the weekend was beatiful too. But now we're back to gloom and drizzle. whee hee... I feel the need for yet another cup of tea very soon indeed. I have been to the post office again already and got a scissor sharpener at John Lewis. The boy hadn't heard of scissor sharpeners, so I shall share in case you haven't either. They are little tools that can be used with any straight regular scissors - ie no pinking or curved or serrated scissors. Perfect for extending the life of your scissors and perfect if you want to cut tricky material. The one I got at John Lewis looks like the below photo and is £7.25, which isn't bad at all.

so cute!

My sister also got some knit wee Easter rabbits and chicks and her cat liked them too, I think:

hee hee hee

jewellery news.....I'm busy with the secret project and plan to launch it tomorrow! yay! If all goes well, there will be photos, there will be plans, they will major excitement (from me, anyway). I have a lot of ideas for new things as well, so the to-do list is as long as ever...

I'm loving the lovely weather we're having. Yesterday I went with my friend to Greys Court - that's a National Trust property close to Reading which has gorgeous gardens. This is a good time of year to see the gardens and there's also a tea room with an outdoor area. The house is closed for renovations, but it's a great place to go sit in the sunshine and enjoy the scenery. Also the woods were full of bluebells, so it just looked amazing.

ha ha - I just got this from my sister and I had to laugh out loud!

ring, bracelet, ring

Two down, one to go. That is, I finished and resized a ring for a friend and delivered it to her yesterday and happily it fit and she's happy with it! Then I finished a cuff bangle which I had sent off to get engraved and that was posted yesterday. Now there's the engagement ring to go - I need to order the gold for it today and then I can get moving on it. It's all heading the right direction!
It's another gorgeous day today - beautiful blue skies and sun! A bit surreal, frankly....

The TOP SECRET project in coming along nicely and I should have photos sooooon....tum-di-dum....oh yes, the excitement!

Erm, in other news I'm getting my hair done tomorrow! hurrah! colour! So I'll have some photos of that soon too.

birthday fun

A lovely day was had yesterday and actually the whole weekend was good! Yesterday was the boy's birthday and we all chilled down at the pub. We had a roast lunch - which was very filling indeed! I had nut roast and it even came with little mini Yorkshire puddings, which aren't usually given with the veggie option! Anyway...it was a lovely relaxed day! I also made a surprise birthday cake - a carrot cake with cream cheese icing (recipe randomly chosen from the internet!). It turned out really well and here's a photo of it:

Today we took down the Norden Farm exhibit, so that has come and gone. I'm sure it won't be too long before we do another exhibit and then I'll post it on here again :-)
I hope everyone had a lovely weekend and here's hoping that we get fabulous weather this coming weekend too!!

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 :-)

Wheeeee

Oh, I'm having a good day...very productive! I've called the stone setter, the gem supplier, the arts centre, had a lesson, got some box supplies, been to Staples and even went to Hobbycraft. This is all in the name of the engagement ring commission and a big secret plan. The big secret plan shall be revealed at some point. *evil cackles*
The engagement ring went beautifully well in silver and now I am awaiting approval (or not) from the bride-to-be, who is visiting this Saturday with her mum to see if it's what she wanted and to choose the stones that she wants set in it. I have a small pile of sapphires and such so she can look at the colours together, etc.
Ok, well I still have heaps to do so I'm off again....more photos of pretty things soon!!

Monday feelings on a tuesday

So it's Tuesday but I'm feeling like it's Monday - wondering what order to do things in, what I'm supposed to be doing and thinking I'm probably forgetting something important! I have a box of items at the hallmarking office, so I should have those back at the beginning of next week. I have a small pile of half-finished items - this pile is, thankfully, getting a wee bit smaller and more manageable! Last Thursday I did loads and got various things done that had been laying around for ages. Also, we had the private view at Norden Farm which went very well. The show there is still on for another 2 weeks, so there's still a chance to see it!
I hope everyone had a lovely Easter. I put my knitted Easter bunnies and chicks on the table for Easter breakfast and it was very cheerful :-)
Tomorrow hopefully a more interesting post - with me more focused than I am today!

update: hm, two websites seem to have disappeared. One is a bead supplier I have used a lot - Jules Gems. They seem to have gone bust, the website is gone and I managed to find one comment somewhere that they aren't in business anymore. That's a shame because they had a good selection. And now I see that theindiego.com seems to have gone as well - but I can't find any comments about that, so not sure what the deal is there. If anyone knows....please leave a comment!

sing song

Norden farm, Norden farm, Norden faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarm,
you are like a nice warm baaaaaaaaaaaalm,
tomorrow night you will see such a siiiiiiiiiiight,
lots of lovely jewellery under bright white liiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Is that a haiku? no? poem? terrible poem? ha! I think I better stick to jewellery.

ps. Looks like I may be having my jewellery at Norden Farm later this year as well, in their cases in the foyer area, from August onwards some time!! :-)

ps2. I put some things in my online shops, including this pair of earrings. They are silver folded over with texture on the inside and one is laser hallmarked. I think they would be perfect for someone who likes their earrings large...not huge, but not tiny:

Norden Farm, Maidenhead

Yesterday morning we (Berkshire Designer Jewellers) set up the cases and jewellery and other bits and pieces for our group exhibit at Norden Farm Arts Centre. It looks fabulous and there is lots of exciting and beautiful jewellery on show. We are having a private view on Thursday evening from 6-8...you, oh myriad readers of my blog, are cordially invited (yes even the ones in California, although I think it might be a bit too far for you!). If you can make it, you can meet the makers and have a glass of wine :-) Directions are available on the Norden Farm website. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to email me at machi (at) magpienest.co.uk
Hopefully see some of you there!

Not Mass Produced

Good morning! I've been accepted to join a website called Not Mass Produced - it's what it says on the tin - a website celebrating all the great handmade items from Europe (mostly UK and France I think). I'm a starter on the site, so that means I have 3 items available. Follow this link to see! The site has a nice feel to it, it's easy on the eye and since the owners vet every applicant, it has a good quality control in place. I like the ethos, which is on their about us page. It's about finding something special and supporting individual talent and small business. It's in the same vein as Folksy and Etsy and DaWanda, but with a bit more focus controlling who joins and a more active marketing team so publicity is not all down to the individual artisan. I'll let you know how it goes! :-)

easter goodies

So I mentioned that my grandmother had sent me a box of goodies for easter...she knitted them all herself (she's 89!) and I love them, they are super fab. There are two rabbits, a bunch of chicks and then those little hats which are perfect as egg warmers. Egg cosies? I'm not sure what the right word is. Anyway, so here's a photo of most of the stash...there were loads more of those little hats but I didn't put them all in the photo.

phew....

With commissions, I do my best to get a good feel for the style and preferences of the customer, but there's always a little sigh of relief when I hear that they are happy with the item! This is the commission that I've just worked on - it's a lace imprint cuff bangle but will also have an engraving on the inside when it's done:

middle-of-the-week-iness

Well, I meant to take some photos of some fabulous knitted rabbits and chicks and egg warmers that I got from my grandmother. But I'm not sure where the camera is. Ok, I know where it is, but it's just too much for today. I'll get around to it. Then you can see the fabulous goodies that I'm going to use to decorate the table for easter breakfast. I don't think I've had easter breakfast for years...maybe not even since I lived with my parents. But this year it's going to happen, because I have stuffed knitted rabbits and chicks. Oh yes.
So yesterday I managed to get quite a bit done, including finally finishing 7 pendants I was working on for a big project which involves approaching a local business to see if they would like to sell my jewellery. I'm nearly ready to approach the store, just need to get my plan on paper so that they agree it's a genius idea. I'll post more about this once I've spoken to the store.... (ooo the suspense)
This weekend we're doing the end-of-tax-year stock take. That's going to involve making sure the stock sheet is accurate (I don't think it is, because sometimes I forget to take items off once I've sold them) and reviewing prices. I need to review prices because the silver and gold prices have changed, as they do, and increased loads again. Anyway, I like organising so I'm actually looking forward to this big stock take! And today I need to work on my commissions...so off I go...
ALSO - if anyone out there knows how to add a label cloud instead of just a list of labels on blogger, can you please tell me. It should be easy, but for some reason I can't figure it out.