Stardust and Sparkles

Vat of Acid

2011-06-12T08:48:00.001+01:00

A vat of acid is my new favourite toy :) Technically it's a small plastic tub rather than a vat, and the acid is ferric chloride, which is pretty mild but it sounds suitably cool so I will continue referring to it as a vat of acid.

I've been etching copper. Which is suprisingly addictive. And the number of potential ways to finish it grows every time I think about it. Here's a few pictures - all etched copper, some oxidised, some painted with alcohol ink (and layered with resin although the resin pictures aren't great - these are all snaps-in-progress which tend to not be great photography!)

Oxidised and polished

Single colour alcohol ink with resin glaze

Oxidised with Liver of Sulpher and polished

Heavily oxidised with Platinol which gives a fabulous gunmetal finish

Coloured with multiple colours of alcohol ink and resined (below is before resining)

I'm really happy with the effects I'm getting, and have more techniques still to try - specifically I want to try colour patinas (have the neccessary stuff here, just need time! and I want to try blowtorching etched pieces.
Obviously the above need holes drilled into them before I can make them into actual wearable jewellery but give me time!

It's been a while since my last update and will probably be a while until my next - sadly hubby is working 200 miles away this month (usually he works from home so I'm kinda used to his constant presence!). This means I have very little playing time this month - he usually does the lion's share of kids and daily chores whereas this month I get them on top of my job. So I forsee very little playing / blogging / fun stuff before the end of June!

Take care and have fun!

More steam than I can handle...

2011-05-08T18:56:00.000+01:00

I said I'd be working really this week to make up for not really getting enough done while the kids were off school for Easter. I didn't realise just how hard that would be when I wrote it, or rather just how hard I'd be working. Sometimes life just throws one at you and I really need to.. oh, about triple my income for June and July. Which are usually quite quiet months for me, especially July. So full steam ahead became exploding boiler ahead and I haven't stopped.

For starters I've picked up 6 project commissions for the July and August issues of Creative Beads & Jewellery magazine. Six is quite a lot, especially given that my deadlines are end of May/beginning of June for the respective issues. I also quoted a friend on some web design work. I'm no pro, just significantly more able than she is. It's only the work of an afternoon or so, but it still needs squeezing in. Oh and either the fall or winter issue of Stringinghas a deadline in June as well, which I really ought to submit things for.

I've also spent the last few days really looking at what available stock I have. Amazon is the most sales-effective platform I use, so I've been getting an awful lot of my in-house stock ready to be shipped off to amazon fulfillment centres. Which, while quite time intensive in the short term, tends to be really quite good for me. I love my amazon store.

Vintaj lovers can probably look forward to Vintaj multipacks at some point in the very near future too - I carry an awful lot of Vintaj stock and while I stock it on both my components website and in my eBay store, I need it to be moving a little faster which should mean some multipack bargains soon! I could also really use adding more of my own Vintaj design ideas to my website, and writing up some Vintaj tutorials.

Added to that, I've got some new lines coming in for my manufactured costume jewellery on amazon, and I'm still awaiting over 100kg of gorgeous lampwork beads to arrive (which will then need sorting and putting on sale!) it looks like a busy month or so ahead. On the plus side, I should have my husband available to help out - he's a contract engineer without much contract work for the next couple of months.

So to deal with all that, I have literally scheduled the next 3 weeks, in approximately 2 hourly slots, from 6.00am to 8pm (and at 8pm I usually go for a run). Which admittedly is not new, but this is all extra in addition to what is usually on my generic every-week schedule. I have to admit after a week of it I'm feeling very accomplished but also very, very tired.

I'm thinking of taking August off to recover. Except my Augusts are usually spent preparing for the Christmas season. No rest for the wicked, or even the slightly naughty!

Back to normality!

2011-05-02T23:01:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow my 3 school-aged kids go back to school after what seems like forever. They all had two weeks off for Easter break, then were back at school for two days (one day that week was an inset day - teacher training kind of thing!), then the entire country ground to a halt for the Royal Wedding, and finally today was May Day which is another holiday here. So the kids have been off for almost three weeks straight which plays havoc with my working schedule. But tomorrow they're back at school and it's weeks before they have half term which means I can get back to normal.

I haven't been idle for that time, just desperately trying to keep up with the essentials. I had a craft fair I'd forgotton about last Saturday so spent Royal Wedding day frantically putting together some new stock for it. While I sold plenty at said craft fair, none of those brand-new pieces went so I got to bring them home to photograph and show you. Nothing too fancy - I was REALLY trying for quick makes due to the time constraints but they are pretty and unusual. Firstly some bracelets.

This one is a Czech glass button wrapped in Vintaj filigree with brass beads and Swarovski crystals to make a really rather pretty bracelet. Most of the Vintaj components I use can be found on my princess-jewellery website. There's even a page which links to the various Vintaj worksheets on how to do stuff - including how to use filigree for wrapping stones and making bails.

This one is rhodochrosite with a Vintaj brass art deco swirls centrepiece and more Swarovski crystals.

Finally this cute charm bracelet is a mix of peridot and Swarovski crystals with Vintaj charms.

I made a selection of new necklaces as well, all with more filigree-wrapped Czech glass buttons.

This one combined a lovely lilac organza with brass chain and Vintaj filigree. I love the colours in this button.

Next up is this lovely green & gold button teamed with serpentine and freshwater pearls.

Next is a blue button with lapis lazuli and freshwater pearls.

And finally, a filigree-wrapped titanium coated druzy agate pendant. This one isn't new, I wrapped the stone a while back but forgot I had it until I was hunting desperately for stock to sell on Saturday. I really love the titanium-coated druzy cabs, they are stunning.

As I've now got no craft fairs for about 2 months, this lot will be packaged straight up to go to amazon. Amazon hold and dispatch an awful lot of my inventory and I have finally kicked myself into getting an organized, browsable display which can be viewed (and shopped) from anywhere I put it - purchases are all through amazon and items are all dispatched by amazon. Hopefully this will work, I've yet to test it in a blog post, but here is my shiny, new, organized amazon shop (opens in new window/tab). Technically I can make it display as part of the blog post but sadly that cuts of half the menu items down the right hand side so I shan't do that!

Time is ticking away...!

2011-04-22T07:18:00.000+01:00

It's been a good 10 days since I last wrote on here. In my defense, it is Easter break and my three school-age kids are all home. I've also been making up new jewellery destined for my amazon store and as it's all silver - and as I live in the UK - I find it far mor sensible to make up a fair amount as I have to send it off to be hallmarked at a British government assay office. Speaking of which, when they received my order, one of the ladies who worked there rang me up to ask how I'd feel about her taking a bracelet and sending the cash back with the rest of my hallmarking. Given the thousands and thousands of pieces of jewellery which go through my assay office every week, I was immensely flattered.

This is the coveted bracelet, in Sterling silver with freshwater pearls, amethyst and Swarovski crystal. I love the imperfections you get in dyed freshwater pearls - to me they really add a taste of 'unique'. They are rather lovely and should hit my amazon store in a couple of weeks (we have 3 public holidays in the next week, including today so things aren't moving quite so fast as they usually would!)

I also spent a couple of DAYS sorting our all my beads and focals into fabby compartmented storage boxes. I did have them sorted by colour or type before - so all my blue gemstone beads were dumped in one box, all my pearls were dumped in one box and so forth but now I can see exactly what I've got. I am not the most organized of people so sorting through everything felt like a major achievement. I reduced the space used for storing my jewellery-making stuff drastically and also weeded out all the redundancy in my stock-keeping area, freeing up some shelves and storage boxes for a large shipment of pretty lampwork beads I expect to arrive soon - they were ordered about a month ago and I always ask the manufacturer to take extra care with making sure they're kiln-annealed properly so the lampwork doesn't break - this means my goods take a little longer to arrive but they're better made than might be the case if I didn't specificy my need for high quality.

While sorting through my beads, I found some awesome petrified wood beads (essentially, fossilised wood) and thought it was high time I made something with them. This necklace, and it's brothers were the result.

It's pretty and stylistically, very me. I love the rich colours of the pearls coupled with the freeform slabs of petrified wood. I made three of these and still haven't decided whether to steal one.

Finally, remember the Vintaj challenge I entered with my pretty Woodland Blush necklace? I came in 4th, which I was fairly ecstatic with given the quality of design talent featured! I am probably not going to find time to enter the next one but hopefully subsequent ones can be scheduled in.

Finally, tomorrow I have a craft fair. It's a while (as in months) since I've done one - I usually prefer not to do them as the time involved in sorting stuff, spending the day away, and unsorting stuff on my return isn't usually worth it for the return, given the time lost on my regular work schedule but I was asked to go along as a favour to the organiser (my sister!). So today I'm pretty much dedicating to sorting out stock and pricing for that.

Take care!

Stephie

My favourite places!

2011-04-10T19:25:00.002+01:00

I follow quite a few blogs within the jewellery making and beady world. As I'm mid making stuff and have yet to photograph anything I thought I'd share a few of my favourites with you and tell you why I find them so enthralling. This is only a very small selection of those I read but for various reasons I think they're my favourites. There's a little bit of a lack in pictures on this post for which I apologise. I'd love to use a picture from each blog to illustrate what I love about them but its not really very good form to steal pictures without asking (and I'm too impatient to wait for permission!). Schedule says 'write blog post' NOW!

My resolution for this week is to comment on more blog posts. Sometimes I read the blogs I subscribe to and just ASSUME that because these are all fabulously talented people who are mainly well known and established within the niche of beady-worldness that another randomer commenting on their blogs isn't something they'd want. Then I remember we're all people and everyone likes comments :o) I don't comment enough when I'm blown away by something or have an opinion on a post. I should do it more.

A Bead In Time
I couldn't do a blog list without mentioning A Bead In Time, the blog from www.madcowbeads.com, partially because I work on a freelance basis for them but mainly because they are a super source of low-cost and very cool beads and findings here in the UK. The picture is of glass ready to go into one of their fabulous hotpot microwave kilns - amazing fused glass jewellery from the comfort of your own kitchen!

Earthenwood Studios
The blog from the supremely talented Melanie at Earthenwood Studios. This is probably the blog I read that I've been following the longest - I first started reading a good couple of years back when Melanie was developing and researching her line of Steampunk ceramic beads and components. I love her style and her vision and have a gorgeous rainbow pendant from her that I really must incorporate into something at some point soon! More of Melanie's components are available in her etsy store and on the Earthenwood website.

Jennifer Jangles
Jennifer is another very talented - but very different to Melanie at Earthenwood - ceramic artist with the added bonus of designing fabrics and ribbons in her own very unique style. I love this blog because its so much FUN. The bright colours and designs really appeal and looking at Jennifer's posts always makes me smile. I'm also insanely jealous of her studio space which is amazing! Jennifer's beautiful beads, components and some of her ribbons and fabrics are available in her Jangles etsy shop.

Missficklemedia
I've literally only discovered this blog from Shannon LeVart in the last week and promptly spent about 3+ hours reading all the back posts and marvelling at the pictures of her work. Shannon creates the most extraordinary aged-metal pieces with patinas to cover all the colours of the rainbow (she has her own line in patnia colours as well and I want some! Next time I have some spare cash, that's where I'm going :o). More than that her personality and outlook on life really shine through her blog making it an absolute delight to read. Missficklemedia's etsy shop is here (currently closed for a short period but due back later this month!).

Sigaliot Designs
This blog features the most amazing polymer clay beads from Sagit at Sagaliot designs. The colours and contrasts are just amazing and I fell in love with Sagit's beads when I saw them. they have a wonderful psychadelic feel to the patterning and colour use. This is another on my list of absolutely must-own-some! Go look at the pretties - you won't be disappointed. You can find Sigaliot Designs etsy shop right here!

Daily Dialogue... with Jess from Vintaj is always absolutely stunning. I love Vintaj components and Jess is one of their fabulously talented designers. It's always both fun and inspiring to see what's going on in the Vintaj studios. Its also the home of the Vintaj monthly challenge which I've entered for the first time this month!

Sea of Glass
Blog from Melissa Rediger of Sea of Glass. I saw Melissa's beads online and against my usually mantra of 'look don't buy PLEASE look don't buy' had a very weak moment and went shopping in her fabulous store. Her beads arrived to me from the USA in an impressively short span of time and they are STUNNING. Absolutely gorgeous and I don't regret my little splurge in the slightest - all I'm concerned about is my ability to do them justice in the jewellery I make. Go look, they will knock you out!

Finally Good Quill Hunting is an absolutely stunning blog on jewellery seed bead weaving/embroidery. I am constantly stunned by the level of detail and brilliant mixes of colours and bead sizes in these designs and eagerly await new posts detailing the latest works and works-in-progress. She's amazingly talented, I could look at these pieces for hours.

Take care,
Stephie x

I'm a little nervous...

2011-04-09T08:33:00.002+01:00

The entry stage for the Vintaj monthly challenge closed yesterday and I have to confess to being a little nervous about voting opening on Monday. I've been entering design competitions, designing for jewellery magazines & beading websites and selling my work for years - but I've never submitted any jewellery to a challenge with a public voting mechanism and the thought of complete strangers - many of whom are superbly talented in MY field - judging my work is a little nerve wracking. Will my design be the one sitting there with no votes for the duration? Will it look silly and amateurish alongside truly stunning designs? Just as a recap this is what I entered.

I was happy with the end result, but is it good enough? We shall see.

I've had a busy week this week, mainly creating what I tend to call my 'commercial' jewellery - thats jewellery which can be made up in multiples to be sold from my website or my amazon store. I prefer one-off designing at several hours per piece but multiples of simple designs is how I pay my bills - from an economic point of view it makes a lot of sense. There were a bunch of earrings - some new, and some of which I was remaking existing sold-out designs. New earrings have yet to be photographed so I shall save them for next week. I also made up a bunch of bracelets in two designs.

This one is a mix of freshwater pearls, amethyst and Swarovski crystals and is really quite pretty. I love the colour mix and each bracelet has 75 beads individually wired and attached.

This one felt really summery with its mix of citrine, shell pearl, sunstone, rhodochrosite, yellow jade and ruby. This particular style looks fabulous worn but I always find it difficult to photograph well. I may need to redo the pictures before selling them.

As I'm in the UK, all those bracelets need to be sent off to a British government assay office for metal testing and hallmarking before I sell them - legally in my country we can't sell anything as Sterling silver or gold (or platinum) above a certain weight without first getting the items assayed and hallmarked. For silver this is 7.8 grams - so my earrings and pendants are usually fine without, bracelets and necklaces usually need hallmarking. It makes more financial sense to send a bigger lot in for hallmarking so I really want to get up to at least 20 pieces in the package before I send it - I currently have 10 so it will be another couple of weeks before I can sell these - and I have a load more bracelets and necklaces to make up!

I finally got one of my decorated Vintaj art pendants, made with a beautiful 40mm Bamboo Bezel, to my beading table. I made this batch of pendants in (I think!) January and have been particularly terrible at finding time to turn them into wearable jewellery that I was happy to make (I could have stuck it on a chain at any point of course, but I wanted to make something a little more special). This was the end result:

There's a lot of design elements in there. I'm not 100% about the pearl clusters - whether they should be there at all, whether they work as they are or whether there should be a second set of clusters on the next bit of chain up. I shall continue to think about that! I loved the way the 16mm Filigree Bead Caps fit my lapiz lazuli so nicely - I often have problems getting bead caps to work for my but the Vintaj ones are so soft and mouldable around my stones that they tend to work perfectly. The 21mm Diamond Filigree worked very well curlyed over as a decorative bail to the pendant drop - much nicer than just using the jump ring to attach!

Until next time!
Stephie x

New VINTAJ items now in stock!

2011-04-04T09:15:00.000+01:00

Dear all

My new supplies of Vintaj finally arrived! As always they are absolutely superbly detailed and very beautiful/ I am totally in love with the Mythical Wings embellishments - I look at these and see massive potenial for sanding off the highlights and colouring with beautiful alcohol inks or acrylic paints, and just a couple of seconds with a mini drill turns them into fabulous pendants. These are definitely my favourites of the new items, although all are stunning.

Is it just me or do you see it too? I think that definitely has to be my 'play' item for this week!

There is, of course, more than just beautiful fairy wings. I love the tiny, sweet Nouveau connecters which Megan Sharkey of Vintaj incorporated into the necklace below:

Wendy Mullane of Vintaj used the gorgeous diamond filigrees as a clever wrap for enhancing stones in earrings. I also see great potential for these filigrees to make beautiful and unusual bails.

Have a browse through my Vintaj products at www.princess-jewellery.net, or if you prefer ebay, at my ebay shop.

Take care!
Stephie x

Photos and designs pictured are copyright VINTAJ Natural Brass Co. Used with permission.

I LOVE it when I finish things!

2011-03-31T18:59:00.000+01:00

I am the queen of unfinished projects. Jewellery, scultpure, fabric art, wirework, you name it, I have an unfinished piece lying around somewhere. Which is why I'm so happy that I've finished not one but TWO challenge pieces this week. One is too late to count, the other is well within the submission date (and the latter is an actual potential-to-win-something entry as well :o)

First off, this was done for Andrew Thornton's challenge LAST week. Which is too late but I'm sharing it anyway. I like to have low pressure things as an excuse to play. In this instance, I was trying out painting a brass keyplate with alcohol inks and glazing it (I used diamond glaze from madcowbeads.com which has worked well. Usually I'd use resin but I was in a hurry! I also needed to practise fringing. I'm not entirely happy with the result but I suspect that's because I used size 11 seed beads and I prefer size 15s. I loved the dark rainbow effect though.

And a closer view at the centrepiece:

The second piece was for the Vintaj Natural Brass March Challenge which has a deadline of 8th April - plenty of time left for you to enter too. I really loved the end result here - there's a beautiful Czech glass button from Pavi Yarns wrapped in a Vintaj filigree Passion Flower as the centrepiece and loads and loads of dyed freshwater pearls. The challenge title was 'Woodland Blush' and this piece reflects the current spring-ness of the woodland I walk through every day.

And a close up of that beautiful button:

Until next time!
Stephie x

Busy, busy week!

2011-03-28T17:49:00.000+01:00

I have such a busy week ahead! I'm still awaiting my shipment of beautiful Vintaj Components to sell from my princess-jewellery site and sorting them will be both fun and time consuming once they arrive. I also forgot I have all day Sunday on a craft shopping trip with my Mum and so didn't have time to finish the piece I was working on for Andrew Thornton's weekly word challenge - its a just for fun challenge that I particularly like simply because Andrew's choice of words always mesh very well with my mindset! I will finish that piece, hopefully this evening, even thought it's too late for that challenge!

I have got a few pieces left over from last week to show you. I have a few craft fairs coming up so sat and spent a day creating some one-off pieces specifically for the fairs.

This bracelet was very quick and easy to work up - it's three different colours of Sof-Suede (bought from madcowbeads.com) with the ends caught in Vintaj tube beads and copper charms added. It's really quick and easy to make.

I also did a beautiful copper and teal necklace using copper beads and glass pearls from Mad Cow Beads with a delicate filigree focal from Fire Mountain and some sparkly Swarovksi crystal dangles. I really love how the colour combination turned out in this.

Another simple necklace above in a lovely, almost ancient-feeling Serpentine and antuque brass combination. Again, I really loved how this came out. Most components and beads came from Fire Mountain.

And finally, a cute and quick pair of earrings featuring jade and Vintaj Fern Valley Fastenables. They're super quick and easy but so elegant and distinctive. I really adore these.

Take care!
Stephie x

Exciting Times in Stardust Land!

2011-03-24T19:04:00.007Z

I am excited! Partially I'm excited because the clocks go forward this weekend, meaning more light in the evenings (I can understand reluctance on those of you that consequentially have to leave for work in the dark. However, I don't :o). Partially I'm excited because I'm really, really trying to get myself organised. Sometimes I feel like I'm juggling an impossible number of things at once. I run two websites and sell on eBay and amazon.co.uk as well. I do craft fairs and have a family. I try and stay fit and walk and run every day. And it's nice to relax and sleep sometimes too. This all adds up to my running around in a non-productive, panic-stricken frenzy on a regular basis. but that will change for I have Organised my Life. This all adds up - in the context of this blog - to my having new shiny stuff to show you!

Firstly this, which doesn't have a name but will probably include the word 'Atlantean', as in Atlantis, as it reminds me very much of exquisite treasure being lost beneath the vastness of the ocean. It was my first try at... pretty much anything at all I did with this. It's basically a Paua shell cabochon with a peyote stitch bezel on a felt background. The felt border was freestyle embroidered with tiny size 15 seed beads, Swarovski crystals and larger baroque pearls, then a shimmering fringe was added and an Ultrasuede backing glued then stitched on. The necklace part is fairly straightforward stringing.
Secondly, I've been playing with my new line of findings. I stock Vintaj Natural Brass components over at www.princess-jewellery.net (new shiny things due in next week. Another reason to be excited!). The Vintaj site has loads of suggestions on working with Vintaj, some of which I've borrowed, adapted or altered to make my own stunning and unique components.
	Firstly here are some butterflies. The matching pair were coloured with alcohol inks and given a coat of resin to seal. The Black butterfly is on a small Bamboo Bezel which has been coloured with alcohol inks. The butterfy itself is Vintaj Arte Metal with a coat or Markal Paintstick and a little sparkling gold Pearl-Ex powder, once again all sealed with a coat of resin.
	This pendant was made with a large Bamboo Bezel, a swallow charm and a flower fastenable, and is coloured with a combination of alcohol inks, Pearl-Ex Powder and Markal Paintsticks (all the colourings were bought from Rainbow Silks). Similarly, the sunset flower pendant below and the waterlily border have been treated with the same materials to stunning effect. I hope to get some of these components made up into jewellery to show you next week!

	For my final Vintaj showcase, I took a 2.5cm Czech Glass button (A truly amazing and extensive selection are available at Pavi Yarns) and snipped the back fastener off (it had a wire loop for stitching onto garments). The bottom was then wrapped in a Passion Flower filigree - I'm midway through making a necklace with a similar wrapped button and it's looking truly stunning. More on that soon!
Finally, thanks to Melanie at Earthenwood Studios for some inspiration. I've been obsessively hunting down interesting escutcheon pieces after Melanie blogged about her beautiful antique and vintage key and keyplate finds. Sadly I have neither the time nor a great location to go hunting down old pieces, but you can buy some very interesting new ones if you hunt - I found loads at www.morehandles.co.uk. Here's a selection of fun things for me to experiment with:

2011-01-13T13:06:00.007Z

*looks at the clock*

Gosh, is it 2011 already? I've done it again, haven't I...?

While it may have been a tiny while since I last posted anything of note - or indeed anything at all - I have not been idle. The last few months have been incredibly busy building and maintaining web sales platforms, attending shows locally, writing for magazine and website jewellery features and trying to find the occasional time in which to play.

I've had a few magazine features over the last few months, mainly in the UK's Creative Beads & Jewellery magazine which I design for mainly in my capacity as designer for madcowbeads.com. Some exciting issues are coming up, so if you're in the UK and don't already get it, make sure you do! It's available from Hobbycraft, WH Smith and through good online magazine suppliers. Or you can subscribe direct at http://www.practicalpublishing.co.uk/creativebeads/. Amusingly I got something of a shock when I went to that page to check the link as the picture of the current issue has my necklace plastered all over the front. I didn't know it was being used on the cover (or even that it was in that issue!)

This is the necklace in question, made for madcowbeads.com where you can buy most of the components used:

I also turned up with a brief appearance in the USA's "Stringing" magazine in the Winter issue with this bracelet which at the time of writing is on sale at www.stardustandsparkles.co.uk. I like this, and have successfully managed to not steal it - thus far!

My other BIG news is that I was approved as an official supplier for Vintaj Natural Brass. There's not a huge number of Vintaj suppliers here in the UK so I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to offer their beautiful products. Vintaj make superbly high-quality findings and components, suitable for jewellery making, beading or pretty much any other craft you care to incorporate them into. My range is available on www.princess-jewellery.net (and I have a special section for those Vintaj components I think are particularly steampunk appropriate and have added some of my other steampunky bits; watch components, cogs, gears and hands etc component mixes).

I also had a play with my shiny new Vintaj components whilst making some last-minute Christmas gifts towards the end of last year. Photographs aren't great - they were for personal use rather than the professional-style photography lengths I go to on my selling-products but they'll give you an idea of how beautiful they are!

This one was made for my son's girlfriend

This one for my mum

And this one for a friend :o)

All three were made with a mix of Vintaj components, gemstones and pearls with a few extra bits thrown in - resin, alcohol ink, pearl ex powder, shiva paintsticks for starters and I thought they turned out quite well for my first attempt with resin!

Anyway I feel that's probably quite enough for now. I'd promise to write again soon but my track record ain't great... so I will write when I write :o)

Stephie

It's been a while...

2010-07-26T17:21:00.002+01:00

Yet again I find myself in a position where I've failed to post for several months. The last 5 posts don't really count as I just did them and backdated - they're copied over from my personal blog. I have however been a busy bunny over the last year. My Stardust and Sparkles jewellery and art website has been massively updated and is a lot more alive than it was previously.

I took up encaustic art (painting with hot wax) around Christmastime and have had a lot of fun with it - check out my encaustic art work on my website. I'm in love with the colours and that you don't need to be able to draw particularly well to produce really rather pretty paintings. I'm just about at the stage where I'm feeling confident talking about it. I've never been much good as an artist so it took a while to get rid of the mindset that anyone looking at my art would be laughing at the juvenileness of it all.

I've also set up a facebook page for Stardust and Sparkles. Its new and still at the stage where I'm overjoyed with any new 'Likes' so click on the box and like me, like me, like me! I promise not to post on it more than a couple of times a week, max and its great for keeping up with new and cool shiny things á la Stephie :o).

I'm also currently loving deviantart although it's been sadly neglected of late, and the wonderful Eni Oken's Jewelry Lessons site where I'm hoping to write tutorials. I enjoy writing them, I'm pretty good at it but I do prefer writing for cash.

Speaking of lessons, I'm in Creative Jewellery magazine and Stringing magazine this summer - the first with a necklace tutorial, the second with a pair of earrings. I've got tutorials coming up in Creative Beads & Jewellery magazine here in the UK as well - not entirely certain when - this year - but it was done in my capacity as designer for www.madcowbeads.com and Georgie, the business owner was handling the mag submissions. So I know I've got one - I think two but I'm uncertain - coming up soonish, along with a bracelet in the winter issue of Stringing.

Anyway... with any luck, the next thing you hear from me will be an update on the 52 weeks project. It's become abundantly clear that with craft fair bookings and small children, I don't have a chance in hell of managing one every week. I've started Week 6 - Bezel Settings but have yet to get to a stage where I feel I've accomplished much. I can set a stone in a plain bezel. Kinda. Thats not spectacular enough for me to be ready to post about it just yet :o)

Finally, I'm in the process of running down the beads-and-findings side of my business. There's still a few bargains to be picked up at my Princess Jewellery website and the main bulk of my stock is on ebay at my Princess Jewellery eBay Store. Postage is free for UK buyers and cheap for international buyers so don't miss out.

Until later!
Stephie

52 Weeks: Week 2 - Blowtorch

2010-06-12T06:44:00.001+01:00

OK... first off, 'blowtorch' was a bit of a misnomer, used entirely to amuse Jan with my obsession with increasingly high heat levels. It's actually a more generic 'introduction to metalsmithing'. For those of you not familiar with the intricacies of jewellery making, I'm a cold connection - and component-&-bead-based - jeweller. That means my metalworking is pretty much limited to bending bits of wire as things currently stand. I've never touched a saw or blowtorch or drill in a metal-jewellery related fashion.

I havea Book. Well, actually I have several books on the subject, but I'm working with one for this and it's the best in the business. It's Jewellery: Fundamentals of Metalsmithing by Tim McCreight. I've read to page 48 and my design has developed in my head as I've went.

This is my initial sketch (yeah so my sketching ability is appalling. I am well aware of this). then my computer-drawn template

So... having been up in the middle of the night for several hours, I'm going to firstly make sure I know where my copper and silver sheet is, then get some more sleep. Then I need to texture a sheet, mark out the template on the relevant sheets, saw the bits out, file them smooth, rivet them together and solder twirly bits of wire together and to the pendant. The wire design will probably change. Then make and attach a bail.

How hard can it be?

OK.... now finished the pendant and will tell y'all how I made it.

First off was to make the copper base. I stuck (literally, with sticky-back paper) my template onto a sheet of copper, figured out how the eff to thread a jewellery saw and tried sawing. Then promptly gave up and used sheet metal shears instead.

Tools

Basic copper rectangle. HOW cute is my mini-anvil?!

Couldn't get away with that for the inside to hunted out my mini drill, drilled a start hole and sawed away the inside. My sawing needs a LOT of work. I spent an awfully long time filing it to right angles and straight edges afterwards.

Hole cut out

Then I ruined all that careful filing by deciding the copper would look better textured, taking a ball-headed hammer and hitting it lots to get the dimpled texture. Then filed some more.

Textured

Next I cut two pieces of pre-patterned sterling silver strip and drilled holes in it, marked where the first hole would go when it was on the copper, and drilled that too. Then made rivets for it. Usually rivits would be made whilst in the holes but because the strip was patterned I figured I'd be better off doing the first rivet head before inserting it so clamped the wire with a tiny by sticking up and hammered it to a head. Then stuck it through the holes, trimmed it and hammered the other head on the flat back copper side. Then rivited the other three corners the same way.

Rivited silver strip

And the back where you can actually see the riviting. I'm rather proud of them :p (the back is cleaned up finished!)

Next up was making the curly whatsits which was the easy bit coz twisting bits of wires with pliers is essentially what I do for a living. Then I hammered them a bit to flatten and harden them. and spent quite some time nervously glancing at my blowtorch. I DID do two test solders to get a feel for it on some scrap before I actually attacked the real pendant. My soldering is messy but it IS my first day doing it and it's not something I have any feel for yet.

Between soldering and finishing the clean & polish!

Then it was a case of dump it in some mild acid to get rid of the (terrifyingly dark) marking you get from heating it then cleaned it lots. I was going to make a bail and solder it on but was terrified of killing it so used a pre-made one that I had sitting around here and added a chain. Took about 8 or so hours from initial sketch to completion.

Ta-daaa - finished.

52 Weeks: Week 3 - Fabric Fusing

2010-05-23T17:20:00.001+01:00

OK - this week is fabric fusing, a wide-open area that concerns joining fabric together and marking it using heat. A soldering iron to be precise. I've never tried it before but I read a book on Thursday so it's allll good.

This week is not getting off to the best start. For starters I'd already written the first para of this then Jay used the PC for some sheet music software and it vanished. LJ usually autosaves (I write these in my personal journal initially on LiveJournal - for those of you who are reading from elsewhere) - it hadn't. I'd selected the lot and hit ctrl+C - had it copied? Had it fuck.

Anyway.... what I had written was how this week was off to a less than auspicious start. I thought I had plenty or organza - I was wrong, and organza is the fabric all the lit states is best for starting with. Also it's sheer which for an awful lot of this technique is essential. Nonetheless I've hunted out what I have - mainly scraps - raided the jewellery drawers for leftover organza jewellery pouches, raided the ribbon drawer for organza ribbon and checked upstairs for chiffony scarves (no joy - I suspect they're packed up in black bags-for-carbooting and stored at my sister's). Tomorrow, I may start looking at clothing I rarely wear in a whole new light... NO, I already packed everything that I didn't like / didn't fit into black bags and dumped them at my sister's. There may be some voile curtains upstairs... and I'm sure there's a small chiffon tablecloth around somewhere as well...

That's what I had written. And what I was coming back to write is that my effing fabric scissors have vanished off the face of the earth which is unfortunate. I have other scissors, obviously, but the fabric ones are REALLY, sharp and good for erm... fabric. I had a relatively new pair of paper & card scissors that would have done the job prior to last week when I was using them to hack sheets of plastic. I rather suspect they're a bit blunter now.

This is why I can't find anything - studio mess!

Anyway... I have amassed large quantities of small pieces of organza, large quantities of larger pieces of non-sheer but definitely fusable fabric and lace & netting stuff, some felt for backing, a bunch of templates (I'm really regretting letting Geoff throw away the zillions of leftover sheets-with-interesting-holes in where he's popped out game pieces from their card sheets in the past). My soldering iron is at the ready, the window is open, and my peculiar-looking but essential anti-poison mask awaits.

Flattering, huh?

I have no idea if if will help with plastic fumes, it was bought to protect against breathing spray-on glue and spray paint. And the final essential - a large ceramic tile. The books suggest glass which I personally feel is a recipe for disaster. Ceramic will work just as well as a surface for working with heat and has the added advantage that the edges are unlikely to shred my fingers. For those of you who visit often enough to recognise it, yes it is the type of tile on my kitchen floor and no, I didn't excavate one an inconspicuous place. Although I may have considered it were there not spares in a cupboard.

Tools & materials & stuffs

The rest of my 'evening' (OK, it's 4am but you know what I mean) is going to be engaged with the boring but essential task of making lots of usable sized pieces..

...and at 6am I have finished cutting bits of fabric up. I know, I know, the main event is taking a little while with this one.

Given that I did not, in fact, have the relevant amounts of organza I am largely going to ignore the hand-holding that goes with following craft books. I'm also going to play with small panels rather than big ones coz I don't have the fabric for large....

OK turns out I do have a bunch of voile curtains sitting unused for the last 3 years. I've nicked two (I have more but only two colours).

Initial tests with soldering iron - my first time!

Initial experiments taught me two things. a) Pastels are not my friend in this medium. b) I need to sharpen my soldering iron tip to a finer tool.

And sadly the rest of my Saturday were taken up with real work, Finn's birthday party and - arghh! - being ill and sleeping and now, at 4.30 on Sunday morning the sickness is not feeling any better. I feel fairly crappy although my temperature is now back within the realms of normal which is an improvement.

So.. Sunday 2pm. Sunday I have produced something that I like - see:

My first real fabric fusing piece

It's done by fusing layers of fabric and then cutting pieces away from the top - see?

How I did it

What do you see? I know what I see (and Darren got it instantly in a that's-obvious voice. Geoff took a bit of squinting but again got it more or less right with a bit of prompting). It's currently entirely fused-with-a-soldering-iron fabric pieces with a bit of purely ornamental hand stitching. I am considering adding machine stitching for definition although I may save that technique test for another project and leave this one as is....

...OK, I did opt for adding machine stitching and am pleased I did. I like the finished effect. And that's it for this week coz I'm out of time. There's a LOT more with this I'd like to try and at some point in the near future will try and put aside some play time. It was fairly time intensive, plus I've been ill and busy doing real stuff this weekend but for a first effort I'm pleased with what I produced. It doesn't photograph well, fabric too shiny and sparkly.

Machine stitched and finished - about 8 by 8 inches

Next week is an even vaguer topic in that it's 'do something with acrylic medium'. Which could be anything really, haven't decided yet. Mainly I just want to know how it behaves as I've never touched the stuff.

52 Weeks: Week 2 - Friendly Plastic

2010-05-17T17:19:00.000+01:00

So... what is friendly plastic?

It's a craft-specific material that comes in plastic strips (and pellets but I'm not using them at the minute) which is malleable when heated. It comes in a wide range of metallic and foiled finishes. See the picture below.

Friendly Plastic & tools.

Having spent a couple of hours getting a feel for the material and heat required I needed more. Specifically, its a product I don't have any literature on, anywhere. After a couple of hours I also came to the conclusion that this particular material would benefit greatly from the use of some bezel settings although sadly I don't have any.

Early Efforts

Early efforts kinda look like a 5 year old has went mental with modelling clay and metallic paint. So some refining neccessary...

Completed componants

I did a fair amount more. It's not growing on me particularly. It's kinda like a very limited version of polymer clay (which is all kinds of awesome). Sure it has a speed advantage - poly clay needs to be over baked - but while polymer clay is incredibly versatile, friendly plastic just isn't. You're stuck with the colours it comes in, EVERYTHING sticks to it when it's hot and needs coating in oil to prevent this - which also means after it needs washing in soapy water, it's thinness means making items with embedded components (like loops to form drops or pendants) isn't terribly practical - you'd need to double up sticks and relatively speaking that works out rather costly.

Textured and made into a brooch

Also you can texture it - it does take textures nicely, subject to coating everything with oil - but the minute you need to heat it up again (I've found that late heating for re-cutting and for adding a backpiece are both frequently neccessary) you lose the bloody texture. Silicone stamps / texture plates work well, plastic ones do not - even with the oil as a release agent they stick.

What can I say about it that's nice...? The colours are cool and it makes nice brooches and it IS pretty fast to work with. I might have found it more palatable if I had some bezel settings which I suspect would work very well with it.

Finished Jewellery - Other Brooches

Ring

Pendants & Necklace

Either way, it's reasonably well suited to jewellery and so jewellery is what I turned the shiny bits into and I think my main problem is that Friendly Plastic is, well, plastic. It feels cheap and from the back, at least, looks cheap. Polymer clay is plastic as well but doesn't have that cheap & nasty feel to it (and poly clay can imitate just about any material that isn't transparent).

Cheap-looking back

While I've made these bits into jewellery, I actually see me having more use for it incorporating bits into mixed media artwork which among other things, firmly hides the back (as would the bezel settings I wished for earlier).

So all in all this week was disappointing. Next week... fabric fusing. Largely a mixed media art experiment although I'm curious about the necklace / bracelet making potential as well.

52 Weeks: Week 1 - Wax Landscapes Part3

2010-05-09T17:17:00.000+01:00

OK... better day today. Somewhere along the line I improved a couple of earlier ones (or at least modified them!) so I'll start with them.

IMPROVED 1

I mentioned to someone that I thought this might look better with little flowers added. And figured I didn't have anything to lose. It does look better. Not brilliant, but better than it did.

IMPROVED 2

This was my first attempt at castles. Due to the nature of the medium, they're more suggestive. Not especially happy with them but needed to try.

Now... onto the actual attempts

Attempt 11

Attempt 11 - Another castle attempt while playing with textures and marks. I'm... undecided on this one. Done on the hotplate with a silicone rubber tipped thingy. Thats a technical term.

ATTEMPT 12

Attempt 12 - heh, I like this. Crystaline cave. The 'crystals' were done by dabbing a brayer on (little mini rubber roller), waterfall done with tissue and sponge.

ATTEMPT 13

Attempt 13 - I quite like this as well. Sky could be more variegated but I like the slightly surrealistic colour. Part iron, part sponge.

ATTEMPT 14

Attempt 14 - this I like although the background could do with softening. It looks better 'in the flesh'. Done with iron, stylus, tissue and hotplate

ATTEMPT 15

Attempt 15 - my final one before calling it quits on week 1. and I do like this. Sea, sky and island all done with hotplate and tissue, foreground done with the iron.

So... the objective was to improve my wax landscape technique and I did. In about 10 hours total over 3 sessions. Objective was also to explore techniques I shy away from usually and there's a fair amount of iron and stylus work there both of which aren't my usual MO. And there was some new techniques in there - stamping with my brayer and working with tissue are both things I haven't tried before.

Just to finish up I played around with abstract texture and depth.

TEXTURE 1

Texture 1 - This was done entirely with cotton buds. Yes the thing you clean your ears with. Then iron-blotted with tissue afterwards.

TEXTURE 2

And this was done but putting my wax card down onto the hotplate on it, drawing melty wax strips on it then dragging a wiggly poly clay cutter down and up and left and right. Then blasting it with a hot air gun. To see what happened.

It's been interesting and rather fun :) Next week is Friendly Plastic, something I've never used before.

52 Weeks: Week 1 - Wax Landscapes Part2

2010-05-08T19:16:00.000+01:00

OK... well I'm slightly disabled this morning with stressy everyone and hordes of children wandering into my office (where my studio is).

ATTEMPT 6

But Attempt 6 went ahead nonetheless and reminded me of two things. 1. The first picture of a session is ALWAYS crap. 2. I hate using metallics for anything other than detail & highlight work. Don't try and paint hills and skies in them.

ATTEMPT 7

Attempt 7 - at this point I figured it would hurt too much to have a little hotplate help.

I also came to the conclusion that I find it REALLY difficult to do anythingwith constant interruptions, noisy kids, and stressy husband. So after a little play on the hotplate, I'll end part 2 and try again in the middle of the night when there's no-one around to bug me.

So attempt 7 anyway. I'd switched to the hotplate because I was frustrated putting the sky down with an iron. Hotplate and tissue got the colour mix I wanted but it did kinda go downhill from there once back on the iron. Just... messy and not very good.

ATTEMPT 8

Attempt 8 was a deliberate hotplate abstract. Quite often abstracts can suggest landscapey type scenes so it was a case of putting the wax down, crossing my fingers and plodging my card in. I quite liked what I got and added ironwork around the edges. I see the view from inside a cave, looking out at the reflection in a lake of a forest burning. You may see whatever you see fit.

ATTEMPT 9

ATTEMPT 9 Upsidedown

Attempt 9 was literally cleaning up the wax on my hotplate fro the previous. I haven't decided which way up it goes. There's either a sky or a river depending on the orientation. Its not great but it WAS just cleaning up wax.

ATTEMPT 10

Finally attempt 10. hotplate & tissue sky, ironed hills and foliage. Kinda makes me think of the beginning of spring in the Swiss alps. Why Swiss... dunno it makes me think of cowbells and shepherdess girls in traditional dress. But fails to impress, hence coming to the decision that this is perhaps better done without distractions. Or at least when I'm in a marginally better mood.

52 Weeks: Week 1 - Wax Landscapes Part 1

2010-05-08T17:14:00.000+01:00

Part 1. Of probably 3 :) I was writing as I went and figured it was going to be best to break it down.

Soo... week 1 - wax landscapes

As I've said, I'm appallingly bad at wax landscaping. This frustrates me. So I'm starting off my little project with tackling them. There's a number of issues I have with it, and first amongst them is that I find encaustic irons incredibly clunky to work with. I'm a jeweller, I'm used to manipulating tiny things with microprecision. Painting with an iron is like... trying to do wirework with a mechanics toolkit. Clunky and awkward.

And for interested parties, this is my studio setup. Theres some info on the details under the picture (if you click through it) :)

More pictures of my setup for wax in my Scrapbook

So why not just leave it...? Because I know what CAN be done with that damn iron and I'm not going to be foiled by a flat block of hot steel. Not yet anyway. If you want to take a look at the possibilities, take a look - HERE

So I started out with a supply of A6 cards for practise. Looks like I'm gonna need them...

ATTEMPT 1

Firstly, ignore the fingerprints. Encaustic art needs polishing after making at which point they go :) and I haven't done it yet as this is essentially a WIP post.
Attempt one convinced me to never use black wax in this way. It just gets in the way and makes it difficult to work over the top (most of my waxes are transparent). And while every encaustic book on the planet waxes lyrical (excuse the pun) about how easy it is to do-over a picture you don't like - what IS near impossible is to do over PARTS pf a picture. So I like my sky and my foreground foliage but hate my hills. Tough, either get rid of the lot or keep the lot pretty much. I didn't like the first attempt although later I'll fire up the hotplate and try passively smoothing it (wax paper is totally non porous - so ACTIVE smoothing just tends to push the wax off areas of the paper).

ATTEMPT 2

Attempt two was less ambitiously coloured and less awful but still far from acceptable. And also boring. Thats another thing about landscapes ie I don't actually LIKE traditional landscapes much. It's kinda meh... I can see that wandering around outside in full, glorious, 3 dimensional technicolour why would I try and paint an inferior version?

So the answer... go with something I do love. The fantastical. Time to break out the pink and purple paints.

It's all good. I'm learning. 1. Don't landscape in black paint. 2. Paint things you like. And 3. level of heat matters.

ATTEMPT 3

So... attempt 3. I felt marginally more in control. Still not happy but can see some improvement and this one had a better sense of dimension, I thought. More practise in the same vein required

ATTEMPT 4

Attempt 4. Now I actually feel like I'm progressing. Its generally much more pleasing and I've added some stylus detail in as well. Not brilliantly executed stylus work but it helps I think. I like the suggestion of being at the bank of a great river. I don't like the bottom right, it looks overworked. In fact looking at it again I'm not keen on the foreground in general. But I like the sky and the lake and the birds.

ATTEMPT 5

Attempt 5. Part of me thinks I'm regressing. This one has better definition and depth than the previous but qually it has less detail and just feels... like a step backwards. However it's 4.22am in the morning, I've been at this for 3 hours and that could just be a sign that I need to sleep.

Tomorrow - another few of tries at iron-only (more or less) landscaping, the addition of castles and if I get to a stage where I'm halfway satisfied, I'll move on to the hotplate.

52 Weeks

2010-04-28T17:12:00.000+01:00

Is a project in the making.

OK, anyone who is even vaguely familiar with me is aware my attention span is... limited. That's why I haven't taken over the world yet ^_^. I get distracted too easily and while I would love to spend the next year mastering some art of craft form to it's absolute best, we all know it ain't gonna happen. Not because I doubt my ability to do so... but because I get very distracted very easily. And bored. Let's not forget my capacity for boredom.

Add to that the fact I've spent the last four months largely working 14+ hour days and I really sort of need an enforced break. A few weeks off work isn't practical so I'll opt for enforced mental break... which brings me back to the 52 weeks project rather neatly.

It's really rather simple. I own vast amounts of items for innumerable different arts and crafts. I mean seriously, I have a shopping habit and magpie-like powers of resistance when it comes to shiny Stuff. I own stuff in the regions of tens of thousands of £££ purely because I have days when I thought "wow, that looks cool". This is not exactly laudable but it DOES mean I canuse the resources at my disposal to tackle a different craft/art/product/theme every single week for a year. I don't want to be too limiting so I'm quite happy to go witha broad "Jewellery" one week, an area specific "Precious Metal Clay" another week or an item specific "something using stamps" another. There are rules. Rule one is a minimum of an hour a day (average over the course of a week... so expect lots of frantic Sundays). Rule 2 is a write up of the week by the evening of the Monday. Rule 3 is post pics, including of the design process!

Why? For fun, for motivation, to feel vaguely justified in my purchases, to develop new skills and to remind myself of exactly what I own, amongst others. And curiousity. What can I come up with given self imposed incentive?

So... for this to work, I need to come up with 52 weeks of Stuff. And I will stick to the order or I'll waste far too much time trying to decide what to do in a given week. Yes I have everything on this list (or the materials for) lying around my studio/workshop areas ^_^. You see my point?

1. Wax Landscapes
2. Friendly Plastic
3. Fabric Fusing
4. Acrylic Medium
5. Blow Torch
6. Stone Setting
7. Cardmaking
8. Fabric Paints
9. yarn
10. Aluminium
11. Embroidery thread
12. Stamps
13. Stencils
14. Acrylic Paints
15. Devopatch
16. Printable Fabric
17. Pastels
18. Polymer Clay
19. quilling
20. Embossing crystals
21. Dried Flowers
22. Moulds
23. Egg Shells
24. Napkin decoupage
25. Mask decorating
26. Buttons
27. Paper collage
28. Fabric sculpture
29. Quilting fabrics
30. Silk paper making
31. Machine embroidery
32. Bondaweb
33. Coloured pencils
34. Chinese fabrics
35. Sead beading
36. Fabric art collage
37. Wax collage
38. Epoxy resin
39. Opal cutting
40. Piercing
41. Precious metal clay
42. Paper sculpture
43. Novelty cards
44. Embellishment pendants
45. Abstract watercolour
46. Gemstones
47. Watercolour fairies
48. Wood sculpting
49. Textural fabric collage
50. Wire sculpting
51. Bookmaking
52. Wire Crochet

So... week one starts on Monday 3rd May (it makes sense for my final day to be a Sunday in a given week - that's when I'm most likely to be able to find time to catch up).

Stay tuned for week 1 - Wax Landscapes. I've chosen that as my starting point because I love wax and I'm pretty crap at landscaping with it. So a few hours of actually working at it rather than giving up and trying something else will probably be good for me :o)

From Concept to Completion: Making Jewellery

2009-09-22T20:11:00.006+01:00

Ever wondered how jewellery designers come up with their ideas? What design factors are taken into account (and what commercial limitations there are in place)? Here I aim to give you an idea of my concept-to-product process.

A sunny afternoon in late July is not really the setting one might expect a winter jewellery collection to be conceptualised in but that’s exactly what I was doing this summer.

July is the perfect time for me. Summer is slow on the jewellery components and beads side and I like to stocktake over the summer to ensure everything is ready for the September rush on jewellery making customers. So I close my online shops in late July, take everything I want to use to make jewellery and then frantically make as much as possible for a month before stocktaking and re-opening my shops in September. This lets me get a wide range of items designed and made before my manic sales of the final four months of the year start.

I was sitting outside one very clear morning in July and the clouds were like little fragmented puffs of ice. My ‘Winter Fantasy’ collection is based around those beautifully crisp, clear mornings in winter where the dawn lights up the entire sky in barely-there shades of pink, blue, lilac and lemon with dotted white clouds. Think the morning after snowfall when the sun is glinting off bright white snow and frozen icicles. The ‘Fantasy’ part comes from my love of the magical and whimsical. About half of my collection features unicorns, pegusi, fairies, stars, moons and the like.

Moving from the concept to actual jewellery is a careful process. First I look at the colours and pick out appropriate shades in Swarovski crystal and occasionally, glass beads. I’ve used a lot of crystal AB, light sapphire, aquamarine, light rose, rosewater opal and violet opal among others. Then I look at my Sterling silver components. I sell components in various finishes of silver from very dark antiqued to the bright, almost white silver of very highly polished findings. It was the latter which were incorporated into this range.

Next is design and make. It’s important to get a balance between artistry and retail savviness if you’re depending on sales for a living. I do make art pieces which take many, many hours, but when designing a retail collection there has to be a trade-off between time spent and rewards available (i.e. how much I can sell them for). So a lot of my retail collection are both beautifully simple and relatively quick to make which in turn allows me to keep prices at an affordable level.

I tend to design 2 or three pieces, sort out the quantities I will need to make duplicates and then make up multiples of them. Again, this is a simple matter of economic sense, particularly as all my jewellery is sold through my eBay store. eBay implemented changes for business sellers earlier this year which make selling multiple quantities of the same item far more cost effective and likely to succeed than selling individual items. So most items are made with between 3 and 10 pieces of the same item.

My jewellery ranges tend to centre around necklaces, bracelets and earrings and often I’ll make up matching ranges of necklace, bracelet and earring so a customer can buy a whole set if they wish. I make an average of 20 pieces a day for around 4 weeks. That’s over 500 pieces, all carefully hand crafted in my studio in South Gloucestershire, England.

My jewellery is available online exclusively through my ebay store at www.stores.ebay.co.uk/princess-jewellery. I also sell a large range of beads and findings, many of which went into my current collection, both through my ebay store and through my website at www.princess-jewellery.net.

Gallery

Sterling silver necklace with Swarovski Crystal
in shades of blue, green and teal.

Sterling silver earrings with fairy drops and Swarovski
crystal hanging from delicate rose-shaped post earrings.

9 Carat yellow gold earrings with 9ct glitter beads
and aquamarine Swarovski crystal.

Sterling silver charm bracelet with Swarovski Crystal beads,
glass lampwork beads and a beautiful fairy charm.

Where does the time go!

2008-08-11T16:28:00.003+01:00

It has been an embarrassingly long stretch since I last posted. Partly that was due to breaking two of my fingers in July (ooops!) but mainly it was due to being terribly distracted due to the kids summer break.

I've had a fun 6 weeks or so (distracting children aside!) with lots of drawing, painting and claying but for now I'll simply leave you with my latest tutorials available on my website.

First up we have this beautifully delicate silver filigree bracelet with rose Swarovski crystal. Deceptively easy to make, its a sure hit with anyone and can be made in any number of colour combinations.

I've also made matching earrings to compliment the above bracelet. For this quick and easy tutorial, click the image.

Finally, this cute and whimsical mermaid necklace is great for summer!

That's all for now - I'll be back with a claying post later in the week!

Stephie

Busy, busy, busy!

2008-06-23T13:25:00.002+01:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in Stardust land, and also quite stressful. I was diagnosed with Osteoarthritis in my hands and several other joints. Needless to say its the hands that worry me most, as a jeweller they're quite important. As a jeweller who sells entirely online they're absolutely essential. There's lots of useful things one can do to try and manage it though so I'm remaining optimistic. The Arthritis Care website has been invaluable in providing lots of useful and pertinant information that my GP failed to mention.

Other than stressing about my fingers (which are rather painful) I've been busy getting stock listed and ordering more. Check the New In Stock category over at www.princess-jewellery.net to see what I've been adding. I'm also midway through another tutorial for a beautiful sparkly pink bracelet. I haven't written it up yet but it should be available in the next few days - watch this space!

And finally, I thought if I'm going to find myself with extremely restricted finger usage within the next few years, I need to get back to drawing regularly! I was always told I had no drawing talent and thus it was only around November last year when I plucked up the courage to teach myself to draw. Due to general busy-ness I haven't drawn at all since around January this year but over the weekend I pulled out my pencils and took a stab at my first ever fairy. She's far from perfect but given my lack of experience, I was reasonably pleased.

Until next time...

Happy Beading!

Stephie
x

A New Necklace Tutorial

2008-06-10T08:26:00.003+01:00

Its turning out to be quite a busy week so far. Nothing major - just lots of little things needing doing. My ad for the UK's Bead Magazine was sent to them yesterday for the professional treatment (I sent a fairly basic layout of what I want, along with the jewellery I want featured in it for them to photograph and produce properly). The magazine comes out in August and of course, by then I really need to have the stock levels upped a bit (particularly on anything I'm featuring in a tutorial!).

More tutorials are on the agenda this week. Haven't quite decided what but I think I'm looking at the lovely bright white silver componants I sell at www.princess-jewellery.net with some pastel shades in crystal. I also want a techniques tutorial done for the art of fitting pinch bails. I want a good selection of tutorials available in a relatively short space of time which means getting a few done every week for the next couple of months.

Speaking of tutorials, there is now a matching necklace for the Summer's End series. I hope you enjoy (click on the picture).

A new website - and new tutorials!

2008-06-06T02:50:00.003+01:00

It has, admittedly, been an age since I posted here, mainly because I've been so busy with all manner of exciting things that I've simply not had time to update my blog! I am hopefully back on track now, and over the couple of weeks I shall try and show off some of the designs that have been made over the last three months.

The main reason for the absence has been the development and launch of my brand-new website at www.princess-jewellery.net. My wonderful range of Sterling silver beads & findings, Swarovski crystal, gold filled beads and findings, glass beads, etc. are now available on my own website. The selection on ebay has been cut down considerably so the webby is really the best place to shop!

I've also made a start on adding some brand-new tutorials to the site, and expect to continue increasing the range over the next few months - here's a few of the most recent ones. My tutorials are free to use, subject to the restrictions at the bottom of my Jewellery Tutorials page, so enjoy and don't be afraid to experiment with different colours and looks!

Flying Free Earrings

Summer's End Bracelet

Summer's End Earrings

Happy Jewellery Making!

A plethora of pretty things!

2008-03-04T17:33:00.002Z

Shame 'plethora' is such an ugly sounding word or that title woulda worked better...

For all you jewellery lovers out there I have a tasty feast of eye candy today. Plus some stuff that I made :p

First off - I still haven't sanded & polished the weekend's lentil beads and realistically I can't see it happening before Friday now so here they are in their unfinished form.

First off - the best of the bunch

The beads I made out of the remainder of the red mix

Best of the blue/pink/silver

And the remainder

And these were made out of the scrappy leftovers from the previous 2 mixes (believe it or now, quite a lot of creamy gold went onto the red ones!)

Now... the Scheherazade necklace and earrings set - slightly better picture although blue goldstone is an absolute bitch to photograph. Its a little chunky for my personal taste.

And the first of the necklace connecters to go with the previously made red pendant (not yet finished)

And finally, these turned up today. I almost never use gemstones, partially because I sell Swarovski crystal for a living and so have lots of it lying around and partially because I'm not really an earth-tones kinda gel, however I've been looking for this stuff for ages - its titanium coated druzy (druzy is a generic name for the tiny little quartz crystals that sometimes form within rocks) and the titanium coating means it comes in a whole range of completely non-natural shades :p They're gorgeous. Far better than expected, I was absolutely blown away by this lot.

The druzy came from www.druzygems.com

My puppies!

2008-03-01T19:35:00.003Z

Non-dog owners always look slightly incredulous when I refer to these two as my puppies. Callie we've had since she was 10 weeks old and she's a white-apricot German Shepherd. Sabre we've had for a year and was a rescue dog who has improved enormously from the scared little boy he was when he arrived. He's never going to be a social butterfly but he's much more confident and happy now. Both dogs are almost 3 years old.

Why the random doggie post? Because they're my wolf substitutes and Cyndi over at jewelleryandbeading.com just posted a GORGEOUS beaded journal page featuring a pair of wolf eyes.

Indecision!

2008-03-01T06:30:00.003Z

You gotta hate it when that happens. Y'see it's the weekend, which is cool given that I'm on a strict no-work regime at the weekend BUT I'm at a total loss as to what to do with it. Not because I don't have any choices, but because I have too many choices.

I want to make a necklaces for the pendant I made last weekend.
And earrings to go with the dark blue necklace.
There's a set-out necklace in my bead tray that I wanted to do once I had some GF wire - which has now arrived.
I want to try some 30ga wire weaving stuff that's been floating around in my head this morning.
I have a whole bunch of different yarn and ribbons that I want to try some mixed media stuff with.
Last night, I spent FIVE hours (I kid ye not) sorting out all my personal beading stuff and threw up a whole bunch of beads & findings that had been dumped in little boxes with the idea of making jewellery to showcase the relevant componant products so that needs doing.
I also found an entire collection of half-made pieces / pieces that need fixing that I'd like to not be sitting in a to-do box.
I got my moulds delivered yesterday from the US so want to play with moulds and clay. I got them from madaboutmolds.com which has some gorgeous designs.
And I STILL haven't tried the cool lentil beads tutorial I intended working through last weekend

Damn.

Clay will be tomorrow I think - Geoff has to go out a couple of times today which means I'll have Finn running around and uninterrupted time is def better for clay.

A to-do box sounds a bit too much like actual work I think...

And product showcasing IS technically work...

...which still leaves me which a whole bunch of choices!

But look how organised everything is! The trays stack on the bead storage table so they don't take up anywhere near as much space as they do in the picture :o)

Imperfection

2008-02-24T20:50:00.003Z

It may surprise those of you who know me well enough to know that I'm totally anal and incredibly self critical, but I don't actually mind imperfection. I mind screwing up something I shouldn't - but I don't get mad at myself just because something isn't perfect. Everything's a learning curve and learning curves inevitably have fuckups - whats the point of trying things that you know you can do perfectly? where's the challenge? So... I can probably complete a 'perfect' necklace or bracelet using wrapped links and connecters. Because due to the nature of the day job, I do that a lot. I'd therefore get pretty peed off with myself if I screwed up all my wrapped links on a bracelet. But trying something new, half the fun is in seeing yourself improve. And being afraid of trying... well yes you could go through life doing everything perfectly because you never tried anything new but... your comfort zone would get boring very quickly.

Therefore this is an imperfect pendant, and up for rewiring. But the interesting thing about it was that as I was working my way down the weave, I could see the technique improving, and looking at it after completing it, I can see how to redo it so the mistakes start to be corrected. I don't know if it will be perfect on the second try. More likely, it will be closer to perfect on the third.

Pretty isn't perfect. Anyone can make pretty jewellery. There's very few people make perfect jewellery (and I don't count myself among them). One lady that does however, is Eni Oken and it was looking at one of her pendants that resulted in my trying this particular technique (I was orginally going to try crocheting). The pendant is here and check out her gallery as well - she's amazing - at the very top of her area. She also has a lot of tutorials. I've occasionally been tempted to buy the whole pack but I'm very much a figure-it-out brain and following tutorials seems like... cheating. Plus I'm spatially strong enough to be able to see how things are put together most of the time. Stupid, but it seems only a step away from all those jewellery people who only ever complete set projects and therefore never develop jewellery craft into jewellery art. Which is absolutely fine as a hobbyist - making magazine-published projects for yourself and presents for your family can be satisfying, but if you're going to aim to be a professional then originality is needed. Design and figuring out is important to me.

Imperfect Pendant

...two hours later...

OK second attempt. Still not even remotely approaching perfect - but significantly better than try #1

It was going reasonably well. So I added a bead. A reasonably adventurous choice of bead for the technique. Which screwed it up more than it otherwise would have been. Other than that, I changed from working with one really long piece of wire, to separate pieces for each 'row' (you can see the ends sticking out - I didn't tuck them in properly when I wrapped them around the beads as I expected to be undoing it again). And consciously remembered that wire loves curling. Its its natural state - no need to fight it.

For attempt three I'm going to take that slightly further I think and coil each piece around a pen to match the number of arcs in each row. Although later, because I'm getting tired.

...4 hours later... after a nap

OK - I'm actually reasonably happy with it now. There is still some slight problems but they should be fixable without restringing.

And perception of size works better on a bust - it's about 2 inches top to bottom. Yes that's my work bench, yes I'm messy. So sue me :p

The mesh size I used is quite a bit bigger than is usual for this technique which I think makes it harder to get perfect - each section has longer pieces to develop kinks! Its more usually seen as a cabochon bezel wrap with very tiny arcs/swags/whatever you call the graceful curves!

An OhShitMoment

2008-02-23T21:15:00.000Z

Below is a necklace I just completed. It already got restrung once because I didn't like the way it was turning out. So I finally finished it, crimped and attached clasp, trimmed the fireline its strung on... and realised there's an excess stardust bead at one end that isn't on the other end. So it needs restringing. Again.

An ohshitmoment (actually my standard exclamation of dismayed frustration is somewhat more... pithy than that... but perhaps somewhat offensive so I shan't repeat it here).

It's called Sheherazade. I don't even know if I've spelled that correctly, but she was the teller of the 1001 Arabian Night's tales and a necklace in predominantly navy with a million tiny sparkles seemed appropriate - the very dark blue beads are starstone (or blue goldstone) which shimmers with a zillion tiny twinkling stars. The rest is sterling and Swarovski crystal.

And if I'm honest I haven't managed to get the style as I want it. I'll try some different variations in other colours and beads but I want to test it with a few different methods including different stringing material, a double drop, and wire meshed 'gaps'.

Its only a point & click snap I'm afraid so not my best. Will post a better one when I get the darn thing to stay strung!

Round 2

2008-02-23T11:30:00.001Z

(Cross posted on Art Jewellery - Polymer Clay)

Heh, I don't actually feel like I'm fighting. More dealing with a new dog. Not quite sure how its going to behave but absolutely certain that I should be in charge, not him.

Either way, its the weekend and I am gratuitiously playing (I feel incredibly guilty just 'playing' - I'm self employed and work from home and it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you should be doing money-making things all the time. But I'm persevering with discovering hedonism!)

I haven't touched clay all week having been flat out busy, so the last stuff I posted was the last I did. The good news is that I can see improvement as I get more of a feel for it. The bad news is that I'm having severe issues with managing regular, consistent beads of any shape. And I have an annoying tendancy to oversand - I can't manage smooth curves, they end up with small, flat planes in. But I think I'm getting better.

Below is last night's creations (well I started the flower last weekend - I got it to its current stage last night). Leaves were moulded, butterfly a cutter then embellished, everything else by hand.

Still far from perfect but hopefully improving! And yes, I have a serious addiction to metallics and shimmers :p

Today... I need to get the hang of canes so thats on my to-do list :o) And I want to learn how to make lentil beads having spend large parts of yesterday drooling at Emma Ralph's polymer gallery (she does a lot of lentils). I love her beads and every time I stumble across her work I am completely awed. The service on the site is awesome as well - I bought a bead roller (in the hope of fixing my bead problem!) and some foil yesterday morning and its arrived today. Next day arrival only going to happen if you live in the UK of course :o)

Anyway... lentil beads. This tutorial by Barbara Fajardo over at polymerclaycentral looks to be just what I need. And its a fingers-free method for the most part so I might actually manage to produce something without fingerprints!

Viva la révolution

2008-02-21T04:34:00.007Z

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

(Sandi Thom)

I actually love this song. It was around last summer? The summer before? Its not my usual style at all, I listen to rock of the Green Day/Linkin Park/Evanescence ilk but this touched my soul. Even though 'punk rocker' should perhaps have been "peace-lovin', weed-smokin' hippie", given the flowers. I was born in December '75 so missed the spirit and change of the time. Even the early 80s punk rock scene passed me by as nothing more than the big kids wearing weird clothes and doing odd things with hair and makeup.

Either way... the point is that this is a 'who I want to be when I grow up' post. Not that I want to grow up, but I'm doing my very best to metamorphose. And I don't really want to be anyone but uniquely, insanely ME but I have a HUGE admiration for a number of people in this industry, and at the very pinnacle of that list sits the amazing Margot Potter.

Now those of you who also read my personal blog will be familiar with my slightly chaotic, inspired and flighty way of taking ideas and sprinting with them. I'm not going to pretend for a second that it isn't a definite characteristic of bipolarity because it IS but its the part of the illness that I wouldn't willingly give up for the world. My personal journal is similar to this one in many ways, but I swear more, make more typos and subject my friends to moans about life, flights of ideas and the more sensitive business details, sometimes locked, sometimes not. This blog is the cleaned-up-for-professional-use version.

Either way, I've been reading Margot's blog for a month or two now and she continues to inspire and amaze me with her talent and generosity of spirit. When I went blog-hunting I was looking for people who were doing what I want to do, in my own fashion and found so many amazing women, including Margot. She's a designer and writer and possibly the best non-pushy self-promoter I've ever come across and on an almost daily basis, she shares the reasons for her success and tips on how to achieve it with the world. Not in an awful, smarmy, life-coach way but in an absolutely genuine lets-all-help-each-other kinda way, whilst being totally sassy and original. I was sad to read she'd had an unnecessarily negative review about her latest book, Sparkletastic. Some people just look for things in life to moan about. Possibly because they don't know what to say if they're not moaning.

So Margot is the person I think I've learned most from this year so far, and her posts, among others, are keeping me going at the minute, when I'm putting my metamorphosis on temporary hold to concentrate on actually making money through the daily grind of my eBay shop. Sadly I'm mid financial crisis and while I am certainly not abandoning my writer-designer plans, for the next week or two, they have to be put to one side while I make enough money to pay my mortgage and bills.

And finally, while I'm sharing linky goodness, go check out my Bead Magazine review over on the lovely Cyndi's jewelryandbeading blog. I was privileged to be asked to write this and ridiculously pleased when I saw it posted yesterday. :o)

Polymer Clay & Bipolar Babes

2008-02-18T19:19:00.004Z

First off here's my weekend efforts with polymer clay. They are very amateurish but it was the first time I'd EVER worked with clay and I'm confident I will improve, it always takes a little time to get the feel of a new medium. I'm currently midway through making a lily focal which is noticably better than the first pieces

Selection of pendants, drops and connecters. My poor fairy has a scratch which I'll fix before covering her in resin for a nice glass-like finish:

Beads made with the clay 'leftovers'. Mainly I just wanted to see if I could manage regular, consistent spheres

In personal news, I was at the docs earlier partly to get more drugs, partly to see what my psych guy said about me after my January appointment. There wasn't anything particularly mind blowing there as we'd covered it all in the psych appointment. Being referred on to cognative therapy and psychotherapy, being kept under the mental health team's care as ongoing, no I don't want a change of drugs. Nothing surprising, nothing mindblowing - just yet more waiting around for referral appointments to happen. And they wonder why I periodically get sick of it all and self discharge from mental health care. Speaking of mad-as-a-hatterness I was reasonably gratified to learn that Jennifer Dangerfield of The Art of Curiousity is another bipolar babe. I don't know why I find that gratifying other than I admire her work, she's another Brit and unless I go out of my way to look (ie on dedicated forums) I rarely come across anyone 'openly' bipolar. Like being closet gays but with more stigma, and you can have a sex life even if you do hide it from the entire world *weird exasperation/irritation/amusement mix going on here*. I won't get on my mental healthcare soapbox or I'll never stop.

Geoff's off out tonight with Jan & Darren which is fine - only Finn & Jay here as its half term and Cam has gone to stay with the in-laws. Finn will be asleep within an hour if he's not already which leaves me free to get on with stuff that desperately needs doing. Mainly stuff directly relating to making money. Its a case of screw the Big Plan this week. Its a good plan. In fact its a GREAT plan. But it does involve long term slow and steady buildup of contacts, reputation and publishing which while will do wonders for business, doesn't help me pay the bills this month. So I'm having a focus-on-sales week. Newsletter to write, a squillion ebay listings to put on 10 day runs (I want about 1000 extra live for the end-of-the-month buying spree). eBay is a bit of an art form in itself. Sometimes having everything running quietly on 'background' shop listings is a good idea, sometimes going all out with the more expensive but more exposed 10 day auctions & Buy Now listings is better. After 5 years I'm still doing it largely by feel, and I currently feel that an extra thousand prominent listings is a Good Plan for the start of march.

Geoff saw a cat being hit by a car on his way back from collecting Finn. Just round the corner but it was gone when he walked back round to check (looks like the car that hit it stopped and hopefully took it to a vet). We've accounted for all our likely suspects but one so I'm keeping an eye out for Mini as Geoff thinks it was a tabby or a grey and Mini is tabby. Somehow I think I'm going to be reasonably agitated until I've found her. I'm trying not to think about it too much.

And finally, Darren was diagnosed as longsighted a week and a half ago, and got his glasses on Thursday. He looks... I dunno, older in them? Seems perfectly happy to have them though.

Polymer Clay

2008-02-17T04:20:00.001Z

It was with great excitement that I unpacked my first ever delivery of polymer clay and associated paraphernalia last week. Friday night was the first chance I had to play and I figured I'd start just figuring out the feel of the clay and how to work it. Problem one soon struck in that I had a overly dry block of black that crumbled when I tried to condition it. Not a problem, I'd thought ahead and my little bottle of clay softener was put to work. I got it worked into my clay and tried again. Soon I had a nice, flat sheet of clay and stamped a star out then rolled some super thin rolls to decorate it with spirals. Problem two. Polymer clay and lint don't mix. I live in a house full of dogs and cats so I tend to have a coating of animal hair on whatever I'm wearing. Which happened to be a fleece, it being February and winter in the UK and rather chilly - fleeces however, particularly bad for collecting pet hair. No matter, fleece removed and I continued to work in a strappy pink vest.

I continued through Friday evening and Saturday morning making a selection of pendants, drops and canes, learning the feel of the clay, how to roll it evenly, making nicely round beads, mixing colours and marbling, texturing, applying mica powders and metallic finishes, then went through my art folder on my PC and miniaturised a number of my creations for use in pendants. So by midday Saturday I had, ready to bake, the original star pendant, plus matching drops for earrings, a selection of copperised drops, a marbled pendant frame with one of my tiny pictures in, a second pendant with another star motif, and a whole collection of beads.

After some experimentation, the correct temperature on the kitchen oven was obtained and things happily baked to completion. The kitchen still smells vaguely of molten plastic but I have assured my family (and two slightly perplexed German shepherds that live in the kitchen, who've never seen Mummy cook before) that as soon as my mini oven arrived, baking would take place in the utility room with the back door open.

I then dug out my Proxxon mini drill (like a Dremel but well... Proxxon) and associated bits and again, after some experimentation, sanded and buffed my creations to a reasonable finish.

Things I Discovered on the Journey
1. Polymer clay sticks. Not massively, just enough to pull up little patches of clay from your nice flat sheet when you stick it through a pasta machine or roll it on the purpose-designed mat. My solution - this is greatly reduced by working on greaseproof (baking) paper. You can roll it through the pasta machine like this as well - just cut a piece to size, fold it in half and put the clay inside at the fold. I did read a suggestion of talcum powder to stop sticking - like using flour to roll pastry on - and would appreciate an opinion. Surely this just weakens your clay by introducing a new, and very dry ingredient to it?
2. I discovered that clay doesn't behave as well as wire when you spiral it. Slippery little buggers like to retain their default position of 'log' but I eventually persuaded my tiny, slightly misshapen rolls to stay put and firmly stuck them in place with another, smaller star at the centre.
3. Somebody somewhere recently posted in a forum that pasta machines were a LOT easier to clean if you remove the front panel - no more taking apart to clean them. I am eternally grateful to this genius of 21st century art. For good measure, the back panel came off too.
4. The little things in drill accessory sets that look like miniature sanding discs are in fact for cutting. In fact they cut marvelously through 18ga sterling wire, embedded in your clay as a bail. Like butter. They don't sand very well either.
5. Luckily, you can, it seems, attach sticky-back sandpaper to sanding drum attachments without any problem and I happen to have rolls of such in a number of super-finenesses from 600 to 2000 grit.
6. Its not a good idea to catch your fingernail on the surface of printed, baked HP photo paper. My pretty little fairy now has a white scratch which I shall try and fix before covering her in resin!
7. If you're going to use repousse punches as modeling tools, when you wrap the clay around it, put a sheet of greaseproof paper around FIRST! I didn't think it would stick - steel not affected at the temperature polymer clay fires at so I figured they'd slide off afterwards. I was wrong. I now have a highly decorated repousse punch with completely immovable clay wraps (prettily textured and copperised).
8. Using liquid sculpey to help unfired clay stick to fired clay works wonderfully. It also leaves a white seam between the two pieces. The book suggested PVA.... maybe I should have listened.
9. Polymer clay is really good at taking fingerprints. It also deforms when you try and smooth them out. Practice, practice, practice! Do latex gloves work or do you lose sensitivity too much? (or does the latex react with clay?)
10. The more accurate you are getting your shapes right when you cut, the less sanding there is to do!
11. If, like me, you're used to working in wire of a maximum thickness of 18ga, its almost instinctive to try and work with the clay really, really THIN. Thicker clay makes better weight pendants though! There is no shame in 2mm+ thick pieces!

Today I intend sending the OH out to get some alcohol (arghhh polymer clay has driven me to drink!)... just kidding, its for cleaning the glaze brushes so I can get them finished up - then I need to make necklaces and earrings with them :-) Given that wirework and stringing is my normal MO, no matter how pretty a pendant is, I won't feel I've finished until I've incorporated it into something and just stringing them on cords simply won't do!

Its Springtime!

2008-02-11T19:54:00.000Z

Wow! I realised at lunchtime that its over a week since I'd left the house. Which is never a good sign and one of the risks of working from home (especially as I don't have a car at the minute!) So I went for a walk along the river and back for half an hour and discovered it's spring! Being the UK though, that doesn't mean that there won't be howling blizzards next week, but its nice while its here! My Tree Stump with Character has developed leafy frondage growing from it's top, and there's little yellow flowers growing along the riverbank - I don't know what they are, those little wild flowers that are somewhere between a daisy and a dandilion. And this sounds weird, but they were oddly accented in a very peculiar suburban-beauty kinda way by a trolly with a bright yellow handle that had been dumped in the river. Not that I think we're suburban. We're more subrural - not quite rural but not urban enough to be suburan! Plus all the trees are sprouting leaf buds and the birds are being busily frenzied with numerous nests-in-progress. And there was a tiny patch of purple crocuses with saffron centres by the river which looked wonderfully spring like. I didn't see a kingfisher though (we do have kingfishers along the river but I've only spotted them a handful of times).

The weekend was tiring but very productive. On Saturday we completely swapped the stock with the studio which meant shifting all the stock and shelving out of here and bringing all the random studio furniture into this room. I actually started on friday night while the boys, Geoff and Jan were gaming. I was decidedly wrecked after but it was so worth it - this room looks a million times better AND I now have all my crafty stuff to hand in the room I spend the most time in. And on Sunday we cleared out the computer and all Jay's stuff from the library and put it in his bedroom. So the library is now no longer infested with the paraphenalia and litter of 13 year olds AND we can fit al least another couple of book cases in.

This is what the office looked like before we shifted everything (I forgot to take a proper pic but you can get the general idea from the background behind Darren - floor to ceiling in blue shelves and boxes with our computer desks at the end of the room the picture was taked from

And this is what it looks like now - my beading table and desk to the left, more beading stuff, books and magazines on the shelves at the back, my photography setup next to that and random wall unit that had to go somewhere by the door. I'm standing my my desk, the window is behind me and Geoffs desk is opposite mine.

I did take some time to plan out a necklace which is still sitting unmade in my bead tray as I realised I didn't actually have any 18ga GF wire in and 22 just won't do! So as soon as thats in I'll finish that necklace. I also finished up a pair of earrings which I think of as lotus blossom drops even though they look nothing like lotus blossoms. They're made with a bead cap that has been beaded although I think I need to change the design slightly, either to simply a beaded ring sitting below the cap, or a beaded cap with 3mm pearls rather than 4mm. They're still pretty, but slightly imperfectly engineered.

I also photographed my springtime bracelet which I love. Peridot and Light Rose always seem super-springlike and the red adds a bit of contrast with silver butterflies and rose beads to add silvery sparkle and a GORGEOUS rose shaped box clasp that I've just got in stock.

So I'm feeling quite happy despite feeling slightly neglected - Jan was here Friday and Saturday night so the boys were all gaming, and on Sunday evening, Jan, Geoff and Darren went out to meet with some similarly geeky friends before coming back and erm... gaming more. I did steal Geoff away for an episode of SG1 before bed though. And tonight, Geoff, Darren and Jan were supposed to be going out but Jan cancelled so I get my husband to myself - yippee!

Mrs Clarke's office, how may I help?

2008-02-07T18:48:00.000Z

I appear to have developed a new role in life as the personal secretary of Mrs Clarke. Today I took a returned call after Mrs Clarke left a message on some company's answerphone, and dealt with her delivery company. This has been going on for two weeks, Mrs Clarke gets a LOT of phone calls and deliveries. She also saves or has a mortgage with Northern Rock.

Trouble is, I have no freakin' CLUE who Mrs Clarke is.

I am assuming she's a dimwit of the highest order due to her not only getting her own number wrong (forgivable, especially if BT are involved) but you'd think after TWO WEEKS she'd have a) clicked that no-one ever returns her calls and b) that SOMEONE in her personal circle would have mentioned it to her.

Its getting mildly irritating. Especially as I work from home and get her blinkin phone calls all day long.

But other than that life is.... tentatively OK. After a couple of bitch-from-hell PMT days this week I appear to be back to what passes as normality in my quirky little world. Work is happening. Its mainly counting beads and listing them so deadly dull, but it is getting done and I'm staying motivated by keeping up my research on magazine submissions. I figure, if I JUST manage to get everything outstanding listed then all I'll have to do work-wise is restocks and packing so I'll be able to spend a lot more time working on designed-for-publication jewellery, and will have the time to keep it all organised and efficient - there'd be nothing worse than having no clue what had been submitted to where and what was free to be submitted etc. Well there are plenty of worse things, but within the confines of my current ambitions its pretty bad!

I did have on my list for February 'hunt down submission guidelines for all relevant magazines' however the lovely Cyndi from jewelleryandbeading.com blogged the entire list this morning, missing off only Bead Magazine which is a UK publication and therefore understandable (I also already have their submission guidelines bookmarked).

So I'm getting quite excited. I'm looking forward to the day I can come on here and say 'one of my necklaces is going to be in xxx magazine!' with happy bounciness and major overexcitement. I don't of course, consider that I'll spend a lifetime being perpetually turned down. I'm too confident/arrogant for that and honestly, what's the point of submitting if you expect to fail? Plus I know I'm good at design (it surprises me that some people can't do it, it's the easiest thing in the world) and if I'm actually trying my writing is OK as well (for years I wanted to be a journalist - I seriously kicked ass in GCSE and A Level English with 90%+ overall scores... then went and did a degree in mainy IT. How bizarre... all I can say is that I was 18, had just discovered the very new Internet (as far as public use went) and I was TOTALLY overwhelmed and enthused by the possibilities this geeky little toy offered the world. Turns out I was right ;-). Saying that for years before that I wanted to be a vet. And Geoff still wants to be an astronaut...

So thats how I'm staying motivated amidst millions of uncounted beads. Maybe not millions. But I'd say certainly in excess of a couple of hundred thousand.

Art and Discipline

2008-01-26T11:02:00.000Z

Today marks the two month anniversary of my deciding that it was high time I learned to draw. Drawing has always been a bit of a stumbling block for me. Its one of the few things I'm not good at. Don't get me wrong, I don't really excel at much either. But I do tend to be passably good at most things I try. Sports and stringed instruments being notable exceptions. But I don't have the time or money for any of the sports that interest me, and I can live without having skill at the violin whereas I have ALWAYS wished I could draw. There are so many wonderful, beautiful images swirling around in my crazy-person mind and I want to have the ability to realise them in a tangible form.

So - after the revelation that the ability to draw is NOT a born with it or nothing skill - ie that it CAN be learned - on November 26th I decided to learn. And now I'm assessing. I'm better than I was before I started, which is good, and my knowledge of the technical aspects and basic concepts has grown enormously. I have, however, been totally lame at finding the time for it. Like everything else in my life, drawing needs discipline - daily practise - and its been neglected (admittedly, mostly in favour of work, but all work and no play....)

I mentioned a few posts back, that what I need is a page a day diary. OK, OK, it could be argued that what I need is to pick up a bloody pencil every day but I have a rimmer-esque need to keep my life in written-down order (in fairness as a by-product of being crazy-mad-bipolar-lady - I KNOW I'm ridiculously impulsive with a tendancy to fly off all over the place if I don't keep myself very disciplined and routine-y... and fly off all over the place can mean anything from spending a few thousand on a new hobby to changing partners / careers / cities etc... having done all of those things - on a whim - I quite like the idea of keeping myself vaguely stable, and if my methods look incredibly anal then so be it)

So. Geoff's assignment for the day is to get me a page a day diary so I can anally plan out the next few months. Maybe a week / 2 pages diary. And a new pretty A4 pad because the current one is nearly out.

Jewellery Tutorial - Rainbow Crystal Bracelet

2008-01-24T19:53:00.000Z

Jewellery Tutorial - Making a Rainbow Crystal Bracelet.

Difficulty level: Level 2 - Quick & Easy (For explanation of ratings please see bottom of this guide)
Time: 60 minutes

This beautiful rainbow bracelet made from Swarovski crystal and sterling silver is a super-sparkly stunner! Works well in any colour scheme so if rainbows aren't your thing, try it in a different colour combination. With all my instructions, I'm simply describing how I do it. There may be other techniques and you may find that another suits you better - there's usually no right or wrong method, only how comfortable you are using it.

This tutorial assumes that you know how to use crimp beads, jump rings and are able to close clamshells - all easy :-)

Sparkly Rainbow Bracelet.

What you will need

I use the following which made up an 8 inch bracelet. 4 beads and 1 spacer is equal to half an inch so to shorten or extend just adjust the number of beads and spacers you use!

52 x 6mm Swarovksi Crystal Bicone Beads - 4 of each colour
13 x 2 String Spacers (I used my D96 Spacers )
4 x 3mm Stardust Sparkle Beads
2 x Clamshell with Loop
2x 2mm Crimp Beads
24 Inches Fireline (or the stringing material of your choice)
2 x 5mm Heavy Jump Rings
1 x Lobster Clasp

I also needed the following basic jewellers tools:
Wire cutters
Flat pliers (I used two pairs - I prefer two to open and close jump rings)
Chain nose pliers

Making Your Bracelet

Before starting, I find it useful to arrange the beads and spacers loose on a tabletop so I can see which beads go in which order. It makes it nice and easy when it comes to stringing the beads.

Slide a crimp bead onto your stringing material and crimp flat at at the half way point with flat nose pliers.

Thread both ends of the string down though the clamshell and through the hole until the crimp bead prevents you from pulling further. Close your clamshell with your pliers.

Thread a stardust bead onto each string and take them as close to the clamshell as you can. Then start stringing your beads and spacers (with a string going through each side of the spacers)

Continue stringing until all the beads and spacers are in place. Add the final two stardust beads.

Thread the two ends through the clamshell from the bottom (so through the hole in the bottom, up through the 'shell' part).

Slide a crimp bead onto one string down into the clamshell. Don't crimp it.

Tie the two strings together using an overhand knot (like the knot you use to tie shoelaces, before you do the looped bits!). You want the knot to close over the crimp bead while keeping the bottom of the clamshell as close to the stardust beads as possible - the tension of the beaded string is really important - too little and your beads will slide around leaving ugly gaps. I use a spare bit of wire to help push the crimp right down while I'm tying. (I've shown the wire in the picture - the hand I'd be holding it with is, of course, holding the camera instead!)

Repeat this overhand knot two more times, keeping the bead string tense. If you wish, you can use chain nose pliers or tweezers to crimp your crimp bead at this point (although it's not neccessary). I dab the knot with the tinyest bit of clear nail polish to help fix it before trimming away the excess line with my wire cutters and closing the clamshell.

Fit a jump ring through the loop on one clamshell, and a jump ring attached to a lobster clasp through the loop on the other clamshell.

Note from the Author

I hope you found this useful. I'm writing new guides all the time so don't forget watch out for more tutorials.

Many thanks and happy crafting!

Explanation of Difficulty Levels

I rate my designs by four difficulty levels for non-soldering or sawing jewellery making. They're rated by a number of factors including time taken to make, whether you need to make some of your own components and whether they need basic tools or 'specialist' tools.

Beginner - Anyone should be able to manage this, even if you've never held a pair of jewellery pliers in your life.
Quick & Easy - Fast project, basic techniques only. Should be confident with pliers, cutters, jump rings, basic beaded links - anything else will be explained in easy steps.
Needs confidence - Longer project that includes some trickier elements including but not limited to using more complex wire manipulation (e.g. making wire bails, using a jig or pliers to make wire components) and more time consuming projects that involve lots and lots of small steps.
Tricky - Projects for the terminally insane. Whether I'll put anything here is up in the air. The vast majority of what I make is 2 or 3 - simply because I don't have the patience for long projects

Copyright Notice

I am happy for designs to be copied where I've given instructions to do so :o) (i.e. this guide!). However if you're producing for commercial use (i.e. resale) credit for the design (e.g. 'A Stephie Hall design'), and a link to my website would be appreciated.

Text and pictures may not be reused without my express permission.

A kick up the bum!

2008-01-24T01:55:00.000Z

I've spent most of the last few days (while conscious anyway, I have a cold and I have a tendancy to sleep ridiculous amounts when I'm sick) sitting being very aimless and thinking of all the things I should be doing and haven't, and mentally adding them to an as-yet unwritten list for some unspecified 'tomorrow'.

So I still haven't....

Finished listing the beads on my desk to my eBay shop (get a move on woman, there are only 6 styles and some chain left to do)
Tidied my office
Put away all the new storage boxes into useful places where they can be used to STORE
Put away all the stuff that I HAVE listed and that is now selling and isn't where its supposed to be when it comes to packing
Done any art 'lessons' of any variety
Made any jewellery.
Not even managed the tinyest hint of writing a tutorial. Stupid thing is I know exactly which project I want to write up - I just haven't done it
Done anything on my 'book'. OK its not actually a book, its writing for personal gratification and the satisfaction of curiousity for interested parties, but it still needs doing!
Finished my jewellery website. All it needs is a few pictures and a link changing. Not rocket science.
Read this months jewellery magazines. I have a Simply Beads, an Art Jewelry and a Bead & Button that I've done nothing more than quickly flick through.
Gone through all the starred stuff in google reader and acted on those which require action

I could go on... but its getting silly.
Trouble is I rely HUGELY on Geoff to help keep me focused. I am not the most self disciplined of people. Not that HE disciplines me (well not at work anyway *grins* ...he can be rath... oh OK, TMI, I'll shut up... ) but he's pretty good at getting me to focus myself. I'm great with ideas, conceptualisation, innovation, ingenuity and occasional flashes of brilliance. I'm not so good at daily grafting and staying focused. Neither is Geoff of course, but he's pretty good at keeping me on track. And now he's back at work full time, I don't have that help here when I need it.

So focus, Stephie. Focus!

A bit of a bust...

2008-01-21T00:53:00.000Z

I've been a bit useless today really. Not helped by feeling decidedly washed out post-friday night having gone out for drinks for our friend Andy's birthday. I'm getting too old to get trashed and sleep on floors.

But today... I've slept a lot for me, again I think because I'm slightly ill with a sore throat and sinus infection. I've not done much in the way of work due to a combination of illness/sleeping, the Evil Nieces being here till 4pm and then a (welcome) trip to Georgie's of madcowbeads. It was good to see her and good to get away from the kids. Then came back, had dinner, slept some more and have pretty much messed about on Facebook until now.

Tomorrow... I need to focus. I have a lot of stuff on my desk ready to list in my ebay shop and it needs to be done yesterday, then I need to send out my Monday product update email. I really need to do various things this week that have been sorely neglected as well. My design ideas gallery hasn't been updated in ages, I desperately need to start writing a jewellery tutorial a week, I also need to do the finishing touches to the jewellery website and start promoting it - its structurally there, more or less, but needs prettifying and personalising - and I have a whole bunch of jewellery that needs making to model some new findings I have in.

I'm dreading Tuesday's weigh-in. I ate soooo much rubbish over the weekend its unreal - I worked my way through a fried breakfast, then lunch, then chocolate, then a BK meal... etc... I rarely eat any of that stuff - or drink - and I dread to think how its affected my weight loss. Not well I suspect.

As for beautiul artistry-de-Stephie... gonna have to wait a few days I think, way too busy with work stuff. Georgie reckons our office is going to be completed soon (its being built) so I need to get in a position to pay the rent very quickly. I'm a little apprehensive about it. I desperately want my stock out the house, its got just too big to keep here but given funds, I'd go with filling in my swimming pool and putting a great big insulated shed in the garden. Sadly thats about 15-20k to be done properly which is way beyond our current means. But paying for space is going to be tight, I'm not making as much money as I should be at the minute, and I'm not looking forward to having to leave the house every day.

There's also the additional problem that, at the minute Geoff is working and we only have one car between us. And I can't get up there without a car. It also means that most days we're going to be back to me doing the packing on my own because we have Cam around once Geoff and the car are home and we can't really drag him up there every day. Plus I think G and I have different idea on how I'll be useing it. I see it as a storage and packing space, she sees it as joint premises complete with office-hours phone manning between us which really isn't practical for me - I can't have the computer up there because I can't live without it here and I don't want to leave the dogs and cats on their own all day. So its difficult. But it will be nice to not have the stock here.

Lesson errr...

2008-01-18T04:41:00.000Z

I have no idea what 'lesson' number I'm up to. And I did these a little while ago anyway - almost two weeks ago, I mentioned I'd been sketching purple animals - well here they are. I wasn't going to post them, being rough sketches to see if I could get animal shapes vaguely correct but *shrugs* I've been too lame for words and haven't posted anything painty or draw-y or bead-y for ages (because I haven't done anything!) so this is my penance!

They were very quick, very rough sketches from photos. My personal favourite is the lion cub - although thats actually the one that looks least like to photo I was working from (in that the the original was erm... a kitten. But all kittens think they're lions anyway!). There's a multitude of flaws which I shan't bother to list - what I take from this is that yes, I can in fact learn to draw and indeed am doing so. I couldn't have done these two months ago.

Just half an hour to go....

2008-01-17T14:29:00.000Z

...then I can SLEEP! The girls have been... tiring in the extreme today. Every time I've left the room to try and do anything their have been wails of Auntie Stephhhhhh I want a drink, auntie Stephhhhhh I want a sandwich, Auntie Stephhhhhhh, I need the toilet ad infinitum... so I'm kind of wrecked and peed off in the extreme now.

Which is a shame because I suspect if the girls hadn't been here I would have had a really rather creative day. I got all fired up last night after realising the 2008 Bead & Button Bead Dreams competition was now open. Not that that I expect to even register as more than an entry fee but one has to start somewhere and get in the habit of submitting (and that somewhere is erm... one of the biggest beading jewellery competitions in the world...) and I've had all manner of sparkling entry possibilities whirling through my head and no time to work on the detail. I reckon work productivity would have featured as well, I have soooo many things at the minute that I need to model in the form of sparkly jewellery and no time to make anything up.

I also found an RSS reader that I LIKE in the form of Google Reader. Perhaps I haven't really looked very hard before but no description of a free RSS reader ever sounded like exactly what I wanted. Google reader IS. Its perfect and I love it and now all those zillions of RSS feeds I click subscribe on and promptly forget about are all nicely displayed as new items for me to read on my browser homepage. I truly am in love.

So I'm feeling artistic, productive and completely and totally frustrated at my complete inability to act upon it due to stress-inducing babies of the niece variety. Made slightly more annoying because I strongly suspect that Phil could have picked them up this morning and taken them into their nursery for the day. But Phil has vanished off the face of the earth. Plus its Georgie's birthday TOMORROW and I still haven't finished her blinkin present (eeep!... its been in-the-planning-stages for weeks!)

The good news is that, assuming Phil actually materialilses into some sort of solid and useful form, rather than a rumoured existence, the girls WILL be going home tonight and WILL be going to their school tomorrow. Then we need to not only repair the damage 3 days of small girls does to a house, but completely clean and hoover it so my asthmatic mother doesn't die when we leave her babysitting (we're off to have birthday drinkies with Andy tomorrow night and will be gone from tomorrow lunchtime to sometime Saturday afternoon).

And ~yay~ typing has cut down my time-to-go to just 15 minutes till Geoff gets home. ~does a happy dance~. And I don't think the girls are screaming... which could be a bad sign but I'm hoping one or both has fallen asleep, they did at this time yesterday.

The girlies have descended

2008-01-16T05:30:00.000Z

Now as anyone who knows me even vaguely well is aware, I'm not good with babies. Yes this is despite having four of em. I'm never quite sure what to do with them (apart from the basics of keep em fed with dry nappies). Plus my brain switches itself off and runs away screaming when confronted with the task of Keeping Small People Happy. If I start in a neutral mood, I merely descend into a zombie-like numbness. If I'm tired or stressed or have other things to do I morph into in an incapable, sobbing wreck. I think its a conditioned reaction of way too many years of PND which resurfaces when I'm around little people. And today I have two of em.

Usually, everyone is very careful to make sure I'm not left with small babies. Its a simple matter of pragmatism. We wouldn't ask Geoff to do jewellery design, my mother to do marketing, dax to do financial management, tricia to do website design - or me to do childcare. Because we're all a bit crap at those things that we wouldn't ask each other to do. So usually in this situation, Geoff would look after the babies and I'd make money. Because I'm good at making money and Geoff is good with kids. Sady at the minute, Geoff is also in the somewhat novel position of breadwinning and therefore at work today leaving me to play Auntie Steph to two very lovely but very demanding small girls while their mom hatches a third.

Sooo... how to approach it? Do I try seeing if I can work while they occupy each other in the living room? I have shitloads to do but if I end up not being able to do it when I've planned to do so I'll get majorly stressed. Or do I write off the day entirely, shut down my PC and move into the horrible dark living room for the day? I'm aware that technically its possible to just.... go with the flow and be wherever is most practical at the time. I'm just very much an all-or-nothing girl. Half-assedness doesn't come naturally and 'maybe getting a little work done, if I can' is very much half assed. And kids being chaotic and unpredictable, I can't plan ahead well, I can't set targets and goals and lists for the day which might seem like a little thing to you but its a major issue for me. I need my time to be planned and filled because boredom and indecision and internal conflict are not things I deal with very well.

So.... expect the worst, and anything else will come as a nice surprise has to be the way to go I think. It frequently works as well. So if I expect the kids to be horrible and demanding and me to totally not deal I feel better when its not as bad as expected. You'd think it has the potential to be a self fulfilling prophecy - ie I think it will be awful so it will be - but surprisingly, it doesn't tend to work like that.

Skiving! With purple unicorns!

2008-01-07T23:25:00.000Z

Hokey cokey... I've been OK today. Still rather tired but I think thats the beginning of a cold taking hold, I felt decidedly ill last night and first thing this morning. Which was unfortunate given that it meant I forgot my dentist appointment until they rang with a 'Mrs Hall... you were supposed to be here five minutes ago'. Ooops.

Nonetheless I've been good and (mostly) worked today. Then Geoff and co went off to geekland and left me with the Evil Small Children who were on the whole OK. Finn did require my pretty much constant presence until he went to sleep but was happy with me reading in there with him. And Cam both let geoff leave and went to bed with no complaints which is nothing short of miraculous.

Then I escaped and skived off for a couple of hours. Technically I should have been doing stocktaking, in practise I've been sketching purple animals. And a unicorn. Just to practise drawing shapes accurately more than anything. I did have to find a clear picture of a horse's head to check what kind of nose they have. Flared nostrils. Got it now. Thought the bear nose didn't look quite right on my unicorn... I'm improving. Still not great though I need to be much better. I can't draw all the cool things in my head till I'm better at it.

Other than that... things are boring. My sister STILL hasn't had the bloody baby. I wish she'd get a move on so I can relax and not be permanently ready to drive down the M4. Bitch woke me at 3am to come down when she had the last one. That was fun....
Darren turns 16 on Thursday (eeep!) and should be starting to work for me next week as week (its a long story... but I get cheap labour, he gets bribed to actually pass his GCSEs.... because he's damn clever but damn lazy and so disillusioned with school its unreal). Jay's friend's parents came round to complain about prank phonecalls at 2am on Sunday morning *sigh* and Geoff goes back to work on what looks like Monday (coincidentally the same day as my mother - another blinking physicist contractor - goes back to her old workplace). Nothing has made me laugh all day which is a little sad.

And I'm now bored. Geoff's been out all evening and I definitely prefer having someone around to mutter at. I'm not tired (plus I'd quite like to still be awake when Geoff gets back)

I'm bloody knackered

2008-01-06T22:58:00.000Z

I have finally been through every single template of every single relevant product in my shop (there's around 1200 products - with around 1-2 templates each) and changed all the bloody listings that still have image URLs for the old domain. Its boring, mind numbing and what few braincells I have left are attempting to escape their torture by climbing out my nose *sniff*. I also stock took as I went... so now in theory all my stock levels for those categories - which is most of the stuff I have - are correct and absolutely everything is listed for sale. Erm all the already written-and-photographed stock that is. That doesn't include the few hundred lines I have sitting here unphotographed, uncounted and unwritten. So much as I'd like to, I can't really take much of a break yet. But its a good start to the year I guess and my shop is now reopened so I should start making money pdq again. Which we need coz we're a bit screwed at the mo.

Soooo tomorrow its stocktake the remaining stuff that doesn't have potential wrong domains - glass beads and jewellery - sticking the jewellery up on the new website as well as I go. Then starts the slow process of getting through all the brand new lines that aren't up yet. And I'm still only on step 2 (of 10) of The Big Picture. And they're not even linear steps *sighs* they go like this:

1..2....3....4................5..6......7...................................8.............................9......*10* utopia!

Or to put it more simply, the first 6 steps - about 2 months. The next 3 steps - about 6 months and simultaneous. Thats way more planning and forethought than I've ever shown any ability to stick to before.

Unsurprisingly I've done bugger all other than work my bum off and sleep the last few days but I figure now the absolute immediate essential stuff is out the way I can maybe go back to having slightly more balance. And, y'know, reintroducing my husband to his wife. I think he's forgotton who I am.

And finally a question.... because I'm really quite interested in the answer. Is finding balance supposed to be so damn difficult?

Its a MAJOR mental logistics problem trying to get my head around doing work-play-family-house-health-etc every day. How do people manage it all the time?

Coz my natural inclination is to one or the other. Like... I can work solid for a week no problem. I can spend days straight reading new books. I can decide my house needs cleaning / redecorating and keep going until the damn thing is done. I've lost weeks of my life completely immersed to the exclusion of everything else when finding new hobbies. I've lost entire months of my life in online communities (or amateur dramatics! Away from rehearsals, costumes need making, props and sets need doing, the am dram pub quiz team Needs You!... is very easy to give your entire life over to it)

But I find it sooooo hard to do little bit of each, every day. So whats the secret?

Being a good girl

2008-01-03T21:05:00.000Z

Sadly the fat chick picture tells me that I've lost the ability to do sweet, cute and delightfully angelic so I shan't try. It would be grimace-like. Sadly my kids noticed it and have been teasing horribly. Or rather Darren was teasing horribly until he decided to convince me that if he really stopped talking to me I'd be worried (haha - I won that one though, he's 'not speaking to me' for a week to see if I get panicky. Yay! No incessant teenage rambling!). Then he just sent Jay in with comments about double chins *glares*.

But I have been behaving in the sense of sticking to my lists a little more. Work has been getting done, although I've changed the shop reopen date to Monday to allow me to get through the rest of the stock edits unhindered, I've been dutifully getting my minimum-per-day exercise, staying (mainly) off the chocolate and attempting to get my finances slightly more... afloat. As Geoff appears to be still largely non-posting on his journal, I'll say that it looks like he's going back to work part time as a contractor - at least for a little while. I won't pretend I won't miss having him at home - I'm not sure how I'll feel to be honest, I've been a lot less depressed with him around - but we need the extra income at the minute. We're not entirely sure how we'll manage kids though given that Cam needs collecting from school at 3.15 daily and I don't currently have a car.

I'd like to have found some time for drawing/painting but most of the stuff I'm in the middle of is currently at the stage where its going to require a good few hours uninterrupted to get further and I haven't really had those hours to spare. I have however got several new books that I've yet to read some of which are relevant to the artwork I'm working on so could read them instead, takes considerably less time!

Sadly the one major thing on my do every day list that I've skipped today is 'something houseworky' so I'm going to bugger off and change the cat litter trays in a mo... Oh and I didn't take my extensive collection of vitamins, supplements and meds this morning either. Ooops. Bad Stephie. Bad, bad bad. *Adjusts the halo from where it slipped anklewards*

The End is Nigh!

2007-12-31T12:10:00.001Z

So its another New Year's Eve and another night in. Technically Geoff and I were supposed to get to go out this year - we had my sister's kids last year so it was OUR TURN, dagnabit! But Daxi is 8 and a half months pregnant and not in any real condition to have our kids as well as her own so we don't get to go out. I can't even drink because I'm on labour emergency call (so if she goes into labour I get to jump in the car, drive down there and look after the evil wee girlies). Which is a shame because I'm high as a kite at the minute and partying the night away would be FUN. Although I'd be seriously at risk of inappropriate, gender irrelevant snogging. But c'est la vie.. there's always next year and she's going to bloody well get spayed this year if I have to take her to the vets hospital myself!

Otherwise I'm good. My Plan is going to... well, plan, helped along by the fact that I'm almost certainly mid mania at the minute, not sleeping, highly energetic and ultra efficient but I'm pleased I've been doing quite well at keeping a balance betweeen different things. Work, play and home are all featuring in equal amounts (even my husband doesn't appear to feel neglected... just slightly harrassed by my constant demands that he do this, that and t'other). I have set myself the possibly unrealistic target of stocktaking everything and changing all those blinkin domains by the 3rd (because thats when the shop reopens) but I'm actually getting through them OK at the minute so it should be perfectly manageable.

Both Bry's and Jans paintings have had work done on them (I say painting, they're both technically still drawings - brys is at least mapped out on watercolour paper whereas jans is still getting its rough draft done). I was waiting for masking fluid before doing any more work on Bry's (which also served as a reminder Not to Shop when manic - because a simple quest to get a couple of bottles of masking fluid turned into a £350 art materials & paper shopping spree *sigh* including masking fluid from four different retailers...). And my house is getting tidy and hoovered (another classic manic thing.... I clean when I'm manic. I don't clean any other time though...!) I've been kind of good with not eating too much rubbish which is to say I've ben eating less of it, not none, although it won't kick into full gear until all the christmas goodies are gone. And I've been home exercising dutifully. Holly likes it - slightly bemused kitty rubbing up against me when I'm on the office floor doing stretches!

So... here's to a productive, busy and highly enjoyable 2008 :o)

~loves y'all lots~

Stephie

Making my life better - creativity

2007-12-29T03:07:00.000Z

"I want to find a balance between money making, personal fulfillment and my responsibilities as a wife and mother. I want to make my husband and children happier while not feeling it takes away from the money or personal side of my life."

That was written amidst some notes but probably sums up what I'm aiming for overall.

With my job, and business development plans, creative wellbeing is intrinsically tied to work. So this post is about creativity and work as two separate but interrelated topics. I'll have a separate one about money and work although again, I have a fairly holistic approach. How could work, money, creativity, relationships, health and fitness not be interlinked? They're all about the common theme of me and my sense of happiness and fulfillment.
I want to work through the points 2 and 3 in Steven Aitchison's article 'Change Your Life Part 1: Grab Your Balls'

[Taken from his post with my answers in red:]

Most people don’t know what they really want to do with their
working life. Try the following exercise:

Write down 7 things you love to do: Read, Shop, Spend time with friends, Draw, Play with Beads, Write, Receive praise

Write down your 7 best talents (be honest and don’t be shy): Design, Analysis, Seeing how things (physical or abstract concepts) work, Jewellery making, writing, ability to learn quickly, sales, animal interpretation

Write down 7 jobs you’d love to do: Jeweller, Artist, Singer, Entrepreneur, Writer (non fiction), Wildlife photographer, erm... I'm stuck

Write down 7 things other people say you’re good at: Jewellery making, art & design, making people feel better, self analysis, sales, techy web stuff, mind reading (its a combination of empathy, logic and interpretation of body language, I do it unconsciously).

Write down 7 courses you would take [cut - specified university but I think thats too limiting. Not everyone wants to learn something purely academic - personally I've done quite enough academia to know I'm damn clever, now I wanna have fun!] if you had the chance: Silversmithing, salsa classes, drama, enamelling, fantasy watercolour painting, the psychology of mental illness, circus skills

After you have down this look at all the things you’ve
written and try and find a common theme. It might be teaching, it might be
learning, it might be driving just try and find the theme.

Art, design, performance, sales. I want to be good at my arts, and I want to achieve recognition and financial recompense for them.

3. If someone gave me a million pounds

If someone gave you a million pounds to change careers what
career would you choose?

I'd take the opportunity to learn to become a bench jeweller, opal cutter and artist, and to develop a name writing about my chosen arts. All three skills would require learning and practise.

[end article text]

To an extent I know what I want to be, what I want to do and how I need to change things to get there - but I think everyone knows that about themselves really, whats important is working out the specifics.

I want to develop as an artist.
I want the development of my websites, galleries and tutorials to drive money in through the business rather than the sales side being the focus and everything else being an afterthought 'when I have time' - switching those focuses is perfectly possible but requires planning and determination.
I want to spend less time on the work that I dislike to free up more time for the artistic side.
I want to get my websites up,
I want to be a good artist,
I want to be beautiful and I want to keep in touch with the things I enjoy.
I want to stop procrastinating with things that mean nothing and result in me getting frustrated,

I can see all the answers are there, everything I need to change my entire life focus and I can see what's stopping me from reaching it. I need to work out how to get past those obstacles, not just now but as an ongoing thing.

So - back to the focus. Creativity is a wonderful thing and I have the good fortune to be passably good at most things I try. I also learn extremely quickly. But I do have a tendancy to be impatient and fickle. My interests can change quickly and I'm not very good at working myself through passably good and onto excellence. I'm also quite poor at doing things that require a degree of setting up - because its not instant gratification and inevitably requires the drudge work afterwards of clearning up. My strongest artistic skills are cold jewellery making, web design and written communiation - because they're the ones I've been doing the longest. They're also the ones that currently contribute to my income. I'd like to add traditional art, cgi art, bench jeweller, opal cutter, and specifically specialist jewellery making writer to that skill set that makes money. Of those four extra things, writing is the only one I currently do so it stays as its essential to my business plans. The others are all new skills that will require development over a period of time. As my current interest is traditional art (and by traditional I mean pencils, pastels and paints), that stays too. Bench jewellery and opal cutting both require additional expenditure and learning from scratch so they can be pus aside for later development. CGI art I was reasonably good at until I found a reason to stop doing it, and realistically I no longer have a computer capable of dealing with modelling software. So it stays on the shelf as well.

Creativity requires regular practise - the more you do it, the better you get. Simple and obvious but easy to overlook. Some creative things are essential to my job. Jewellery making sells my beads and components by demonstrating their potential use. Writing enables me to sell my products through clear use of words. Web design enables me to create welcoming and easy to use environments in which to shop. My fledgling tutorials project is aimed at reaching a wider jewellery-making audience to buy my products (I write the tutorials using the ebay guides feature. Whether you love it or hate it, ebay has great search engine ranking). But they all need developing. I have a jewellery gallery within my ebay shop aimed at providing design ideas but it doesn't get updated anywhere near as often as it should. I should be producing a tutorial a week, and I've only managed two since the conception of the project several months ago. Both finished jewellery and jewellery making sales websites are still in their embryonic stage. I have plans to start writing for magazines, again with the aim of promoting myself and my products to a wider audience (but need the websites finished first, realistically - eBay is a problematic venue). And I have all manner of plans for raising my internet profile to much higher levels (again, I kind of need the websites finished first). Artistically, I see no particular reason that I couldnt become a good enough artist to be saleable, but more importantly, its something I enjoy doing for ME. I don't want to spend every waking moment obsessed with whether what I'm doing makes a profit.

I believe that doing (I used 'practising' first but that suggests 'not for real' which is misleading) those artistic skills, regularly and consistantly will automatically result in a greater income. As above, I want to use my creativity to drive sales to the more mundane side of my business, by creating a reputable, well regarded presence within my fields, rather than my focus being entirely on the mundane side with anything creative being an afterthought. So my products are listed, sold and restocked with very little direct input while traffic comes from making jewellery, writing about design ideas, tutorials, magazine features etc which is a major shift from where I am now where all of my sales come through ebay and I'm constantly revising listings, and adding new products (and getting very bored and frustrated with it, and angry at myself for being bored with it).

So on a regular basis I aim to:

Draw or paint
Make Jewellery
Write online tutorials for publishing on both my websites and ebay
Write tutorials aimed at specific magazines
Spend some time every week looking at promoting my web presence through the use of online communities (various methods from writing book reviews to offering advise on jewellery making forums)

I should be spending some time, every day, at a creative activity that I enjoy.

To do this I need to:

Get my house in order - finish my websites and make sure my stock is all listed
Energise myself - mental energy is related to physical energy and that is related to diet and exercise
Create a calm environment - I hate mess and disorganisation (bit stupid really given that I'm one of the messiest people I know) - schedule in regular housework.
Develop a balanced life schedule. I don't mean to the exclusion of spontaneity but I dont want to be sitting round going arghhh I don't know what to do either. I'm at my best when I'm structured and busy and I operate well with lists.
Have welcoming artistic environments. My bead room is getting better, it feels a bit more homey now and Geoff shifted his CCG cards off my desk in there. My stock will be moving out of the office at some point in spring (to new premises - they're currently being built) at which point the office can be optimised towards Geoff and I doing things we enjoy. Drawing is OK at my desk, painting really isn't.

My main problem here is balance and scheduling and organsation and I want help and suggestions with this.

Still reasonably content...

2007-12-27T03:58:00.000Z

... although possibly slightly cranky because my shoulder has gone again - I pulled a tendon or something in my neck a week ago and I thought it had healed but stretched it a little too sharply this morning and I'm once again in agony and unable to use it without severe pain. Possibly hauling 20kg boxes of beads around yesterday didn't entirely help matters either. Sadly that limits my drawing and painting - and computer use - typing isn't a problem but using a mouse IS. Possibly I should get Geoff to swap my tower and printer round so I don't actually have to stretch for my mouse.

Either way, given pain and inability what I was drawing has been temporarily abandoned and instead I'm busy printing off all the squillions of reference photos I have and organising them into files. Which will give the advantage of not needing me to be tied to my PC when I'm drawing because there little display folders are portable :-). I was busy doing both Bry's and Jans stuff but Bry's is at the stage where I can't go any further without masking fluid (I'm working in watercolour) and Jan's needs large amounts of sketching-planning done which hurts my shoulder if I do it for more than a few minutes.

While there's numerous other things need doing I'm having real difficulty coming up with anything that isn't going to further damage me. Even reading strains is which is a total bitch because I'm kind of left with plonking my arse down in front of the TV which I rarely do and have no wish to do. Given everything, reading is possibly my best bet, especially as I'm currently at home alone with mini bratling - Geoff and the middle two kids have gone over to Andy & Alvery's to see the kids and play some games and Darren's off out with a pack of teenagers. Sleep sounds kind of tempting - I deliberately woke up at 4am to get some drawing time in undisturbed by kids or husband so I'm kinda tired, but obviously not an option with the small snotty one running around.

So yeah, enjoying the time off work even if it does make me feel guilty, but kinda bored on account of not being able to do anything. Ho hum...

Merry Christmas

2007-12-26T08:22:00.000Z

Its boxing day. I managed a WHOLE DAY without turning on my PC, a feat of which I'm reasonably proud, being me. So Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you're enjoying it.

Christmas with four hyperexcited kids was, unsurprisingly, tiring. Possibly moreso for Geoff than for me, given that he's post killer-illness and all. Mainly I sat around and read - finished my Terry Brooks novel which I started on Christmas Eve - Genesis of Shannara is really rather good. I've never read the Shannara books (and have no particular desire to do so) but am a huge fan of the Word and the Void trilogy and his newest series (beginning with Genesis) ties the two worlds together. And then sat and read a couple of fantasy art books.

This morning have just started yet another fantasy art book. I know I'm going to like an author when, within the first couple of pages, he has a diagram with corresponding descriptions of his workspace which include "2. Door. This leads to a big, scary thing called the Outside World. Most fantasy artists avoid using this unless completely neccessary" and "8. Phone. Tenuous link with the Outside World - to be used carefully and wisely.". He even writes like me (LOL - note the capitalisation!) so I think I'm rather going to like Finlay Cowan, he has a sharp, intelligent humour and unusual streak of practicality that appeals.

Other than those I had a stack of other books to get through, which doesn't concern me too much given that I read faster than anyone I know, by quite some way. It amuses me that that particular skill awes Geoff. I'd never particularly thought about it before he brought it up but he is gratifyingly amazed by it. Its not a conscious effort *shrugs* I just read quickly. Its also vaguely pleasing that there's an 'intellectual' skill in which I rate higher than he does. I have a definite tendancy to prefer significant males to be cleverer than me... rooted in, I suspect, an evolved version of base instinctual desire to have a 'strong' mate... I just value intellect over strength and speed, unlike my historic peers. But it can make me feel slightly 'lesser' at times (look, I married a nuclear physicist - I'm going to feel intellctually inferior at times!). But strength of mind - both intellectual and emotional are important (the latter possibly moreso, emotionally broken people make me VERY uncomfortable. Rather hypocritical of me, all things considered).

Eitherway, yeah, reading. Lots of it. And working up the neccessary resolve and conviction to get an entire collection of outstanding birthday and christmas presents drawn. Bryans first one has at least been sketched in rough, Georgie's and Jan's are still half-formed images in my mind. And they're all very different so should be good practise at a variety of skills (luckily going to a collection of people who will appreciate the sentiment and effort over the artistic skill!)

I also, on christmas eve, had a delivery of some 200+ kg of beads which should have arrived some six weeks previously, in time for christmas selling. So at some point I need to investigate those.

And on a lighter note, Geoff's Auntie Jean, wonderful character with a baby obsession and ability to talk, incessantly, for hours in a cigs & whickey soaked voice, about people you've never met and don't care about managed to buy one of the boys a tin of succullent, hard-boiled willies by mistake. She thought the tin looked nice, in an old-lady kind of way - a traditional tin of boiled fruit sweets but missed the modern twist of phallic amusement. Luckily she has a sense of humour, I think my grandmother would have died of embarrasment.

So I hope you're all having a good one without too much stress, arguments and bitching!

Lesson 5 - Colour Pencils

2007-12-22T05:55:00.000Z

OK its not the greatest work of art ever, and I'm not quite exhibition quality but I like it :p

As mentioned in my last post, I tried drawing a castle (Conwy Castle to be precise) which was working rather well until I tried adding a girl in the forground using colour pencils. And discovered that colour pencils are not as intuitive as one might think. So I read a book on drawing with them (thanks Geoff! x) and followed a very simple exercise on getting the feel for colour, shading and hatching with coloured pencils - the suggested idea was completely abstract - just a sheet divided into different shapes and forms shades in in a variety of colours but I didn't feel like abstract to I've given them a recognisable form. The colour is more accurate on the one without the frame mount (its scanned - the mounted one is photographed)

I like colour pencils. They're bright and fun and don't need any set up or cleaning up after. So for now I'm going to continue trying with them (and watercolour pencils - which to be fair, said book concentrates on heavily).

Bah humbug!

2007-12-21T10:05:00.000Z

It would appear that Christmas is not happening this year due to large amount of internet-ordered christmas pressies having not yet arrived (including darren's main present). So christmas is cancelled and its coal for the stockings.

On a lighter note, I've now STOPPED selling, today is my last day of mailing anything and as of this afternoon I'm officially On Holiday. Woohoo! Given that I haven't had a day off ( at all - I work weekends too) since June its really rather needed.

On the arty stuff side I've spent the last few days doing a coloured pencil exercise after a disastrous attempt to draw a girl in the forground of a castle with coloured pencil (the graphite castle kicks arse. The girl was incredibly poor). So I read a colour pencil techniques book and spent some time getting the 'feel' of coloured pencils with a pretty pretty picture which I shall post at some point soonish.

My mother in law took me birthday shopping to hobbycraft on wednesday which was cool. I am now the proud owner of some posh colour watercolour pencils, some very nice quality watercolour and sketch pads and a bloody great big portfolio carry thing in which to keep stuff.

On the subject of my birthday it turned out I wasn't forgotton after all. I got some cool stuff including a book on woodcarving and a miniature grinder set from my sister (plus a fluffy Tinkerbell fleece blanket!), a beautiful set of watercolour paints from Geoff, an easel from the big kids and oil paints from the wee ones among other stuff. And Jan got me the most amazing book on painting watercolour fairies which I'm desperate to try out once I get a few hours and some inspiration.

Fickle as a flutterbye!

2007-12-15T13:49:00.000Z

Me that is! I've been busy for the last couple of days creating a shiny new website to showcase and sell my jewellery and provide an artsy backgroundess to it all. Artsy backgroundess including a getting to know the artist bit - which this blog will be imported into (hence locking anything I really don't want visible to potential customers to LJ friends). Its coming along nicely, Ive got the structure almost done, the design is looking good and a load of products are written and in place. Its not online yet - I need my card processing details to be resent to me before I can add them to the site but its coming along nicely.

However 10 minutes ago my birthday pressies from georgie arrived :o) So I have a shiny new how-to-draw-fairies book and the Drawing for Dummies book here and a need to sit and work through the ENTIRE drawing for dummies book with pencil and sketchpad. So at least for a while I'm going to leave my website creation in order to play. I'll probably spend the day alternating both.

Its perked me up a little though. While I've been working fine its been in a very 'normal' manner. I read something about omega three being beneficial to bipolars so I've been eating a little peppered mackeral every day and it does seem to be working. I'm not falling asleep whilst doing monotonous work and I'm not being utterly manic about my new site (or my new books - its the weekend, I'm allowed to play!)

But on Monday I reach the grand old age of 32 and I'm not a huge fan of birthdays, possibly just because having a birthday a week before Christmas really sucks. Apart from Georgie's books I have two presents to open on Monday - I know Geoff had one arive in yesterday's mail plus Jan dropped on in last night which was a welcome and very sweet surprise from him. I wanted to open it then and I think he'd have liked me too but presents being in such short supply I thought I'd save it. There will undoubtedly be more but everyone is so frantically busy organising Christmas that I tend to get forgotton until they're dropping / mailing christmas stuff. Geoff is broke so I don't blame him in the slightest for not managing my birthday but *sighs* it would be nice to have some exciting new things to play with.

The other thing that has been stressing me out is work. eBay customers are SO impatient this close to Christmas - and of course mail can be severely delayed - which adds up to a whole lot of annoyance.

I might get some sleep before doing anything - I was up early with Finn this morning and had fairly horrific nightmares through most of last night (its the stress!) and while I did try going back to bed at 9am when Geoff woke up, it lasted all of an hour before arguing children disturbed me.

hmmmm artistic blank

2007-12-13T11:47:00.000Z

I haven't been doing a whole lot of arty crafts stuff of late. Or rather I have but my entire time has been spent trying to master the drawing of realistic fur, which I've yet to accomplish. Jewellery making hasn't been happening at the minute simply because its too late to really get things hallmarked and on sale for Christmas so I've been concentrating on other things. I've also been weirdly obsessed with trying to get my house clean which I blame ENTIRELY on my sister. I ALWAYS get her pre-birth nesting instincts. Its so unfair.

Georgie did send my an amazon voucher for my birthday/christmas which I promptly spent on some artsy fairy books (and a terry brooks novel). Haven't arrived yet but amazon assure me they've been dispatched. And as I detailed in previous post I've been thinking LOTS about ways to develop the business in a way that will keep me interested. And I've done most of the geoff & older kids & family christmas shopping now. Only really my mother and some ancient relatives who need frames for their cam & finn school photos we had done to sort. Geoff will do cam & finns shopping.

I did finally get around to photographing my Vintage Lace necklace. Although it looks better 'in person'. I need to work on my necklace photography skills. Tiny things - no problem. Anything bigger than a bracelet and I start to struggle.

I can't remember if I already posted a picture but here it is.

Helping someone with depression

2007-12-05T19:46:00.000Z

Please read. If you think it might help someone else you know, please pass it on (in a strictly non-spammy way of course! I wrote this, its not a forward)

At some point in your life, you will have a friend of family member suffer from a form of depression, whether it be long term chronic depression, postnatal depression or shorter term depression. Yet so many people refuse to accept its a real illness and think all a depressed person really needs is a kick up the arse.

Think about this. Just because you don't understand an illness doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you feel you can't help doesn't mean you're not able to.

The key is educating yourself. Knowing about the illness and knowing how to help can all be achieved easily. You may not understand it - but you'll be aware.

Please read this and remember it. Because some day you might need it. Its a US site but very useful and very relevant.

Most of you are aware than I'm manic depressive (or bipolar if we're using the current PC term) by now I guess. This isn't about me, its about my current state of extreme anger towards someone I love who refuses point blank to accept the illness of someone else I love.

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/depression/related/support_4.asp

Oh and for the record I don't subscribe to the prayer-makes-everything-OK

stance. If you do, please remember more tangible gestures can be felt more easily. If you don't, do what i did and smile amusedly at the susperstition whilst taking on board the sensible stuff.

Love
Steph

Lesson 4: A Whole Head!

2007-12-03T06:35:00.000Z

Firstly... I want to explain something about how my brain works. If I think about doing things - I mean really think, do them in my mind - it has pretty much the same effect as practising. Hence my assertation that I'm pretty sure I could silversmith without too many problems - because while never having touched a soldering torch, I've read a lot, I understand the concepts, and the behaviour of metal and I've 'done it in my mind'. This always prompts looks (or types) of disbelief if I say it but its true.

The same applies to drawing. Before lesson 1 I hadn't drawn anything in over 5 years other than evil cat pic. And before that, when I was occasionally drawing I was awful. But I drew evil cat pic, thought I'd like to learn to draw, read some stuff and started *thinking* about it. Everything bar a cube and a cylinder that I've drawn in the last week has been detailed in my journal. So I'm not practising lots, but I AM thinking about it lots. Hence getting from not-very-good cat pic to quite reasonable portrait in a week.

OK portrait... this 'lesson' had a number of aims. Firstly to try and train myself to use more than two shades of grey when drawing! Secondly to get over my stupid statement that I can't draw noses or lips. If you can draw one thing OK you should be able to draw anything OK using the same basic techniques. And thirdly it was an excercise in drawing from sight - I used a googled photo of a girl to work from. And greyscaled it to help get to grips with the different shades of grey.

I think I managed aims 1 and 2 OK although because I once again couldn't be arsed to go upstairs and scan, the picture looks lighter at the bottom than the top. Aim 3 is a different matter. It is a reasonable drawing considering, but doesn't look especially like the model I drew. But that will come with time.

Its also highlighted that I could do with reading some hair tutorials. The picture was a close up of her face so there wasn't much of her hair to work from. The hairline was entirely made up because her photo cut off before the hairline. But I'm quite pleased with it.

And this is the same picture when I'd done the structure and just started filling in detail

Lesson 3: Eyes and eyes and eyes all over....

2007-12-01T00:21:00.000Z

This evening, I've tried to teach myself to draw eyes. 2 and a half pairs of.

The first one came out best overall I think but they're not aligned properly, the second pair ARE properly aligned but the irises don't match properly (plus the model was at a weird angle so one of her eyes had eyelashes pointing up and one eye had them pointing down. Which looks kind of weird without the rest of the face to explain it). And no, I can't do the rest of the face. I can do the eyes. A vague symbolic attempt at eyebrows. And thats it. Eventually I hope to have enough body parts in my repetoire to build an Entire Person however at the minute I can do a person with eyes, one finger and a thumb.

The third one was a quick 60 second attempt at 'value' drawing - ie drawing the image using tones to define rather than starting with a line drawing and shading in. Its very distinct from line drawing with shading and produces a different effect. Apparently. Either way the single eye was just to see if I'd grasped the idea properly. What I gleaned from that little exercise was that I really need toget a pencil which produces darker tones (I only have a standard HB pencil. I'm not allowed to go buy a range. Or some decent paper :p)

I did try drawing a rose this morning. It sucked. At least in part I think coz I used a fakey fabric rose as a model so didn't have the proper plant structure and texture to work from. So thats at the bottom but is a bit rubbish.

First set of eyes

Second set of eyes and single eye (underneath)

And a really awful rose

Lesson Number Two

2007-11-29T09:59:00.000Z

OK... so strictly speaking I should be working my backside off at this time of year. I'm working certainly but really not to the extent I should be. Although I'm trying harder. But I'm also very aware of the danger of getting completely overwhelmed by Christmas sales because I've had mass stress and depression every December for the last 4 years. So I'm consciously keeping myself doing 'normal' things like the drawing. Not that thats normal in itself but I'm doing it in a normal way. Anyone who knows me is aware of my frightening tendancy to throw myself completely into any new interest to the exclusion of life, the universe and everything. I'm deliberately keeping the drawing down to a couple of hours a day (a lot of which is reading, not drawing).

So yesterdays exercise was to try looking at outlines as a series of interconnected angles which can then be smoothed out, the idea being accurate shape reproduction and as yesterday, training myself to see what is really there. I then added the shading/shadowing stuff from my first lesson (when I say 'lesson' what I mean is what I gleaned from an hours reading and rereading of various tutorials condensed down to what I felt comfortable trying. I also read a lot on shape form, head construction and drawing roses yesterday. But settled for the basic angles practise with my thumb (because its a multiple angle shape and, well, it was there). Ignore the pen, its a leftover on the same sheet from lesson 1!

Eventually I'll manage something interesting. But I want to do this properly and slowly and really focus on the techniques a little at a time.

Drawing 101

2007-11-28T06:23:00.000Z

OK as noted previously, I've always been vaguely disappointed that I can't draw or paint. But having put a little thought into it, I'm sure I could learn. So Step One in Stephie's Learn to Draw project came last night. I spent about half an hour flicking through how-to for beginners articles on about.com last night before doing a very simple exercise at 1am - the 'pick something random but simple and draw it' exercise. The point being to focus on seeing what something really looks like (because your brain compensates for things like perspective and shadowing - try doing the optical illusions app on facebook!) and developing hand-eye co-ordination. And 10 mintes later I'd produced a reasonable facsimile of my pen. Its not perfect my any means, its fatter than the actual pen, the point where it joins stem to nub isn't quite right and the tapering is out - its wider at the further away end making it look flat, when it should be getting ever so slightly narrower towards that end - but as my first attempt since probaby 2nd year high school at drawing an object from sight I'm still reasonably pleased with it (and for those who did high school with me - do you remember drawing the cheeseplant in art? Or the one where we had to do a self portrait half human, half machine?)

Either way I figure with regular practise I could become OK. Then its fairy time! I wonder if I own a sketchbook... Tesco Value printer paper perhaps not the best surface.

First thing to make me laugh all day

2007-11-27T18:59:00.000Z

Stephie: Why is my brain not working properly today Geoffy?

Geoff: Because sometimes your brain doesn't work properly. It goes a bit 'wheeeee'

Stephie: 'Booooooo'

Geoff: It does that to

Stephie: 'Booooh' and 'wheeee'?

Geoff: Yeah your brain has 'Boooo' chemicals and 'wheeee' chemicals fighting a battle over clusters of neurons. Today the 'booooo' chemicals are winning.

*recorded for posterity*

Maybe if I took lessons...

2007-11-26T10:25:00.000Z

OK I'm trying to be objective. And its still awful. But this is the first thing I've even attempted to draw in about five years. I don't have the natural talent that some people have - but I think I could learn to draw. I'll scan it properly when I've finished it. Its not finished yet. The cat demon incidentally came from hallucinations the other night. Purely mind induced hallucinations that is, my brain is quite weird all by itself without adding external substances. I was stroking my cat and her face kept morphing into demon boy down there. It was kinda freaky. Why did I draw it? Erm at stupid o'clock last night I wondered if I could. So I did. It was a bit weird. It also inbued me with a desperate need to do a 'this is why you're wonderful' post... for people in my life that I appreciate in one way or another. OK its sappy and possibly stupid but I reserve the right to both those states so thats at the bottom.

Because you're wonderful....

Geoff - Who else could I start with but my husband? An anchor to my chaos, a lifeline to my madness, a balance to my flightiness. You're the other half of my soul and I love you completely.

Dax. Because you're you. Because you understand and don't judge. Because you help without complaint. Because even when your world is imploding you still have time to keep mine stable.

Georgie - You're my best friend and a welcome oasis of total sanity. Because I'm a difficult person to be friends with and you just accept that sometimes I don't want to talk or keep in touch. For accepting me completely even while completely failing to understand the why of me. For putting up with my cockups, insanity and occasional paranoia without letting it ruffle your fur in the slightest.

Phil. For managing to put up with my sister and not once strangling her and burying her beneath the patio. For incredible patience, tolerance and acceptance joining the utter chaos that is our family. For being a wonderful father to my nieces.

Erica - For loving the worst friend in the world. For knowing I don't mean anything by it when I ignore you for months. For being the most beautiful woman in the universe.

Jan - . For being a giver when its so very evident you need to take as well. And for a journal post that described how you thought illness was not something to be ashamed of. That made me think.

Andrew - For being an embodiment of calm and rationality and letting Geoff know he's not alone.

Andy - - Because you make me laugh. For trying to make me feel included. For supporting Geoff and not judging me despite what you know.

Fiona M. - You make me smile. I'm glad I found you again. We should have been friends 20 years ago.

Something is missing....?

2007-11-19T18:18:00.000Z

I have a vague feeling that I've missed something I've finished recently when doing these photos. I KNOW I forgot to photo my Vintage Lace (or possibly Rhapsody in Lace) necklace - the cake part of my Coffee & Cake sets but I'm sure there's something else missing. No clue what though.

Either way. I don't usually make earrings as anything but an afterthought - I'll make them up to go with a necklace or bracelet, but this week I felt like making some relatively quick projects and opted for earrings in 9k gold (partially because I needed to make up the numbers for hallmarking - I only had a couple of pieces in gold and given that I have to pay for a minimum of 10 IIRC, I may as well send that many in for hallmarking)

Today however I have earrings to show you. And the Coffee part of my Coffee & Cake necklaces

Hoop earrings made with 9k gold wire, Swarovski bicones in Capri Blue and Swarovski crystal pearls in Gold Pearl.

More hoop earrings in 9k gold wire with assorted colour Swarovski bicones. Kind of dreamcatchery. Wish I had some little gold feathers to hang off the bottom.

Emeralds and golden shadow Swarovski crystal cluster earrings with 9k gold wire. The spirals at the bottom are a direct result of my being unable to get hold of headpins at a remotely sensible price in 9k. Mainly I just wanted to play with green and gold. I like the colour combination.

Long chain drop earrings in fire colour crystals and 9k gold. I adore these (and am halfway through making a matching bracelet - unfortunately I forgot that I'd sent the relevant 8mm Swarovski round faceted fire opal beads to my mums for counting).

Cute butterfly earrings. I wanted to see if I could do exact replicas/matches in bent wire so I did the wing shapes on these and added rose and 9k stardust beads and light rose Swarovski butterflies.

And the coffee part of my coffee and cake necklace and is called Autumn Cascade. This is - as my pal Andy would put it - an blatant exercise in fanwank. Not that I'd use such a crude term, but it WAS inspired by a very beautiful character for which the costume dept managed a perfect and meticulous detail to her jewellery at all times. Prize if you can guess the character :p. Hint - TV.

I have - finally - finished the cake section which is probably called Vintage Lace but potentially Rhapsody in Lace. Feel free to vote :p You can also vote for 'naming your jewellery is the most stupidly pretentious thing I've heard in a long time' if you must. Be nice about it though, I appear to be somewhat oversensitive at the moment.

Almost...

2007-11-11T10:56:00.000Z

Well I managed the hour of listing in my ebay shop yesterday. Then did an arrghhh I don't want to be here any more and spent large parts of the rest of the day sleeping or moping. But by 2am my drive had returned and I spent 5 hours or so making my sister's birthday pressie. With barely a bent bit of wire in sight (note its not that bent wire is WRONG. Its that its my method of choice for 90% of what I make. So occasionally producing something none-bent-wirey is cool)

Necklace, bracelet and earrings set. I'm particularly pleased with the bracelet - I don't generally do beaded strung bracelets and I'm pleased with the result. They're made with a mixture of Swarovski crystals and glass seed beads from my friend Georgie at madcowbeads.

Today...

2007-11-10T11:53:00.000Z

I am going to be good. I've been seriously up and down all week and frankly have done nothing at all in the way of useful stuff. But right now I am going to spend an hour listing some of the stuff thats on my desk and then I'm going to go and play with pretty things. Conscious target practise :p... I've been buzzing so much this week and its been wasted on random internet stuff or worse, just making me frustrated that I wasn't doing anything with it. So today I'm going to try some structured targetting. It won't work while I have the babies to myself as well - that creates conflict and I don't do well at conflict - so I'm going to wait until Geoff gets back, then spend an hour listing, then spend an hour playing. Thats just two hours and two things which shouldn't be too much to handle. So... forget about all the other stuff thats outstanding and just do those two things. Great. Go Stephie.

I might even get back to the point of this journal and post some pics of my creations later :p

hmmm

2007-11-04T18:53:00.000Z

OK... as a jewellery maker, I don't do chunky, I don't do asymmetry, I don't do rectangles and I don't do wire wrapping. Which could be why this piece is confounding my usual philosphy of 'part of being good is knowing when you're not'. I don't know if I like this. I don't know if its any good. I think it stops just short of chaotic mess - but am not 100% certain.
I do like that its very tactile - its heavy and a mix of sterling wire, smooth glass beads and faceted Swarovski crystal beads and its also quite motion-y - there's slight movement in the wrapped beads and a tremulous jiggle to the beaded rings on the botttom (they look fine when its hung by the way - not so good flat which is how the photos were taken).

So am posting it here. Not that anyone reads this journal other than my OH who is quite capable of commenting when I wave it under his nose (anyone else is more than welcome to comment - but most of you who are likely to see this ain't going to have any interest!). I've done it on two separate chains. And again, am not sure which I prefer. I'm leaning towards the crystal linked chain.

So... Attempt Number 1 at a framed wire wrap type pendant. My wire wrapping experience before this was limited to wigjig components and wrapped loops so there's plenty of scope for improvement!

Do-Over

2007-11-03T20:35:00.000Z

I suppose I'd better do a proper introduction post. I almost feel like I'm starting over with this journal - realistically, opal work is not something I have the time or the equipment to do at present, so for the time being it's being shelved.

I’m Steph Hall, 30-something years old and I made my first piece of real jewellery when I was 17. I so wish someone had introduced me earlier! The short bout of metal work we did in school would have been so much more interesting if it had been jewellery focused and 3 years of secondary school art classes would have been far less excruciating if someone had explained you don’t need to be able to draw to be an artist. Because I can’t draw for toffee. I totally suck. I still enjoy it on occasion but my 12 year old son is significantly more talented than I!

!Artist.... Am I pretentious? Of course I am. I call my work 'art', my workshop a 'studio' and see 'inspiration' everywhere :p I'll get around to putting up a 'gallery' soon to 'showcase' my 'portfolio' as well. I've even got my very own fashionable mental illness to explain away my 'eccenticities'*. Just be thankful I'm not churning out crap poetry anymore!

*As an aside I did try getting my husband and best friend to refer my wierdness as 'endearingly quirky'. Their responses were 'Nucking Futs is more like it' and 'No, you're completely insane' respectively. I love them :o)

Jewellery making first came about because my parents decided their latest get-rich-quick scheme (or at least earn some extra cash scheme!) was to be making jewellery. So armed with plated wire, a pair of round nose pliers and semi-precious beads I set about making jewellery which went into local shops, libraries and such for sale. It stayed interesting for a while but I was significantly ‘handicapped’ by my parents’ cost awareness. If I used a bead too many or tried something a little too ornate it was too expensive to make. Eventually, my mum left and the jewellery making died and it was a good 13 years before I picked up a pair of pliers again.

Can't Paint...

Can't Draw...

Can Sew a Little...

In the interim I’ve flirted with a lot of crafts. I became reasonably good at my style of digital art & modelling, painted (badly!) and wrote a lot of poor short stories and poetry. I’ve also done a reasonable amount of sewing. For a while I had a stepdaughter for whom I enjoyed making pretty-girly dresses (I had two sons then – I’ve since had two more so there’s a lack of girlyness in our home!). I’ve also done a reasonable amount of costume making for amateur dramatics (I always particularly enjoyed panto and have performed in a number of shows – always with my hands firmly dug into the costume and makeup design as well). I also spent three years designing and selling ballgowns before selling off the business due to a lack of space.

Finding my Mediums
Digital Art	Ballgown Design	Wire Jewellery

So through a very roundabout route, I ended up selling jewellery, beads and jewellery findings for a living. It started when I thought it might be nice to try making jewellery again and I discovered I enjoyed it. I do seem to have ‘caught’ the cost awareness aspect from the parents however instead of limiting myself, I made a business from selling the components needed to make jewellery and have established a lot of wholesale and manufacturing contacts around the world. So I use whatever I feel like using for a piece – I just buy at very low prices in bulk! Its not unusual for me to buy 1000+ identical beads because they gave me an idea for a necklace. I just sell off the excess – which fortunately I’m quite good at - my ebay shop pays the mortgage and the bills so its reasonably important!

Colour is my main motivator. I find inspiration in all manner of things – from art to nature to people but what I see will always be related to the colours I can use in a piece. I’ve zero interest in the very intricate and beautiful art of chain maille – I can appreciate it as an art form but it doesn’t hold the allure of working with colour for me. I frequently look at other artists’ jewellery and sites – not to copy, I’ve never replicated anything in my life – but because their beauty stimulates my creativity – sometimes I look at the same styles as I make, sometimes I’ll browse through sites showcasing the wonderful art of glass beadmaking or polymer clay, or silver & goldsmithing none of which I’ve ever tried and all of which I’d love to be able to do and I do of coursed have my own favourite artists whose work I will never tire of looking at. Alas, I’ve had to put measures into place to severely restrict myself – I’m quite bad for getting worked up about something new, spending way too much money on it and finding myself without the time to work at it.

Jewellery is exciting. There are so many methods and techniques that I’ll never get through them all, and if I start to even consider it my mind takes off on wild flights through my imagination so I do try and keep myself grounded to one or two things at a time simply because I’d never get anything done otherwise!

And the point of this... *shrugs* do blogs need a point? Its a visual and literal diary & scrapbook of my play-time :p

Sadly neglected

2007-09-28T07:56:00.000+01:00

I do try not to completely ignore this space... but looking at the dates it seems I erm... did. Financial meltdown and pneumonia (in August. I mean really.... who gets pneumonia in August?) means that I've been desperately trying to keep enough money coming in to live on. Not helped by the tax credits office being total incompetant idiots.

Anyhoo... I promised pictures and pictures there will be. Nothing very inspiring but the studio (yes, i did give it a pretentious name!) is looking much more studio-ish - in my own, chaotic fashion. No longer a child infested bombsite anyway. More a bead-infested bombsite.

Plus opal. Not that rough opal is particularly inspiring in photo (its actually very inspiring if you're sitting handling it. But maybe I'm just odd). But I've amassed quite a collection of Stuff to Play With, I just need a shiny expensive machine with which to play. True I could go buy something to do the job for considerably less than my shiny toy but I'll just get frustrated I think and want to upgrade. So I might as well do it properly the first time.

In the meantime I took some normal work deliveries that I've been playing with. I'm in love with gold filled findings and I think its high time the UK craft making population realised their value. So its my current mission to make them do so, along with pushing gold foil beads. And being a seller of such treasures I do of course need to demonstrate their application. So I've been making some shiny things.

These were made with gold fill chain, beads and gold foil beads.

Soooo pretty! Must get round to selling them. And because my core market is sterling silver, I've added some more sterling jewellery to my designs, made with a combination of Swarovski crystal and glass beads (coz I've just added glass beads to my shop). Must get around to doing my ebay designs gallery.

And finally... Christmas is coming! And a little logical thought says that kids jewellery is the perfect line. Quick, easy, pretty and the little horrors get more money spent on them than any other section of society. So I've been knocking together a range of kids jewellery using little ceramic beads, sterling silver and Swarovski crystal - couple of example pieces below.

So I haven't been completely unproductive whilst ignoring my blog. Just concentrating on things that will make me immediate cash!

I'm still standing... yeah, yeah, yeah...

2007-08-15T00:38:00.000+01:00

*shudders* bad eighties music running through my head now. Although I think we're probably the luckiest generation.... born long enough ago to have had free reign and exploration encouraged, whilst modern enough that the positive side of feminism had left its mark. We're the far ranging, imaginative innovators :o)

Either way... as the title suggest, I am in fact, still here. And my workshop is looking a lot more Stephie-friendly now with all the crap removed and useful furniture of the we-had-to-put-it-somewhere variety all arranged. And a herd of My Little Ponies adorning the shelf. Absolutely essential.

My opals, tools and beads have been moved in there (I really ought to get my arse in gear and do some beadwork - which qualifies as 'real' work because I use my designs to sell the components). Although I'm still waiting for a couple of opal parcels - some cut Mexican and a lot of what should be extremely high quality Lightening Ridge black.

I'm not actually doing anything in there yet. Partly because I'm still stupid busy with real work, partially because I'm too broke to buy any equipment that I need. Although the nice people at eBay gave me a shiny £150 Powerseller Reward voucher which I promptly spent on a rolling mill (bargain - £250 list price, £150 best offer accepted so all I paid was the £30 shipping).

The good news is is that I'm one of those people who really absorbs books. I barely ever read fiction, because I become completely and totally immersed in it until finished (which is cool, but it don't half piss off anyone around you). Similarly, good techniques books are read from cover to cover, then sections that particularly interest me reread. Then I go to sleep and dream about working metal. You may laugh... but I've got a particular affinity for materials as far as shaping, displacing, bending etc go (I'm also one of those people who can tell by touch whether dye will leak from a garment, or if it really ought to be dry cleaned or if the label is lying). Had I followed my mother's physics-degrees footsteps, I probably would have excelled at an engineering discipline that required a lot of materials science. Sadly the same doesn't apply for carving, drawing or sculpting. I've got very little ability at creating from an empty space. The point being, that dreaming about metalsmithing is a perfectly good starting point for me.

I did have a fun hour or two with my mum 'opal dipping' - the idea being that when rough opal is wet it looks like it will when polished... so we sat dipping rough pieces or Andamooka opal into water in the sun. Its amazing :o)

So I'm thinking. Lots. And exploring websites (I've fallen in love with the work of Victoria Lansford - check out her site, she's absolutely amazing. And on top of the actual metalsmithing techniques, there's been some definite design tricks that have struck a chord. I already have various (scattered) folders on the PC where I nab images because I like the feel of the jewellery, or the colour mix or similar (I almost never copy... where's the fun in that?). Inspirational pictures is what I should refer to them as. But the very simple idea of keeping them and cutouts from magazines etc in ye oldey-fashioned-scrapbook appeals (and its not an idea I would have thought of - I've been surgically attached to computers since I was eight years old with a C64 and a BASIC programming book). But I like the idea of being able to flip through. The other, related, idea was to keep a looseleaf design sketches folder. While I can't draw to save my life, the idea is not to Make Friends and Influence People with my scintillating artwork, but to pin MY ideas down as and when I think of them. Especially important for me because I have a memory like a sieve.

Anyhoo... its 1am and I'm supposed to be getting some real work done (actually I'm supposed to be sleeping, but it just wasn't happening *shrugs* terminal insomnia sucks). So its bye for now but I will be back soon with pictures of my magically transformed workshop and my not-yet-magically-transformed rough opals.

Getting there....

2007-08-06T01:36:00.000+01:00

Back to workspace. I wasn't joking when I said the designated room was a tip. Here's a 'Before' picture...

The grey bar in the forefront is a crosstrainer by the way. One of those 'I really need to get fit' moments several years ago that's sat collecting dust ever since. And underneath the pile of boxes and rugs at the back is a sofabed. Honest.

But I'm getting there. All of the kids crap is now out (you can't see it but the desk and surrounding floor area were covered in stuff). My sister's other half is coming up to collect rugs, crosstrainer, and sofabed, plus a spare cooker and freezer from our old house that were unneeded after we moved! She can use them or sell em or whatever. My time is worth more than I can make from them, hers isn't. I'll post another pic when I've finished sorting it out.

There is so much equipment I want. I need an anvil, and some jewellery hammers. A milling machine (I think thats what its called - has steel type rollers - mainly because I want to be able to texture metal sheet with it). A propane torch and something heatproof to solder on. A Genie has become my cabbing machine of much desire. It will be mine! Various other 'little' bits. And longer term a kiln and glassworking equipment. Oh and a safe... I'm impulsive, not stupid :p. Unfortunately they'll have to wait... Mr VAT man is owed £1800 and I owe quite a bit to my Big Sis Friend Georgie of www.madcowbeads.com so I have that as my main priority. So project Be-A-Jeweller will have to wait a little while so I can sort out urgent payments (not helped by the fact that I'm owed about 6k from the sale of part of my business earlier this year).

Therefore this week will, I think, be dedicated to real work (doubly important because eBay have decided to add item specifics to the jewellery making category *sigh*. I haven't finished adding them to beads yet and now I have a zillion other templates to edit. The only good point is that at least they did it when its quiet!). Unfortunately its August, the sun seems to have finally come out for summer on this little grey island, and that means folks aren't spending anywhere near enough shopping online! I also have an absolute shedload of unlisted stock to get up on my ebay site - just taken a massive load of glass beads (with lots of shiny gold foil beads - beautiful, expensive and hard to get over here!) plus I have a fair few new findings and bails that I haven't sorted out yet, including a lovely new range of gold filled items. Unfortunately gold filled is still relatively unheard of in the UK so I'll have the task of educating my customers on the value - approx 100 x more gold than gold plated, 5% of total weight is real gold and doesn't cause allergies, flake, or tarnish. Wonderful stuff!

If I do get a few hours to play with, I do have one toy I'll be trying out - my lovely dremelly-type tool - which while not what I want to use long term for opal cabbing, can certainly be used to play with until I can afford something better. Although having looked at all the zillion bits for it, I'm not sure I have a fine enough grit to get a really good finish. I do have stickyback wet & dry sandpaper though, so I can probably modify some of the bits. And I have some rough and valueless low grade opal to play with before I let myself loose on the good stuff!

Ad finally, to balance out the not-very-attractive picture above, here's a pretty one - this is one of mine, made with gold filled findings and Swarovski crystal (I sell lots of Swarovski). I really wish I could master photographing necklaces. I kick ass at tiny things - crystal & findings are a doddle - but anything bigger than a couple of inches and my quality drops. On my list of things I need to learn!

2007-08-04T19:33:00.000+01:00

For years I've been fascinated with precious metals, sparkly stuff and especially opals. I adore opals! And after years of hesitantly looking into metalsmithing and opal polishing techniques without actually DOING anything about it, I think its high time I started. I'm not a total novice to jewellery - I wire work and play with beads - and also sell beads, findings & other components for a living at www.stores.ebay.co.uk/princess-jewellery so metalsmithing - and learning to polish opals - is the next big step.

Sure I could buy ready made settings and calibrated finished stones... but where's the sense of satisfaction and artistic achievement in that? I'm definitely borderline frustrated artist (albeit with an engineering brain!). Its a bitch being creative and not being able to draw for toffee.

So... the story so far. I've been reading lots and lots on metalsmithing. A whole load of books arrived from Amazon and as I'm a boring, read-the-manual type of gal, a mentally devoured them and took the bits that felt like me into my grand mental plan. Or possibly mental chaos. Kind of like a bubbling witch's cauldron with lots of unidentifiable elements in there, some of which are almost definitely going to have weird effects.

I've also scoured the web on info on opal polishing and found lots of very good sites, the best of which I'll get round to linking permanent links to at the side.

Finally, I spent far too much money on pretty rocks. Finished rocks, rough rocks, opal rocks and faceted gemstone rocks... you name it. My one point of validation is that they're most definitely a business expense and therefore reduces my tax bill! Surprisingly for me, I've thus far managed to be remarkably restrained on equipment - a dremel type pendant drill with a zillion different cutting, grinding and polishing attachments, and a stand for it. Embarrassingly, its the second time I've bought this model of drill-wotsit. I got almost to the stage of throwing myself at stone polishing in the past - and kind of got distracted by real work and ended up selling it unopened (in all fairness, I do work very hard, and have 4 kids, 7 cats and two blinkin' great german shepherd dogs. Oh and a husband but he's pretty low maintenance).

So, I got the rocks, the dremel and plenty of sources for precious metals and associated supplies (an advantage of trading in jewellery components for a living!). Next I need.... workspace.

I'm fortunate enough to own quite a large house (by UK standards anyway) - need it for all the horrible beasties. So I have a big room downstairs that doubles as my office and stockroom, and the kids had another 'spare' room downstairs for one of their computers & consoles & stuff. However after months of trying to get them to keep it even vaguely tidy, I feel fully justified in kicking them out (its not as mean as it seems - just means the PC goes into one of the boys bedrooms - and given that the wireless connection didn't work too well downstairs - the fault of a rather large aluminium backed magnetic board I have on one of the walls - the kids ain't complaining :-).

So my next step - again before even touching any jewellers equipment - is to clear all the 'spare' furniture and other crap that's been dumped in it - kids desk and computer was in one corner, the rest of the room was erm... pretty much temporary storage.

So there's the start of the journey :-) Its quite exciting really... I like new things!