fab new boxes!

This is a photo of my new boxes, just arrived from Finer Packaging, who, as always, have done me proud! I ordered these on Monday morning and they arrived on Wednesday evening! Amazing huh? These wild pink boxes are just for my feather earrings and necklaces which look incredible in the boxes. Very chuffed indeed.

Meanwhile, don't forget to leave a comment below if you want to be in the draw on Sunday evening to win the wild roses stud earrings. With the likes on FB and the comments here I'm nearing the 100 mark, at which point there will be two pairs available to win, so tell your friends too!

giveaway!

I'm in a generous mood! It's been a great month in the shop, I've had some lovely commissions, and now we've got gorgeous weather, so I'm going to give away a pair of my new wild roses stud earrings. Just leave a comment below so that I have your name and email details and if you want to follow my blog, then sign up, but that's not a requirement. If you also 'like' my facebook page, or this page, you'll be entered twice into the draw. I will pull a name out of the hat on Sunday 2nd of October, at 8pm. Pass on the word because if I have more than 100 entries I will draw two names out of the hat, both will receive a pair of earrings.

Chit, chat, natter, natter...

Today was a day of chatting! Much of it illuminating, like the fact that we will have new neighbours at fig from the beginning of October. In the shop vacated recently my Charlie Boots, will be a pop up shop selling lovely crafts, by Button Karen and Quilt Mim. You may have realised that I don't know their surnames, so for now I shall call them Button and Quilt. Or Karen and Mim to their faces. Both do gorgeous work, so we are very excited, and Button had on an AMAZING silver ring made by someone who will join them in the shop, for now known as Silver Lynne. Though I don't feel sure her name was actually Lynne....

Meanwhile I got a smidgen of work done, but also took on a rather exciting commission. An acquaintance

from the school playground back in the day when my son was at nursery, has commissioned 5 pieces of jewellery for her editors who worked with her on her latest book, the jacket of which you can see on the left. She's asked me to come up with something inspired by the jacket, and I love the curlyquews (sp?) all around the cover, but particularly under the VIII. So far (in the time between nattering) I've come up with this...

I think I may use the curly bits bottom right (they are on their side in the image), cut out of sheet silver, and have chain coming from either side as a necklace. Got to remember that I need to make 5 of them! Remeber the budget Lumley!

ah.... Bristol!

On the way to work this morning, bright and early, this is what I saw.....

I do love living here, and even after nearly 10 years, I still enjoy the site of the balloons you suddenly see drifting over the skyline. The photo makes it look like it was sometime around dawn, but I really don't get up that early, well not for the amount I earn at least!

Now, a little nearer dawn I was lying in bed reading one of my favourite customer's blog, Ann Rippin. Her blog is always interesting, and this morning's words on patchwork have set me off again. Just the sight of the first photo took me back to working in a children's summer club, called Stop Gap in Barnes, London, where there were two huts, the messy hut and the clean hut. No one who knows me will be surprised to learn that I was generally assigned to the messy hut where we made batik, tie-die, painted, made giant junk models and so on. Every so often I would hear the dreaded words 'you're in the clean hut today Jemima', and I would sigh loudly, and sit all day making peg dolls, and embroidery and patchwork. These days that sounds pretty much like heaven to me (apart from the tidy aspect of the work of course).

So this evening I have taken out my 'stitch and bitch' bag, where lies two sets of 'charm squares' (pre-cut squares of lovely, mixed pattern fabrics) that I bought last year to make a patchwork. And, gawd-dammit, that's what I'm going to start doing right now. Well, once I've reacquainted myself with how to do patchwork of course. Here I come YouTube (and a glass of cold beer obviously).

On second thoughts I have just unearthed my 1970's crafts bible. Perhaps this is more me....

Bit of a dull day!

Today was spent trying to tackle the long, long list of items wanted by one of my galleries. It's called atelier, in Barnstaple, and is run by lovely Tracey Benton. I've been (legitimately) putting off starting, let alone completing this order, as I've had lots of other big jobs to work on, but now I can procrastinate no longer.

Meanwhile, in fig, everyone else has been very creative and today I'm including an amateurish shot of Jane Ormes's print, which is stunning. So even when I'm struggling to feel creative, I can look around and see loveliness. Lucky me! More fig colleagues work soon.

A new charm and a brilliant website

This morning was spent photographing a couple of new pieces, which I promise will be on here and blogged about soon, but this afternoon I was on duty in fig. My lovely friend and paperwork sorter-outer extrodinaire, Juliet came in to have a good old gossip, and she has introduced me to Domestic Sluttery! Genius!

I also created this cute new charm which was ordered by a very stylish young lady, who has just started at secondary school, for her charm bracelet. I love it, and I hope she will too.

ooo-er missus!

Today I made another Mrs...... name necklace, so that the lovely Clare Swayne of Snappy Families can photograph it for me tomorrow, along with the the shhhhh.... big project I can't mention yet. The amateurish photo that I've taken with my camera here, is to give you a little idea, but I'm hoping that good humoured men, with a keen sense of irony, will flock to fig to snap them up for Christmas. I would love to see lots of lucky ladies around the place wearing them - more's the pity that my (married) name is far too long to have one myself. Officially I'm triple barrelled, don't you know!

Meanwhile I prepared a quote early this evening for a five letter name in 9 and 18 carat gold. Given that these necklaces in silver are £59, I worked out that in 9ct I would have to charge £240, and in 18ct £450! The world's gone bonkers.

New Work

I have promised myself for months now, that I would start blogging regularly. And somehow it never quite happens. So my new promise to myself (along with taking more exercise and eating less chocolate) is to blog, now and then, about new work. Of course, I've chosen a week when the two exciting pieces I'm working on are surprise gifts, and I daren't put them on here just yet, just in case. So instead here are photos of the new 'value for money' collection! Feathers!

Lots of 'em. I've always loved feathers, and there are images, and sketches of them all through my sketch and note books, but I could never turn them into satisfactory silver pieces. So I just bought some real ones! These are hand dyed (not by me) goose and chicken feathers. I've made silver tube attachments for them and then 'chemically bonded' (read glued!) the feathers into the tubes. Very 80's style, long and luscious, and remind me and my (younger!) sister of our teenage-hood, though then I wore peacock feathers.

Prices start at just £15 for the earrings, and £25 for the necklaces. Only available from fig at the moment, or you can order on the phone if you want to let me know what colours your'd like.

Meanwhile I realise that I also haven't posted any images of my newest silver collection, which is called Wild Roses. These gorgeous photos have been taken by my friend and regular photographer, Clare Swayne of Snappy Families. Her work just gets better and better and I'm soooooo pleased with these images. I designedand ordered new gift tags this week using some of the images from this collection (though not the ones here!).

I'm hoping that these will be available on my own website soon (webdesigner's time permitting) but meanwhile you can find them on notonthehighstreet.

That's it for now, I'm dying to post about the new pieces, but it will have to wait till next week. I will say though that one of them is a version of this piece here, but instead of a woman's name it says MrsSmith (though I've replaced the real name with Smith!) - what a great idea! Really made me chuckle. The other piece is a rather fabulous stand out piece from my Wild Roses collection destined for one of my favourite customers for her rather special wedding anniversary. So no photos until she's received it!