Red Curlique Pendant: One of my new favourites! I actually made this necklace while spending the afternoon at Le Scandinave with my family

I'm very excited about one of my new May goals to work on my photography (and actually an April goal as well), because I just bought a brand new camera! Well, partly brand new. I already have a Canon film SLR, and I just bought a digital camera body to use with the lens from my old camera. The photo above was one of the first taken with the new camera, and I'm very proud of how it turned out.

May Goals!

Blue Sunstar Necklace: the most recent item in my shop


Time to cross off April's goals and set some new ones for May!
I'm very glad to have an impetus to do this - it does give me a roadmap. You'd think with all the strategic planning emphasis in my library courses I'd have thought to apply it to my business by now!
Hmm, so, let's see how I did!
April:
1)Apply to be a part of Portobello East
2)Apply to be a part of Store 54. Well, sort of - I actually decided that it would be too much of a demand on my time at the moment, along with working full-time. You should still check them out though! Store 54
3)Get more jewellery bags for online orders
4)Make minimum one piece of jewellery a week (this is what I usually do, but exams got me off track)
5)Blog once a week
6)Experiment with product photography (create a lightbox or take photos outside)
I'm not sure that the last one entirely counts. I did experiment with photography, just on my window ledge and not outside.

Onto the May goals!
1)Apply to be a part of the Wychwood Market
2)Experiment with product photography (create a lightbox or take photos outside). I've re-added this because I still want to do more with it. And see above about it counting.
3)write out my business plan. This goes back to the strategic goals - I think I'd like to have a map somewhere.
4) Get my accounts in order for 2009. I just did my 2008 taxes. There was swearing.

I think those are big enough goals for May! Any suggestions?

craft shows and more

Craft shows, craft shows, craft shows!
Is it the end of April yet?
I've been doing so much running around starting work and applying to craft shows that I haven't made that much jewellery recently!
Never fear, I do have a few new things up my sleeve that I will put into my store VERY SHORTLY (this emphasis to remind myself).

I'm not doing too badly on my goals so far this month - I've been keeping up fairly well with the blog anyways. There are definitely not enough hours in the day. I definitely want to re-focus a bit on the important part of this job - i.e. making things!

Book Buying Spree

I had a number of Chapters gift cards, which means – shopping spree! Among the books I bought were two new jewellery books that I’m excited to get into.

The first is a book of Art Deco designs and that is exactly what it is – there is nothing else in the book but drawings of different designs. It’s a great resource to flip through when I’m looking for ideas (like the Art Nouveau book is as well!).
The second is a Directory of Gemstones, which is a brilliant reference book. It has information about the composition of stones, different names for gemstones, types of cuts and settings, and so on … I find it fascinating, but it’s also great if you are looking to buy jewellery as well. I’m also planning on using it to provide more information about the semi-precious stones I use.

April's Goals

I'm following a suggestion from over at Modish BizTips - a monthly goal meetup! Basically, you set a list of about five goals for the month, and the first Friday of May, we cross the things we've done off the list.
So, my goals for the month of April:

1)Apply to be a part of Portobello East
2)Apply to be a part of Store 54
3)Get more jewellery bags for online orders
4)Make minimum one piece of jewellery a week (this is what I usually do, but exams got me off track)
5)Blog once a week
6)Experiment with product photography (create a lightbox or take photos outside)

I personally think this is a great idea - not only does it set some specific long term goals, and put them in front of people (hopefully forcing us to accomplish them!) but it also makes me think about what I want to do in the next while.

ByHand.Me Feature!

I've been featured on ByHand.Me's homepage! You can see the full feature here, and be sure to take a look around at some of the other brilliant artists who make up the ByHand community.

Nouveau Creations

I am a very big fan of the art nouveau style, and I also have a book that includes a large amount of really neat art nouveau designs. I was making a custom order recently, and was particularly inspired by this drawing:





I was making a pendant with silver wire and amethyst, so I started out by making an arrangement of three flowers using small round amethyst beads. Then I made the pendant by bending the wire with my fingers to attempt to achieve a similar kind of tangled, swoopy look to the pendant. Finally, I attached the amethyst flowers to the pendant using thin purple wire.




However, this pendant was much smaller than it needed to be for my custom order (it only measures 1.25"), so I started over again, incorporating a similar design feel but dispensing with the flowers, and this was the result:
And that's how it goes!
You can check out the amethyst pendent in my store here.