And the Winner is ....

No 7, NESS, Congratulations Ness !! Please email me so I can sort out your prize.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey, it is very interesting to look through the results, a quick summary of which -

Of the people who filled it in the majority are jewellery designers / makers, but from all different corners of the world which is amazing and fantastic (to me anyway !).

By far the most important thing for you in reading a blog was that you like the artists work, with good quality pictures and style of writing drawing for second place. 

Artists inspiration and the design process came up tops as the topics you were most interested in and Blue and Purple were far and away the most chosen favourite colours.

A big thank you again to everyone who took the time to do the survey and especially to those who left comments and questions which I look forward to answering soon ! 

You could WIN ... if you fill out the Survey

Ok, so gratuitously attention grabbing title !! The reason for this is I have noticed that following some of the recent events, blog hops etc round here, there has been quite an increase in the number of people reading and following the blog, thats so great, THANK YOU all !

As a result I have put a little  Online Survey together to get to know a bit more about who is reading the blog and the sort of thing that interests you.

Now I know not everyone is like me (I *love* surveys) and enjoys filling them out so I thought as an incentive we'd have a giveaway. To be in with a chance of winning it you need to fill out the survey (Its anonymous) then come back here and comment on this post to say that you have done so.

The prize will be your choice of either a set of beads and matching focal, or a Pendant and matching Earrings. I will keep the survey live until Sunday 20th March then on the Monday I will draw someones name to win from the people who have commented on this post.

The picture is some new beads, purely to have something pretty to look at, I will post a picture of the prizes next week when I have made them ;o) 

World Book Night

What a lucky girl am I ! You may have been hearing about World Book Day recently, or if you have been watching the TV this evening you may have come across World Book Night, an exciting and ambitious project to give away one million books.

Well I am very excited to say I am going to be getting one of those books, I will have a copy of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and with huge thanks to the lovely Mary Kent of Nemea Designs who is one of the people who was selected to be a "giver" and distribute copies of the book of her choice from those in the project.

Part of my excitement (other than new reading material to feed my book-worm habit) for this is that the books all have a unique identifying number on them, so that once I have read my copy I can pass it on to someone else to read who can log on the website that they have read it and then we can follow the journey of the book !! I think that is soooo cool. Once I have my book and have read and logged it I will share the number so you can follow it too.

If you want to get involved with this project then you can find all the info via the links above or register for World Book Night 2012 here.

Spring Garden

I have been busying myself with some more framed work, I got all over excited with an idea and decided I had to follow it through to a finished piece. I had been doing some research for my little pattern project  making some drawings and doing some initial work based on some photos from a trip to RHS Wisley when I decided I had to try the shapes I was drawing in glass (now there's a surprise...), with patterns on in the same way as I pattern my dragonflies. And this is what I came up with

It is in a white frame, just photographed on a black background (hoping for chance to have a proper "photoshoot" with it next week) but im sure you get the idea ! 

As you can see its not just glass, I have been playing with metal clay, fine silver and sterling silver too. Great fun as it has been a while since Ive had chance to use metal clay and I really enjoy the different effects you can get with it.

I think this is my favorite bit (dont tell the other flowers that though !!) I think Im going to make another flower in this style and work it up into a pendant. One of the best things about doing this has been all the other ideas and tangents it has generated that are now crowding around in my head. I cant wait till next week and some time in the studio to work on them.

Spring is in the air

Its creeping in slowly but surely, sometimes in a one-step-forwards, two-steps-back kind of way. but you can feel it in the air. The sun is shining, the bulbs in my garden are starting to poke their shoots through the ground, even the kitties are starting to go outside more frequently to play, Spring is on its way.

Spring, like Autumn is one of the seasons that I find has a tangible effect on my work, its not a deliberate "oh, I must make spring like things" but a hankering to use brighter colours, designs that remind me of warmer days, things blooming and a general feeling of freshness.

I have been thinking about this for a few days as I have been working on a new framed piece, so far im really pleased with how it is coming together, and to me it feels very much like spring. Want to see a sneak-peek teaser ? Just a little detail ? Ok, here goes - 

Do you find the seasons have a direct influence on what you make ? I would love to hear if it affects you, how it affects your work ? Do you find you  use different colours ? Or even a different technique or media ?

And the winer is

Sarah, of La-De-Dah. Congratulations Sarah ! 

Huge thank you to everyone taking part in OWOH, it has been great to visit lots of new blogs and "meet" new people I have thoroughly enjoyed it. A particularly special thank you to everyone who took time to comment on my post too !

Lonely Hearts

I hope that you are having a  lovely day and the sun is shining where you are as it is here, after the grotty overcast and rainy day we had yesterday its so lovely to have bright sunshine today. I decided that it would be fun to do something for valentines and this appealed so I hope you will go and take a look at the Chameleon Designs Lonely Hearts Page and say hello to Lola, Betty, Ginny and company and help to make them feel loved.

Its over a year now since I went on the class with Claudia Trimbur Pagel and I had lots of ideas following the class for beads that  I wanted to make, amongst which was a manga style girl and, well, as you can see its take a year to get there but then last week I finally got round to attempting it and I was quite pleased with the results of my first goes, despite there being some obvious room for improvement !!

Beads in order that they were made - top first

While I was making them something clicked in my brain, a switch somewhere flipped or something and I remembered a souvenir my mum bought me back from a holiday in Greece, a plaster ladies head, very pretty, in a 1920's style, all black and white, and we called her Tallulah after one of the characters in Bugsy Mallone.  So I decided to make some 1920's (ish) ladies, bobbed hair, big flowers in their hair or hair bands, and "all that jazz". Meet "Lola" - 

You can see the other ladies on their page on my website or on my flickr.