Happy new year to everyone, and in the words of John Lennon….let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear…goodness knows I could do with it this year! I’ve just scooted to check the words and for some reason in my head I was singing ‘without any tear’ and ‘with plenty of cheer’, that would make more sense for how I’m feeling today. OOOO and it looks like I’m back to blog titles using song lyrics, yippee.

I’ve had a lovely Christmas with family, my dad came and stayed with us for a few days, and we had a good time getting to know him better. It’s very interesting the things that can come out of difficult times, and important (I think) to try and find positives when chaos or problems arise. I’ve always been one to explore new avenues that open up when life throws me a curve ball or wallops me off my road and into the ditch or even over the hedge and into the field next to me. Life has to constantly change or we can stagnate, and it’s important to go with this, whether it’s about what we do for a living, or how we feel about our friends and family or the stuff that happens to us.

Last summer was probably one of the most important things that ever happened to rock my world. I really felt that I’d been booted with great force into the field by the road, and I’ve been reassessing my life ever since. I’ve been considering my priorities, my family, my work, how I spend my day, the many mistakes I’ve made and more importantly I’ve been trying to work out how I can improve the things I’m not doing so well. I’ve also looked at my successes and all the wonderful things and family that I’m privileged to have.

So what does the new year bring? Hopefully a happier year than the last one, and more time to do the things I want to, like going out with my dad and getting the house tidy and keeping it that way (this is going to be very hard as any student who has visited for a lesson will tell you!). I will have to get more organised in the way I run my beadmaking business if I am to have more time off………taps chin and wonders how I am going to fit even more stuff in my week.

Have a great week and make some realistic resolutions.

Hello peeps. It’s a been a long time hasn’t it? I’ve been really busy over the last few months doing a City and Guilds course, and I’m now eagerly awaiting my letter to tell me I’ve passed. I was really surprised how long all the homework and class preparation took, especially towards the end of the course. Anyway, that’s over now, and I have got my life back, sort of.

Horsham Open Studios started this weekend, and we have had a lovely first couple of days with so many visitors that we didn’t get time to eat lunch until 3:30pm on Saturday. Thank you to everyone who came this weekend, you made it really special for us, and we look forward to welcoming more of you next weekend. I have a cabinet full of colourful jewellery, with some new designs, lots of beads to choose from, my fun earrings (using sterling silver) and lots of big hole beads starting at just £3 each to put on your Pandora style bracelets (they don’t have silver in them). I also have other small bits and bobs to choose from, including my ever popular £1 rummage dish. Here’s a couple of photos to tease you.

I have several new tuition dates listed on my tuition page. The next available date is a 1 day Beginners course, Weds 29th June, 10am to3pm. Special rate of £79, class size of 2. Contact me to book your place now.
As always I have other availability if these dates do not suit, drop me a line for my list of dates to choose from.

I have one new listing on Etsy and will be adding more during the day, just follow the link on the left.

Lampwork Classes – I have one new space on a 1 day Beginners  Beadmaking course, Tuesday 3rd May, contact me now for more information and to book your place.

I’ve popped some repeat sets on Etsy and a new whopper set of amber, ivory, black and brown beads. Here’s a taster including some of my new ‘Didy sets’.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks as I’ve enrolled on a 10 week course down in Goring and so went to have lunch on the beach after the session this week. After my food I had a walk along the path down to where we often go in the summer with friends. It was very different with the mist and cool spring breeze, and people wearing coats to walk their dogs. The sun was shinning very brightly and dazzling my eyes as it reflected off the pools of water on the sands where the sea had receded away from the shore. It was very peaceful and energising although a bit windy, my hair was a complete state by the time I got back in the car to come home.  It was a treat to have a change of scenery and a chance to reflect on the mornings’ proceedings and life in general. Here’s a few snaps that I took with my new Canon Ixus 130, including the ones I shot after I had rolled backwards onto my back through trying to crouch so low….I meant to do that.

More new beads on Etsy.

What to do on a train journey? Normal people play games like ‘I spy’ but we had fun on our way home from London on Saturday messing around with my new camera…Oh I didn’t tell you I eventually got a new one in January (for my birthday in November). I am the proud owner of a Canon Ixus 130 in Shocking pink.

OK so here’s my list so far…….

1. Play ‘I Spy’
2. Play Noughts and Crosses
3. Read something
4. Eat…mmmmmm
5. Drink…..glug
6. Talk quietly so as not to disturb anyone
7. Sleep…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
8. Play hangman
9. Play join the dots to make boxes – remember that from school?
10. Listen to music
11. Play with I phone/Blackberry/HTC Desire/ insert your phone here
12. Take silly photos with said phone or small camera and see how many different silly effects you can get.

and here’s some of the photos we took…….

Dreams. We all have them. But I’m not talking hopes and dreams, I’m talking of gently coming out of a deep slumber type dreaming here. I get loads, so many that it’s unusual for me not to have one in the morning. They often have recurring themes, and I often visit the same places regularly. I wasn’t going to divulge what I dream, but I may as well tell you that one of my regular haunts is a very big modern house with lots of rooms and a massive garden that stretches off into the distance. We don’t have the real luxury of that but at least I get to enjoy one of my dream properties regularly, including the joy of rediscovering a room that I had forgotten existed. We wouldn’t mind that here in our real house, although several months after we moved in our present house we rediscovered the cupboard under the stairs.

Dreams can often confuse and disappoint. Take this Saturday, when I had to get up early and continue with my preparations for the exhibitions I have to set up this week. I got up and ploughed on with my work really well, feeling relaxed and on top of things, enjoying the early morning weekend peace downstairs,  only to wake up at 10:30 and find that I’d seriously overslept and had to remake all the stuff I’d already done that morning. Oh that sucked.

Still, I successfully prepared my pieces for the Winter Exhibition at the Bank Gallery at Chobham, and now have today and tomorrow to prepare for the Surrey Guild Guildford Exhibition ‘Unique’. I’m feeling very jaded but also optimistic. Let’s hope the snow stays away so I can get stuck in. Here’s some more snowy photos to get you even more in the Christmas mood. Please excuse the dodgy photos, my camera is on it’s way out and Picasa isn’t playing ball either, it keeps changing the photo next to the one I’m trying to tweak. Bye y’all.

It’s official…Christmas is coming and would you believe it if I said I’m getting organised? Oh yes, I had an email from Sainsbury on-line the other day announcing Christmas delivery dates and I actually bagged a slot today. Not one of the really close ones, but I have Monday evening, which is good as that means that I can get the worst of it delivered and anything they muck up on, or I forget, or they don’t have, I still have plenty of time to go and get myself, without having to spend 3 hours traipsing around a packed shop like the other year (click here).

We also have snow, but you’re not really surprised there are you? Fortunately I was able to go to the Gallery in Milford safely yesterday and got home easily, but today we are snowed in, well, my daughter had to stay home as her school was closed. But gone are the days of a real ‘snow day’, she had lots of work on the internet from her teachers, so didn’t get off that lightly. As usual I found it very hard to concentrate and plough on with my work (making jewellery for my 2 exhibitions that start next week) with her here. What am I like?

Here’s a couple of snowy pictures to get you in the mood for December…….

Hurrah, we have more space in the lounge! Oh yes, we got stuck in last Saturday and actually managed to reclaim some floor space. We spent the day emptying the cupboards we bought to house all our daughters toys and bits when she was little, and for the old huge telly to sit on. It was 2 Ikea kitchen cabinets, both 60 cms wide and 60cms deep sitting out from the wall so that the TV could be rotated, and to cover the fireplace hole left when the old house owner sold up and decided to take his new fireplace with him because we refused to pay extra for it. Well it was a bit naff and not to our taste. We also (when we moved in) pulled off all the 70′s naff stone fireplace surround and hearth as we were terrified that our baby (just starting to walk at one year old) would fall and crack her head open on it. So all these years it’s been hidden by cupboards.

I have to confess to being rather staggered by the amount of rubbish that we had been storing in these cupboards, as I’d been saving all sorts of bits and pieces to use for junk modelling, something I used to love as a kid, not really realising that now if you want lovely shiny paper or card you can go and buy it. Gone are the days of recycling your Quality Street wrappers to make light catching jewels to adorn a mobile, although I bet someone out there is doing it well, but not the kids. Anyway, we have successfully sorted lots of paper and bits for recycling, and even managed so far to rehouse one of the 2 cupboards in a very successful position even if I do say so myself.

So now all we have to do (ha ha) is make some sort of fireplace surround to fake a fireplace and make the area look good. At the moment we have a small cube storage unit (one destined to go into my studio) with the TV on it in front of the fire area. Then we should have even more floor space. Talking of my studio……..how cold? I popped out to put the kiln and heater on before coming here, and it was so cold that it was almost hazy in there. The kiln was reading 1 deg C when I switched it on, and I’m sitting here putting off the inevitable. It will be interesting to see how warm I am in my new improved super dooper insulated studio. Please think warm thoughts for me.

I have sore fingers. that would be down to the couple of hundred or so beads that I have just removed from their mandrels. And I still have 7 soaking in Coke as we speak. You know you can always tell how busy I am these days by the lack of blogging. I’m feeling a bit all over the place, my mind is going here and there right now, thinking about all the stuff I’ve done since I last checked in here, all the emails I’ve replied to, beads I’ve sold, places I’ve been, people I’ve met. It’s been a very busy but fulfilling few weeks. Open studios went really well, our numbers weren’t massive, but everyone who came left happy bearing Popped Bubble Designs or gorgeous lampwork bead jewellery. They were treated to Elderflower Cordial and demos from myself and Katherine.

After that I had to have a quick turnaround and prepare my work to put on permanent display at Shop Maltings. This is our new venture as a collective with the Surrey Guild of Craftsmen and Farnham Maltings. We have been invited to use the cabinets in the foyer, glass wall cabinets along a very busy corridor and a small retail space. So last week saw me preparing for that, going there to set up last Thursday (very challenging as my plan for the display didn’t work due to the different stands and the shelf depth) and then returning last Friday for the private view. My daughter and I had a lovely evening over there with drinks and canapés, then a trip to the local Pizza Express while Rick gigged in Haywards Heath with the band he’s in.

There’s always lots on this time of year, and I had been planning to go to the Hampton Court flower show this week, but you know I’m not sure I have the energy, after attending sports day this morning and parents induction at our daughters new school last night….can you believe it she starts secondary school in September! She had a great day at her induction yesterday and we returned in the evening to meet her new tutor and managed to get her kitted out with her new uniform. The first thing she did when we got home was to try it all on properly, she’s so excited and can’t wait to start….long may that last!

Here’s a few shots I took outside Farnham Maltings.

We all have choices to make. At our daughters school they say ‘You can make a good choice, or you can make a bad choice’ in the hope that the kids will behave in a good way. Choices can be major or not, like whether to post yesterdays blog draft, which as it happens wasn’t up to standard. But today I think I’m going to be radical and make what I hope is a good choice, do I make beads in my lovely new wired up studio (do you see how I got that in?) or do I sit indoors and price up my work for the Open Studios that start a week on Saturday? I think pricing work a week and a half early would be really exciting (in a weird sort of way) and to be honest rather grown up for me, a bit scary really, but I think a good decision as hopefully it will mean a less stressful build up to the event and maybe give me some gardening time. It will also give me time to mull over what gaps I have and what beads I should actually make when I do get out to my lovely white studio with the pale beech laminate floor (ooo look I snuck another bit in about my lovely new refitted studio).

Don’t forget to check out my Etsy shop, lots of sets sold from here at the Dorking Bead Fair 2 weeks ago, but I have added one lovely set of Silver Waters. Just click on the Etsy widget on the left. Also I have a couple of glass beadmaking lesson dates:-

***1 place on a 2 day Beginners Course on 12th to 13th July***

***1 place on a 2 hour taster on Friday 25th June 2-4pm***

contact me now to book your place

It’s general election day and my mind is turning to think about the things that could be done better in this country. And I’ve been thinking about some things that keep getting in my way near the front door, and that seem to keep increasing in number, and won’t go away even when I do what it says on the label. Hmmm, what could it be? Phil the Bag? or any of the number of cheap thin virtually useless plastic bags that seem to keep getting dumped through our letter box, at least one each week. It’s not even like you can use them for kitchen waste as they have holes in them. So I’m going to have a bit of a rant now, because I’m getting really fed up with them. I thought we as a country were trying to do our best not to use plastic bags, and I as well as Dickie always take our own bags to do our shopping now. We’re trying so hard to keep our plastic levels down, and yet the charities seem to have a free pass to dump at least one of the offending bags through our letter box every week. How does that work?

I’m a firm believer in recycling as much as possible, and this week we in Horsham were really pleased to have a new street collection on Tuesday that took away junk mail, paper, newspapers, all types of card, glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, cans and foil, and basically combined most of what we already recycle with the addition of the things we used to have to take to other centres. The only extra thing we can now recycle is waxed food paper cartons, but hopefully more people will now recycle what we’ve been doing ourselves. I hate to think of all the clothes that are simply thrown away because they’re no longer wanted, and I also know that charity shops are struggling because people that used to give their clothes to them are now selling them on Ebay. I’m cautious about putting my clothes in the recycling bins in supermarket car parks as one of my friends told me how she saw a car drive up to one, the driver then dangled their child out of the window and into the top of the bin to rummage through it and remove what they wanted! Now maybe they were in need, I guess that was OK, but you hear of companies that do kerbside collections for charity, then set up a shop selling what they collect for their own business.

I have to say I wouldn’t mind the bags so much if they actually did what they said they would, i.e. if you have something to put out you use the bag or if not then put it out and they will collect it back. So what actually happens? I’m sure you know already.  You put out the empty bag and it sits on the doorstep until it goes dirty and rotten and looks a complete mess, because when they do turn up in the van to collect the goods people have left out, unfortunately the company that sells stuff will have been around first and nabbed the charity bags…oh yes, I’ve seen it happen, even when the bags were explicitly labelled with the name of the charity on it, then the charity guys don’t even bother getting out of the van to collect the empty bags, and so the pile gets bigger. You can’t win.

So what’s to do? I really don’t know. Maybe they should think of a better greener way to collect. Obviously the bags make people think about donating, and make it easy to just open it and start filing it, but shouldn’t there be some sort of ban on littering our houses with plastic junk?  Just like the amount of junk mail we get, which has increased since some bright spark said it was all right for the junk mail allowance that Posties deliver to go up in quantity. How green is that? IT’S NOT.