Sarah Downton Beads and Jewellery

Thursday morning

How many musicians can you fit in a cluttered lounge?….lets see…..2 violinists, 1 cellist/guitarist, 1 keyboard player, 1 saxophonist, 1 flautist, 1 trumpeter, 1 bass player (that’s me) and 1 on Bodhran (to be full drums on Saturday)…yay 9! Ok so Rick didn’t have drums out but we were pretty full and enjoyed playing live music last night to practice for Saturday. I wonder what our neighbours thought! It’s OK though as we kept the volume down like last year. tee hee. We all gelled really well and it sounded great. It’ll be fun on Saturday when we have our visiting instrumentalist join us and they play through our stops and quiet bits, lol.

I know you’re amazed, and so am I, but I have yet more new beads for sale, they’re in my Etsy store and here’s a teaser….

I hope you like them, and there will be more to come in the next few weeks. Don’t forget you can click the link on the left to get there speedy fast.

Friday lunchtime

It’s the end of half term and it’s been a bit of a let down really. I had a cold at the start of the week, and now our daughter has a temperature. So all we’ve managed to do is mooch around town for a couple of hours on Wednesday. Never mind, it’s been a bit of a rest, if I can all it that. I’ve spent the last 3 evenings working with Rick into the wee hours to get the GBUK Journal looking fab. We’ve been moving all the photos around in the gallery so it looks nice, and we’re talking 80 members who submitted 255 photos between them here…OK we haven’t used all of them, but most of them. Rick spent weeks doing all the preparation for this job, taking in the photos and uploading them to the project,tweeking them where necessary and getting a general layout sorted to include everyone in alphabetical order and roughly size all the photos to suit. I feel a bit bad swanning in and making him change everything, but we both know that individually we do good work, but together we spark off each other, and push each other to produce even better things. It really is a case of the sum of the whole being greater than the value of the parts. We’ve changed the front and back cover radically, and now we’re both very excited about how the whole project is looking. All we need to do now is to rationalise the inside design to tie in with the covers and get our text colours and headers sorted, and we should be good to go to print…woop, woop.

On another note, I’m pleased to announce that I have a new outlet for my jewellery. This is the Cisswood House Hotel, (a luxurious Country Hotel, in Lower Beeding near Leonardslee Gardens) where I gave my Ladies Lunch talk in the summer last year. I have a shelf in their cabinet in the reception area, and have my glass bead jewellery for sale, including some Cloud Beads, together with some of my semi-precious pieces like my freshwater pearl earrings.

Have a good weekend.

Monday night

EEEk, almost a month has just gone since my last blog entry. Looks like I’m slacking a bit here…..OK, so I am on the blog front but it’s been all go. After a couple of months of hard preparations for my 2 exhibitions and 2 school craft fairs I can now see light at the end of the tunnel. Both exhibitions are in full swing and are going really well, details are on my home page and events page that I updated tonight. All I have to do now is to keep my work topped up with new pieces as they sell before Christmas, as both venues are attracting lots of attention, as is the Surrey Guild gallery in Milford. So if you are in need of inspiration for lovely Christmas gifts then you could do no better than visit one of the 3 venues, or even all 3 of them!

I’ve also updated my events page with some of my Bead fairs for the coming year, it’s already starting to look busy.

Today has been a bit of a weird one, as Rick stayed home still trying to get over the cold he got last weekend. The naughty boy put on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer just to have a peek, and 8 hours later we had got through half the 4th season….that’s 11 episodes for the uninitiated…..oh my…sounds terrible, but we have NEVER done anything like that before, and in my defence I did sit at the table the whole time and make 5 pairs of earrings and core 15 of my Cloud Beads. I also managed to break 2 as usual, I always break one in every 9…..I hope he goes to work tomorrow!

Monday evening

Oh dear, I’m really slacking on the blogging front at the moment. It doesn’t help that I can’t move my laptop from the desk, it seems to have turned into a desktop machine, as it crashes when I try to move it. I do need a new laptop, and I’m very disappointed that the journey to buy a new one is frankly rather boring…and I’m not talking about the drive from Horsham to Crawley. I’d been thinking for years that getting a new one would be so exciting, but alas, after a small amount of research it looks like I’ll be going with the same make of Acer again, in a boring colour. I’ve been watching all the Dell ads on telly, and have browsed their website, I’ve even fallen for one of the wacky patterns…this one…Horizontel del Infinto but honestly don’t see the point in paying an extra £75 for a pretty pattern….this is the engineer and tight wad in me! Although a quick look at the website whilst putting this link in would make it look as though the pattern is free at the moment…no I just checked it’s an extra £89! forget that. That aside, they don’t seem to have what I need for a price to match the Acer. rats. Also I’ve left it so long now that I think I may have a mercy mission this week to rush and buy a new one, rather than waiting for a custom job. ho hum.

This week I’m getting ready for another show, or rather a month long exhibition. This is with the Surrey Guild, and we’re setting up this Friday. The event is a selling exhibition at Guildford House Gallery in Guildford High street, and opens this Saturday, running until Christmas Eve. After that I am preparing for another Surrey Guild Exhibition at the Bank Gallery in Chobham. Then it’s prep for the 2 school craft fairs I’m attending. So it’s all go at the moment. Fortunately (or rather unfortunately) I didn’t sell much at the fair the other week, and so have lots of pieces made already for the Guildford show, but I do have to re-label everything and do my inventory sheets (joy of joys!)…let’s hope the laptop copes.

Tuesday night

Yoo hoo I’m back….well, I’m home but working in the Surrey Guild gallery in Millford this week. It’s been such a busy summer, with one event after another, like the Stourbridge bead fair one weekend, 3 days home to unpack then repack to go away again for a family wedding then a short holiday. It’s been all go but fun and exhausting, and I have had no hip pain in my new bionic hip, although some pain in my origianlly bad hip, rats. I’m hoping this will reduce as dependance on overusing it reduces. So what’s new? Not a lot really yet, as I am still unable to enjoy my torch because of the days out this week, although I’m hoping to get some torch time on Thursday as I’ve managed to swap one of my days. I’m getting reved up for the Bead Fair at Hatfield House on 21st September, less than 2 weeks (well, I should be but I’m unable to do anything for this yet) and I have also booked the Big Bead Show at Esher on 1st November (6 weeks away).

These bookings are all very well, but will they happen, will I be able to torch on Thursday or will we have been sucked into a black hole by then?  If you haven’t heard what’s happening tomorrow then look up Large hadron Collider. It amazes me how people are allowed to do this if it’s really so risky. Of course they say it’s not, then laugh manically, but who’s to know? I guess we’ll all know, or not by Thursday. lol.

Friday morning

I’m very pleased to announce that my work is for sale in a new gallery, well, new for me, but the gallery has been open for a few years now. Wave 7 Gallery is full of lots of very colourful pieces of work, much of it inspired by it’s location, near the sea. Actually it’s ideally placed for several beaches, Polzeath and New Polzeath, Rock, and Port Issac. Anyway, my work arrived before the half term holiday and has been on show for a couple of weeks now. If you’re in this area do go and have a look and say hello to Victoria, the proprietor, who also has her studio there making gorgeous coloured abstract mirrors (I have a teeny one that sits on my desk).