just a flying visit to say I have one space on a beginners course tomorrow that has suddenly become available.

Yes that’s TOMORROW 6th March!

If you want to come drop me an email, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. I’m teaching again today but will check back often. Saturdays are rare for me to be teaching, and I know how you all want them, so grab your space now.

Oh, and I have some new beads on Etsy.

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.

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.

It’s all change here I tell you! I had my Grand Etsy shop opening last Thursday, well I say grand but what really happened was I put 4 items up for sale and did a tiny bit of promotion. And guess what…..I’ve already made 2 sales…..and I have restocked the shop again too…..phew, I think I need a lie down now, the excitement is getting too much! lol. And have you noticed more changes here? You can now find a link straight to my Etsy shop in the left hand toolbar of my blog and shop. This has a few sneaky peeks of what is on offer over there, so do have a mosey on down and see what’s occurring. Also you’ll notice a link to Twitter, where I will be announcing when I have new pieces in my Etsy shop and this website shop. So if you want to keep up with my latest work, you can become a follower.

As well as this I have also restocked my shop here with some new bead sets, perfect for a Valentine present, and here’s a peek……

Today the kiln is heating up as I write, I’ve sort of made Wednesday my main bead making day, with another day thrown in each week if I can. Of course this will be subject to change as my teaching schedule is very varied from week to week. I still have a space for one person on Wednesday 17th March on a One Day Beginners Course and if you’re wanting to learn but this date doesn’t suit then I still have days available in my diary to pick from. Contact me for more details or if you want this date. Life is certainly never predictable or dull here.

I’m going to put a photo here of my favourite set at the moment, which sold from Etsy, but I’m planning to make some more so keep a look out for them. This set is called Silver Waters and has dreamy transparent shades of blue, turquoise and teal with a pastel spiral inside and a slight golden glow when you view the beads from the side.

Toodles……..I’m off to play with my hot glass (in the snow)(It’s snowing here)(slightly)(ish).

This blog post is coming to you from my new super doopa shiney laptop…..and it’s taken me all morning just to get to this point…..gah! So after weeks of looking and waiting I finally took the plunge and got the one we’d settled on before Christmas, which had gone up £20 over the new year (they said it was the VAT increase but it was way more than it should have been) but then suddenly came down by £70, so I’m well pleased I waited. Dickie Doo Dah very patiently spent all last evening laboriously transfering all my files from the old one to this (thank you!) and warned me this morning that I might struggle to find stuff….ha ha…that’s the understatement of the new year….and where’s my spellcheck for this blog gone? Please excuse any extraenous letters (or missing ones) that may pop up in your face. At least I don’t appear to have stickey keys again, you know (or maybe you don’t), ones you press but don’t appear to leave a letter on the screen! These new ones are just very clicky, but I think I like that.

We had a fab day at Ardingly last Sunday, thank you all for coming to say hello and buying my beads, meeting you guys is what makes our day at these events. Unfortunately the preparation and the day itself left me absolutely exhausted again, so much so that I was really flaked out for most of last week. The bad news was that Dickie managed to break our new Pump Pot before the show even began, and we’d only had the pleasure of using it on two occasions before Ardingly. Do they do spare glass flasks for these?  It’s looking very much like they don’t. BUT The good news is that I did manage to get my accounts and tax sorted out in time, and I’m sat indoors today in my new bid to be a good girl and do all things admin at least one day a week. Although the rate I’m progressing with this new pooter I will be here all week before I get anywhere…lol. I’m planning to get some more new pieces in my shop or my new Etsy shop this week, but I will let you know when I do. Toodles.

If you have come here via Bead Magazine welcome! and welcome also if you’ve arrived via my advert in the Making Jewellery courses supplement. I have new course vacancies on my tuition page and these are currently changing daily.

I’m very pleased to be featured in Bead magazine in the ‘Makers Profile’ slot this month, and if you’ve read the article you’ll know that my objectives for this year are to direct my business to be a more web- based one. To that end we’ve been working really hard the last week to bring my web site up to date and give it a bit of a makeover. I’m very pleased with how it’s looking now. I have a lovely fresh gallery with lots of lovely photos, and an updated front page (thank you Dickie). I’ve also re-stocked my bead shop at last, the first of many re-stocks this year. I have other changes to make but I’m not going to bore you with that, it’s for me to do and you to find when I’ve done it!

I’ve also been very busy this week getting ready for the bead fair at Ardingly this Sunday. I will have my usual mix of colourful beads, some new silver chains suitable for my Cloud Beads and I’m having a bit of a spring clear out so will have some reduced price sets and of course I’m refilling my popular bargain pots. Do come and say hello.

Here’s a peek at the new beads in my shop

They’ve been sat outside in our new nut dispenser for birds since Sunday now, and have they touched them yet? I’ve been concerned about the birds and wanted to feed them during the snow, and I know it can take up to 3 weeks for them to find a feeder, but how sad that they don’t seem to have noticed it yet. My daughter thought she saw movement on it late this afternoon, let’s hope she right. I’ve been trying to entice them with fresh water in the large pot saucer that the blackbird normally uses, that definitely caused a stir when I uncovered the dish and refilled it yesterday with slightly warm water… a female blackbird came and wallowed in it for about 15 minutes while all the other birds bobbed around to see what she was doing. I also moved the filled coconut shell near the bath and nut feeder and put out a halved apple. If that doesn’t work I don’t know what will!

It’s been a lovely week watching the birds forage for food. They’ve been raiding the Bud-lea next door and the shrub we have which I don’t really like, but I may decide to keep for the sake of the bees in the spring and the birds in the winter. We’ve had our regular robins and blue tits, sparrows and blackbirds. But we also have some other finches, I’m not sure yet what they are. Don’t forget next weekend is the Big Garden Birdwatch, you can get details from the RSPB website

And again, all over the place. Woo hoo it looks so lovely but also means that our daughter was home again today. More work has been done on her igloo, and she even made a snow girl. We had to use celery instead of a carrot for a nose as I can’t eat celery and I’m reluctant to use what veg we have left! Needless to say I’ve found it very hard to work again today after my huge success yesterday when I worked hard ALL day and ALL evening not stopping until midnight. I think I burnt myself out, oh dear. I was also worried about getting to the surgery for my flu jab as I thought I’d have to walk there and back (3.2 miles) in the snow and ice. Fortunately I got the car off the drive and we had a quick jaunt there and back. So I finally succumbed and had the jab! Well they did ring me and offer it, so I thought maybe I should have it, although our daughter did get swine flue in the summer and we certainly didn’t. So far no odd effects, not even the achy arm she promised.

And today I also got excited about my first advert! If you get Making Jewellery magazine I have an advert in the free courses guide, complete with a photo of my pink frit swirlers as can be seen on my tuition page and the home page….yes….more excitement, Rick actually put some new photos up for me. And even more exciting….they used my photos on the front page of the courses guide too. If you’ve looked at my tuition page since yesterday you’ll also see that I have at last announced my first special courses. Just drop me an email for details on how to book and to choose your dates.

Still snowy out there, and very cold. Far too cold to be in my studio at the moment, but hopefully it will be warm and snugly by February when we’ve put in the insulation.  Normality is sort of returning, as today is the first day back at school since all the snow, they had 4 days off in total and my how it disrupted my work plans.  I’m taking a very quick break from doing my accounts, as I have thrown myself headlong into getting them done in time. I have so much to do this month it’s crazy, as I also have a bead fair at Ardingly on 24th January, and lots of other jobs to be ready for the 20th January….but I guess I can’t tell you about that, you’ll have to wait and see what I’m not talking about ;.)

I’d have to agree with the statement of my title, it’s not taxing, but doing my yearly accounts is. I was feeling very despondent last night as it all seems to be taking so long and all the things I did throughout last year to make things easier don’t seem to have worked particularly well. I appear to have a few receipts missing in action, although these are from when I was officially on sick time off and following that when I was technically taking it a lot easier. I have to admit that my head was a bit all over the place then, and they’ve probably been ‘put’ somewhere that seemed sensible at the time. Some of the processes I put into place did work, sort of, but it’s still a mix of some bits been entered and others not, which means I have to check everything. NNNNrggghhh.

I really want to get to grips with this so I don’t have so much stress next year. So I have another resolution…..wait for it…to try and do my accounts monthly or every 2 months (sounds familiar doesn’t it!)…..if possible…remembering that I need to work a couple of months behind so that I have all the relevant paperwork and statements. I honestly tried so hard last year, but as I was trying to do January at the end of Jan I got unstuck straight away. Hmmmmm, I wonder if I will manage it?

Snoooooooooooooooooooow. Yes it came 2 nights ago and there’s loads of it. Yesterday we went for a walk and admired all the huge snowmen and women. Normally when you make a snowman all the snow on the lawn disappears and you get left with patchy snow and a straggly sad looking snowman. Not this time. There are loads of monster snow families around the place and still masses of snow left to play with. We had several snowball fights, my daughter came off worse than me (oops) and I made my first snow angel. So she’s home again tomorrow, that’s the third day in a row, let’s hope she can go back next week or I’m really going to struggle to get my work done. I’m loving it, but below I’m going to have a rather huge moan about something…..

So my question is, what on earth is going on with this country when people are too scarred of being sued to clear the snow? I remember when I was a kid, most people used to clear the snow in front of their house, much to my annoyance. Now it would appear we all sit home and whinge about the councils not gritting everywhere, instead of taking responsibility for our paths and clearing up. This really gets me hot under the collar, especially as my approach to life is that if you need to complain, then something obviously needs doing about whatever you’re complaining about, so why not get off your derrière and do something about it? But apparently now people won’t clear the snow because if you do and someone has an accident, then it’s your fault! What’s that all about? I think this government should do us all a favour and make it compulsory to clear snow and ice like many of the countries in Europe and stop pandering to this compensation culture. I think things have got into a bad state when people are too scarred to help their fellow human beings when help is needed. Moan over!

I have to say though that all this snow keeps reminding me of a Cat in the Hat story I had as child. The Cat had a bath and left a pink ring around the bath, and his friends tried everything to get rid of the pink, which gradually got transferred from one item to another. Things came to a head when they used a fan and splayed all the pink on to the snow outside and ended up with a huge pink snowdrift! And on that note…have a pink warm and toasty evening.