Sarah Downton Beads and Jewellery

Wednesday afternoon

Wow I’ve been away from here a long time. So what’s been happening? Well it’s school holidays for a start, so life is upside down at the moment, but since we last spoke we’ve had Ardingly bead fair, a lovely day with lots of friendly faces coming to say hi and lots of bead shopping, yes me too! I couldn’t resist some amazing and simple boro beads from Purple Beech Designs, I bought some of the teardrops in various colours. Of course I had to rest for a few days after the exertion of preparing for this, then we went away to France for a week with Ricks family. There will be more about ‘The Great Downton Getaway’ in later posts. Now I’m trying to recover from the journey home and the last few days of our holiday which were very busy physically for me.

The good news is that I was 12 weeks post op yesterday, this being another milestone for me being allowed to do a few more things, but the last milestone is my 3 month date on 20th August, when I will be able to stop all my hip precautions and start to lead a completely normal life again (I hope). This is the date I’m really looking forward to. Also this week I have 2 days teaching, my first course until I resume working full time in September, obviously I can’t really teach many days in August due to my daughter being on holiday and family commitments on general.

My next event is the Stourbridge Bead Fair, formerly the GBUK Bead Fair. This is a 3 day bead fair at the Bonded Warehouse in Stourbridge running over the Bank Holiday weekend and is again part of the International festival of Glass (IFG), an amazing and exciting celebration of all things glassy. Actually I’m only going for the Gaffers’ Ale and another hand blown and cut 1 pint beer glass (hee hee) to add to the other 3 in the cupboard.

I am also very pleased to be taking part in ‘The Tempest’ glass bead exhibition on the theme of Shakesperes’ play. This exhibition of handmade glass beads and small sculptures is in the Coffee shop at the Ruskin Glass Centre, details are on my events page together with details of the bead fair. There is a fab website to accompany the exhibition, follow this link for a sneaky peak at my bead (which looks even better in the flesh)! I may also have a couple of my prototype beads for sale in the coffee shop, if I decide to sell them there, if not then they’ll be available on my stall at the beadfair.