Sarah Downton Beads and Jewellery

Monday morning lunchtime

Well hello there! At last I’ve managed to get outside and take up my new position to write something. Once again it’s been all go with exhibition preparation, web site stuff and general hecticalilty (good new word that, whatcha fink?). I managed to get my work priced up early, but only by 4 days, as doing the New Surrey Guild of Craftsmen website took over that week. I’m not going to post a link to that just yet as we have to finish tweaking the front page before we put it up, and we’re doing that this week.

We’ve also been working hard on trying to get our garden looking respectable after a year of barrenness, well, several actually. I couldn’t understand why the garden was in such a bad state, and have to keep reminding myself that neglect of anything not top priority is what happens when you are unwell/disabled or having whatever problem you have. You really don’t realise what an impact bad stuff has on your life until you look back from your better place and see the effects of whatever it was around you. Life has to be prioritised into what you need to do to keep you happy (which in my case was making beads and building up my business), and to live from day to day, like food! Oh and a wee bit of the dreaded washing and cleaning.

So today I’m very pleased to be sitting in my new blogging seat, which is actually a problem area in the garden where we can’t plant anything because of the manhole cover that the daft builders positioned next to our fence and over the drain that runs exactly along our sunniest border, nutters. Now this is extremely annoying as we only have one sunny edge in our garden and this is it. So I devised a cunning plan to make a Mediterranean style gravel seating are over the cover. This can be lifted if access is needed as the gravel sits on a membrane. I love it.

I can’t tell you how nice it is to be able to sit outside with a steaming hot mug of tea and enjoy the lovely weather and relax a bit after my hectic week last week and a weekend of welcoming visitors to our Open Studio in Horsham. We fling our doors open again this coming weekend, and it would be lovely to welcome some of you too. For more details please follow this link.

Tuesday morning

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

Sunday evening

We have a bird tree. Everyone is doing stuff online, it’s all Facebook, Bebo, forums and twitter. Remember Cameron and his funny faux pas on Absolute Radio when asked if he uses Twitter? ‘Too many twitters make a t**t’?  I think we have the coolest twitter place here, I can see it as I sit here typing this post. I can hear it too.

We have a bird tree and right now the birds are twittering in it to their hearts content. It’s a holly tree in the corner of our small garden, one that sits over the corner of my studio and shelters one half of it from the ravages of the winter. The tree keeps my studio dry in the rain but sheds (no pun intended) many holly leaves down the gap between the fence and the studio in the autumn.

I can’t help thinking one of the funniest lines I ever heard in a song……’mangos on the mango tree, tapas on the Tapas tree’.

We have a bird tree….and I love it.

Thursday morning

I have to post and run today. It’s been another manic couple of weeks, with a couple more of the same to come.  I was madly getting ready for an exhibition that started last week at the Bank Gallery in Chobham, and would you believe it finishes this Saturday?  So I  have to go back at the start of next week to collect my cabinet and work. I don’t know how I’m going to fit this 3 hour round trip in, but it will have to happen. And I must remember to take some Blue Tack or Sellotape to stick my parking ticket to the windscreen or I may end up with another parking ticket……oh yes, last Tuesday when I was stewarding and putting my work in my cabinet I somehow managed to displace my parking ticket that I’d faithfully bought, so that the warden couldn’t see it and I ended up with a parking fine, which I contested but they’re being jobs worths about. Here’s a few shots of our exhibition at the Bank Gallery.

So today my job is to prepare for the Bead Fair at Dorking Halls this Sunday. I have beads to clean, dry and inspect…boo, beads to sort into sets and string together, and beads to sort for the bargain pots…yay. I also have all the other small jobs to prepare for the event, the ones that need doing but don’t actually look like they’ve happened, you know, like sorting my float, leaflets and sales sheets etc., boring but very important. I will have more luscious beads, including my Etsy shop stock ( I must work out how to put this on holiday for Sunday), more bargain beads and my usual supply of chains.

Today is also a very special day for me, as it’s now 2 years to the day that I had my hip replaced. I think my last post about hippiness was probably a year ago, no, make that the end of last June when I did the Race for Life. What a difference it has made to my life and that of my family. Two years down the line I feel like me again, it’s taken a while, but the thought of limping and using a stick are starting to fade into the past. I am still concious of walking when I do go out, but it is with a huge grin on my face and a heart full of joy and gratitude for the wonderful technology we have here. Life is sweet. I should celebrate. I’d better plan something in my hectic schedule.

Thursday morning

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.

Tuesday morning

It’s official, I’m back in my new improved studio. I have insulation, posh lining and a pale laminate floor. I also have a new shelving unit for my glass and a new workbench (well, kitchen worktop). It all looks lovely, now I have to tidy up my jars of glass and organise some way to display and store my huge frit collection without the labels fading in the sun light. I have lots of jars to soak labels off, as I just used to use them as they were, label and all, to store glass rods in that I am using, but no more, I’m on a tidy up spree. I’ve ditched lots of rubbish that was in the old studio, including all those lovely colour wine bottles that I thought I would turn into beads. I’d love to spend the time recycling glass, but to be honest it takes too long for my style of beadmaking. I’ve got really ruthless and have decided to part with glass I won’t ever use and clear out a few bead presses also. All of yesterday was spent sorting out said rubbish and going up and down the steps between the house and garden with handfuls of things to put back in the studio. We can now see the floor in our lounge again, such a relief.

Here’s a couple of shots of my studio progress…..hover over the photos for captions

Friday morning

Wow what a week, I was going to post earlier than today but I’ve been a bit busy, again. This week I had the pleasure of attending another course, this time with the marvellous Andrea Guarino who came over from America to teach at Creative Glass. She has now gone to Zurich to their Swiss head office to teach a couple more classes. We had a fabulous 2 days with Andrea, who showed us how to make several of her bead designs, mainly to teach the techniques she uses to alter the appearance of the simple Effetre glass palate. We learnt some reactive  twistie recipes and some neat tricks for colour reactions. We also got to play with some of Jim Moores’ fabulous tools, something I’ve been intrigued by for a long time, and we loved them so much that we had to have a tool lottery to fairly decide who could buy what tool. I fortunately got second or third dibs and got the tool I was desperate to own, a large one and a half inch lentil masher. I was seen stroking this tool at some point and there is a photo of me doing this lurking on t’interweb somewhere. Andrea is great fun and a very generous teacher, and I’d thoroughly recommend going on one of her courses if the opportunity arises.

The course was also made very memorable by my friends who attended it. We had a real blast, and all got on very well with each other and Andrea, the guys at Creative Glass haven’t ever heard so much laughter at one of their courses before. Unfortunately the down side of all this is that I’m rather weary again, having had 2 intense days of tuition, a late night out for a meal with the lasses and 2 days manic driving back and forth to Rochester. Oh well, it was so worth it.

Today I’m catching up with stuff, listing more goodies on Etsy …. keep an eye out for new stuff during the day……and getting really stuck in to sorting my work for the Bank Gallery Exhibition that we set up in 11 days time. Oh and I have to check how my laminate floor will look when put in my studio.

Some photos of the course with Andrea

Friday afternoon

More new beads…..I persuaded Rick to take some photos last night after he got back from band practice, and I’ve listed 4 new sets on Etsy today. Photos below. Unfortunately he forgot one of the angles that I like for each set so the poor duck will have to repeat the process tonight. We also have the exciting prospect of a trip to Ikea at some point this weekend to get flooring for my studio and some shelves to put the glass on.

I had a dream of what my studio would look like when finished and it’s gradually changing into something that I hadn’t envisaged and that I’m not so keen on. I know that practicality should come first, but I’m still a bit sad. But, it will still be lovely and I can’t wait to get back in there and start melting glass again. I also can’t wait to get the new torch that I fell in love with at Flame Off last weekend. It’s a HUGE torch, with a mahoosive flame that melts boro like chocolate. It has a large burner with a Minor burner on top, and you can light one from the other and swap easily between the two flames. Unfortunately this poses another problem in my studio because the flame is so much longer when you have it turned up for the boro. At least I found out at this stage so I can tweek my layout to suit it or install some type of flame insulation opposite where I decide to position it. I’ll have to wait a couple of months before I invest in it as I will also need another oxycon (the machine that extracts the oxygen from the air to supply my torch).

Tuesday morning

Where do I start? Lots has happened here and globally, so what should I talk about today? I decided to write a list of possible blog topics, and it hasn’t really helped, so maybe what I’ll do is give you a very quick run down of what’s new? Or should I? Maybe I should keep all my stuff and eek it out over a couple of weeks to keep you coming back in suspense. Or is too much suspense bad for your health, now who was it who wrote that, was it Douglas Adams?

So here’s what’s been going on, the lounge is still full of my studio equipment and glass, but not insulation boards or plasterboard, Easter came and went, I went on a course then attended Flame Off with Dickie and DD and now I’m so shattered I can’t believe it. Oh and a big volcano went boom and stranded lots of people all over the world including my uncle who lives in Madison Wisconsin and whom I saw yesterday at my parents house. There, I’ve said it. But of course there’s all much more to it than that, and I’m rambling, probably because I’m so tired.

The last few days have been so peaceful, and the sky so clear and lovely. I heard my first plane in days, about 10 minutes ago, and 5 minutes ago looked up in the sky to see a plane very high up leaving a contrail across the huge expanse of clean air…although it probably isn’t, it would be nice to think it was after 5 days rest from aeroplanes. Maybe there should be one day a year across the world where nothing flies anywhere, wouldn’t that be great? They would have to choose a certain 24 hours across the world so it all happened at once, but I think that would be a great idea. Many people have forgotten just how noisy all that daytime background noise has got, and it was a real pleasure to go outside at my parents and not be bothered by City Airport, Stansted, Heathrow or Gatwick noise. It was just so peaceful. Lovely.

Saturday evening

The grand studio refit started today. After 2 days of teaching lovely students Thursday and Friday, I spent the day packing up (again) my beadmaking glass, tools and equipment and moved out of my new studio so we could begin the proper fitting out of my studio that was delivered last May. I can’t believe I’ve nearly had it a year, the time has gone so fast, and it seems really mad that this is the first time in 11 months that I’ve had the time to be able to stop making beads and concentrate on getting the studio to the standard that we planned last year. If they had delivered when they were supposed to I would have had the time last April to do this. But such is life, you just have to get on with what life hands you and try not to whinge (or however it’s spelt… I think that should be spelled, as Spelt is a type of flower…or should that be flour? Oh it’s OK I do know how to spell, I’m just mucking abaaate). I seem to have amassed a large amount of stuff, and lots of mayonnaise jars of glass. Actually it’s interesting to see what jars I have down there, as they are a potted history of what we eat over the years and show our changing preference for the few cook in sauces that we use. We seem to have moved from ‘Bertolli Roasted Vegetable sauce’, to ‘Sharwoods Tikka Masala’ through to’ Dolmio Bolognaise with Extra Onions and Garlic’. I even found some baby food jars hiding the odd dead spider and a HUGE beatle with jaws, which we think must have got stuck inside the slippery overhanging edges.

Our lounge is now full of jars of stringer and glass, 2 oxy cons, chairs, my pink Maxine (kiln), and various boxes of bits, and a huge stack of insulation boards and chipboard flooring. The plasterboard is in the garage thank goodness or we’d be sitting on it. We’re having to eat from trays on our knees…we normally sit at the table and eat as a family. We’re having to be really careful where we put the jars of stringers on the floor so that we don’t poke our eyes out with them! Oh what a good Easter we’re having.

Monday lunchtime

I’m procrastinating again….can you believe it? And this time it’s not tax or accounts, oh no, it’s sorting out my insulation and lining for my studio. I hate planning stuff when I’m not totally sure what I’m doing, or when I have too many design issues to resolve before I can do it, one reason why we still haven’t decked out the back yet (I want to get too many things out of the project). So what’s the hold up this time? I’m not sure, but I can tell you I’m feeling absolutely drained of enthusiasm or energy. I want to curl up into a little ball and snooze right now. But I can’t, I have to get this stuff ordered, especially as there’s a pesky bank holiday this Friday. Also the sooner I get this ordered, the sooner I can get back to play (sorry, work) at bead making. I’m sure that will be tomorrow now, and if that’s not incentive enough I don’t know what is!

I have a couple of places on glass beadmaking courses to fill again

1 place on a 1 Day Beginners Course Thurs 1st April……yes, that’s this Thursday!!!!!

…..1 place on a 2 Day Beginners Course Tues 25th to Weds 26th May……

contact me now to book your place

And I have also put yet more beads in my Etsy shop, here’s a taster….I know, I still can’t get over how regularly I’m doing this.

Wednesday morning

Newsflash…dit dit dit…I have windows that open again! So my new shed last year had 2 windows that were supposed to open and one ended up very jammed. The lovely ‘Man from Malvern’ came today (first thing)  and fixed it, so I can now have both windows open again and keep the howling gales outside, well hurrah. This is actually double hurrah as I thought I was going to have to wait all day for him to come and wouldn’t be able to make any beads, but my day is clear now, up until 6pm, yay. (Hey come on, I know it’s a small thang, but I’m easily pleased.)

Talking of easily pleased, a couple of weeks ago we were pointed to several websites with a cool form of doodling on called Zentangles, and spent the whole of Saturday after the party just doodling (yes, the whole day, but we were shattered and it was very relaxing). Here’s a couple of mine

The tuition date of 13th May has been taken now, but more glass beadmaking lesson dates are still available for May, June and July. Just drop me a line with your preferred dates and we’ll choose one that suits us both.

Friday afternoon

Life. It never goes to plan. It’s always unexpected. Wa hay, it’s fun isn’t it? Never knowing what’s around the corner, be it good or bad? I’m one of those people who likes a challenge, and I like problem solving, and I believe I’m flexible too. I’m saying this because today I had lots planned, but haven’t been able to do much of it because my poor daughter is home with a little sick bug. Fortunately she seems to be over the worst of it and is now feeling hungry, so that’s probably a good sign. I was thinking of taking the morning off, moseying into town to get my new spectacles adjusted….you know you’re getting older when you get your first varifocals, I couldn’t bear the thought of visible bi-focals making me look older than I am! I was then maybe going to treat myself to a coffee in Costa, then go home and leisurely make beads this afternoon.

But instead I’ve been updating my website, adding new events, writing news for my front page, answering contact forms and getting up to date with little tasks that suddenly seem to have piled up. I’ve been so intent on getting my Etsy shop up and running, and updating it on a regular basis that I seem to have let other stuff slip. I can’t win! Speaking of Etsy, I have added more new beads this week! And I have had my first ever sale to America, so exciting (for me anyway, I’m easily pleased). I really will have to go and lie down in a dark room if I keep this up…which I am doing! Look, there’s photos below of the new beads!

I have also 1 new place on a course, One Day Beginners Beadmaking on Thurs 13th May. Drop me an email to book this place. Have a great weekend.

Friday morning

It’s a time of reflection and celebration. Our daughter is 11 this weekend, my nephew and his wife had their first baby 2 weeks ago and we’ve been in our second house for 10 years this week. All this makes me ponder how time flies. We’ve hardly done anything to the house, maybe that statement isn’t so true? We did replace the kitchen within about 2 years of being here, and have decorated the toilet, bathroom, the entrance area and the 2 storage areas by the front door. We also did our daughters’ room about one and a half years ago. So that leaves… let’s see…..most of the house. Our bedroom has peeling dirty wallpaper, the back bedroom was papered for the sale and the paper is falling off the walls…..they didn’t do a very good job! and we’ve never painted the lounge and stairwell. You see the problem is, whenever we think we should get around to doing it, something else happens to stop us. Like the many fences around our property. It seems every time we start to sort the garden, another fence gets blown over.

But back to the rest of it……have you noticed how a new arrival in the family always shunts us back another generation? I’m told that I’m now a great aunt, and of course my parents are not just grandparents now, but great grandparents. My brother is a grandfather….how did that happen? Maybe I’ll be a grandma in the dim and distant future but I guess I’ll never get to be a great grandma ‘cos I started a bit late in life!

So today I’m getting ready for the inevitable party. We have a small disco here for 4 friends, I did say small! I bought the food yesterday, and have to make the cake soon so it has time to cool before I ice it. Then I’ve got party food prep and of course the tidy up, which isn’t that bad as I’ve done lots of tidying up for lots of glass beadmaking teaching lately. I should probably get on with it…rats…I have to wash up the mixing bowl first….see what I mean about never being able to just get straight on with stuff? ;.)

Fri morning

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.

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.

Wednesday morning

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).

Tuesday morning

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.

Thursday evening

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