duckduckBLOGstuff

…I apologise for not being able to get in touch with everyone that I need to individually; I have had to close my Etsy shop very suddenly for a while and I have some orders which need to be sent out as well as convos to answer and people to contact.

My daughter, who hasn’t been very well for over a month was taken into hospital yesterday and had an operation last night for a perforated appendix. She will be in for a few days. I’m writing this very quickly as I don’t want anyone to feel forgotten or ignored - but because of these circumstances I will be pretty much out of contact for a while; I can’t really use the internet (sneaking a few minutes here!) or send out parcels from hospital.

I apologise.

My daughter is very small and needs her mum

I’m really pleased with these! I have been meaning to make them for ages, and a customer asked for a bigger version of the aqua dimpled earrings that I make:

With these it’s really not possible to make them bigger, just due to the limitations of the process; but I’ve been wanting to make little studs along the same lines as the moonpool rings and pendants that I make, so it was really good to actually get the kick in the pants I needed to make them. I really like it when that happens. This is what the first set looks like:

I think they’re sweet - and I’m really pleased with how neatly the posts fit on. It’s one of the few sensible uses I’ve yet found for the “third hand” thing that I bought a while ago. I have a plan to make the hoop studs with little moonpools on the bottom, too.

Slightly tangentially - there is free shipping in the Etsy shop until the end of Monday. After a series of weeks where my ability to work has been severely tested by childhood illnesses (and the rest), I’m getting back on track Self-employment and parenthood are uneasy bedfellows sometimes.

following on from the previous bird-skull post, this is, really, by way of thanks to Etsy seller Blue Bayer, who sells casts from a hummingbird skull in his Etsy shop, which I found a while ago; and obviously, despite the permanent starving-artistness of my life (ok, ok, I am not starving, not technically an artist; but you know, I just wanted to emphasise how despite really not being able to afford utterly non-essential luxuries, I HAD TO HAVE this) I bought a solid silver hummingbird skull, and waited. Excitedly.

When it arrived, I was gobsmacked at just how tiny it actually was - I knew, in theory, that it would be; but seeing this thing balanced on the tip of my finger was really quite something else…

the whole thing was bright, very new, silver, which for me (I have lousy vision) meant the teeny tiny details were getting lost; so I patinated it then polished all the exposed parts up; and it looks, really, genuinely, amazing. I’m going to hang it from a silver hoop on a waxed cord, because really, some things just shouldn’t be embellished. And this is it:

Thank you, Blue. It’s perfect and it makes me happy.

because p&p (shipping) is free in my Etsy shop all weekend, from the time of writing this post until Monday morning. And just like last time (my imagination extends to making jewellery and not, sadly, to exciting promotions) - for blog readers there is a special extra. If you QUACK in the notes to seller (if I could think of a sensible way of writing that noise geese make I’d give you that option, too - in fact, you could type “pit pat waddle pat” and I’d still allow it) I will include an extra surprise pair of earrings in your parcel…

This came about, really, because of some phenomenally wonderful beads made by Malodora, in faux stone, designed as bird skulls, they are quite amazing, and I hope Dee doesn’t mind me borrowing her image to link to the listing on Etsy (if you click it, it will take you to her shop):

I bought a set (mine were greyer, more like stone - I really love these new bony (yes yes, sorry) ones. Might be saving up…) as did a number of Dee’s other fans - Experimetal, The Justified Sinner and the fabulous Laurie Brown. These pieces are utterly inspirational. From my point of view, they are too complete in and of themselves as little works of art to actually use. I keep them, I gloat over them, and they make me happy.

But as I said, they are inspirational, and discussions were had over huge distances, with little delay, thanks to the joys of the internet and Flickr. The Justified Sinner made several absolutely astonishing pieces, which are posted on his flickr - I don’t have his skill levels or resources, and developed a serious case of inadequacy. But, in the end, after months of this thing fermenting in my head; it took a horrible feeling of stagnancy to kick me into doing anything.

It’s been a long time since I did any hammer forming (it’s nothing as sophisticated as chasing/repoussé, it’s the kind of thing that puts the SMITHing into silversmithing) and I had no idea that this was what I was going to do. I pierced a piece of silver to make a flat pendant, and sat turning the metal around in my hands, being reminded of the shapes I had drawn and cut from paper after my son brought me an actual bird skull (I think magpie, but I’m not betting on it) that he had found…

And that started it. I don’t have any stakes (I would like LOTS, but I’ve found that given the relatively limited stuff I make, I can usually improvise something) but I do have a ballpein hammer and an immense, old, rusty vice:

so I drilled two holes in the metal and hammered it into shape:

which really, really impressed the nine-year old. I love nine-year olds, they are such a wonderful audience. The five-year old thought it looked old and dirty, which was, frankly, the idea. But she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Much fusing, reticulating and hammering later, I have this:

Which I am really pleased with. After all those months fermenting in my head, it’s finally ready to be made. And something like it is going to be made several times, at the very least. It has something of bird skulls, something of helms and armour, something of Morpheus’ mask from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and something entirely other. Quite possibly Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss! This one is going to be mounted on a triangle of beaten silver sticks, below a jewel set on a silver shield (I’m thinking a rather nice peridot cab I have), hanging from a hand-done chain.

Maybe.
It might evolve again.

But MAN, is it good to be back on some kind of creative track again. OOF.

oh, poor neglected blog I have so many things to write about - and so many things to do; such a bad combination!

but this weekend (from the time of posting) till Monday evening, there is frre shipping on everything in my Etsy shop. And as a special bonus for anyone finding out about this via my blog, there will be a special surprise pair of earrings for anyone who QUACKS at me in the “notes to seller” on purchase… (you only have to type it, not send a sound file)…

…are the two craft/designer-maker shows I have done recently. Both were the first ever of what the organisers hope will become regular events, and they were both really well organised and very well attended. For both I had really no idea of what to expect, and was so impressed when I got there - and so flattered to be included in what was a really excellent line-up. They were both busy, and I had a really good time. Spring Fling (organised by the lovely Craft Candy people, who made me feel about a hundred and seventy - not on purpose, just by looking the way I think I ought to and haven’t for about fifteen years. um. I digress) was marred by NONE of my display stuff having arrived - in fact, it still hasn’t arrived now, and I am increasingly narked about having spent good money on something I don’t have - and my having spent the two days prior to the event doing emergency plumbing with my head under a toilet, which was grossly unpleasant. And which also prevented me from getting the beautiful cloth I wanted to go on the table.
So I ended up with a weird beige cloth, which showed up neither the bright silver nor the black - I wanted my lovely frosted white and black and mirrored (also frosted) risers, dammit.

But the public who attended were really nice, very friendly and complimentary, which made up for it. I also got to see Katey Felton’s work in the flesh, as well as Helen Puxley from Pogo Jewellery and Pennydog.

I didn’t get much of a chance to look around at the Spring Fling or Sock, which was a huge shame, but a seller who really sticks in my mind is Julian Adams, who is an armourer and makes - as you’d expect - armour. Real armour. Functional armour with scaled and jointed gauntlets. It is incredibly beautiful and astonishingly skilled. He also makes blued steel ware - bowls, jewellery, candesticks - which you can see here and it is all beautiful. I want a bangle or six. The bowls, with the petrol on water colours, are amazing. I want a forge and a hammer. And some more space, I suppose!

Anyway - I had a great time. I have learned that you can’t second guess what people will buy - and that you should never order things from unknown vendors by mail order if you need them urgently. And I want to go back next year!

gah.
I love Cookson’s; I do. I love being able to pop in and collect stuff from the trade counter (and check it while I’m there - the 9 carat white solder instead of 18 carat red incident is burned into my brain as a truly horrendous case of disasters that might have happened); I love the fact that they can hallmark stuff; I love the fact that for metal they are good value; I like the fact that they are in the jewellery quarter. I like that they are friendly and that at least half the customers are as scruffy as me.
but.
BUT
BUT
how - how - can a company of that size run out of 12/18 trace chain? how? if it were for a couple of days I could almost understand it, but in a “sorry there’s none in for another two weeks” kind of way? what’s with that? So, I stood at the counter, having checked my order, looking desperate, and the nice lady checked on the computer and said “oh, we do have some” - yes, I said, that’s what your computer said when I ordered, please can I have eight metres of it - so she went to get it. And came back and said “I’m really sorry, it’s all in separate lengths of under ten centimetres.”

{headdesk}

so now I have 14/16 trace, which looks pretty much the same but is much more expensive.
sigh.

that’ll teach me to leave ordering until the last minute. I should probably have rung Betts (who are also really nice) but I didn’t have time.

then I had to go to three - THREE! - tools shops before I found one with 3M radial discs in pale green.
gah.

…are lovely bits of jewellery made from cast vintage swizzle sticks and cocktail picks (that sounds like the beginning of a rhyme). And they are on sale! They are made by my Etsymetal friend, Nina Dinoff, who sells them in her swizzlet shop on Etsy, where she is offering fifty percent off, which is a massive bargain. They are lovely. I think this is my favourite:

but there are so many other goodies to choose from…

Nina also sells on Etsy under her own name. This is a truly lovely shop. I aspire to owning one of these:

because it is incredibly beautiful; but that’s a daydream. I have promised myself, though, that at some point this year I will buy myself this:

Lovely shops, both of them. And swizzlets at half price is not to be sniffed at!

oh my.
Wordpress has been pestering me to upgrade for - months, it feels like, so I did. Being more sensible than I was, I downloaded the old wordpress directory from my server to my computer, which turned out to be a very, VERY wise move.
It took me three goes to get a cron.php file to upload correctly (no, I have no idea) and then, once the upgrade was finally complete - I got two, horrendous problems.
1) my blog effectively disappeared. If anyone tried to view it, there was a blank, content- and code-free page.
2) I was unable to log in to the wordpress admin panel. Login referred me back to login, in an endless, painful loop.
These aren’t uncommon problems, I found. But - I had disabled all my plugins (the main cause) and none of the other fixes worked. After sleeping on the problem, I reverted to the old install - simply by overwriting all the new files with the old one.
and.
I found.
the DEFAULT THEME WAS BROKEN. also wordpress classic.
so kids. as well as disabling your plugins, check the default theme is not corrupt. Save yourself much pain.
to make myself feel better, I redesigned my blog with an entirely wonderful customisable theme called Atahualpa 3.2, by BFA WebDesign which I can heartily recommend. Although I haven’t yet discovered how to hide the distracting tags clogging up the post kicker. I hope I will at some point. ETA - got it. note to self: always scroll down to the botom of the page when looking for something.

and I haven’t yet thought of a good reason to attempt wordpress 2.7.whateveritis again, yet.

sigh.