Thursday 30 September 2010

What's new? Exciting announcent and a new bracelet design..

So, starting with my exciting announcement...some of you may remember me writing about doing some part time jewellery making teaching with a jewellery school in London in the last few months. Until now I have been mostly teaching beginner's wirework workshops and doing the odd hen party, however, I am now pleased to announce that I will be teaching my very first beadweaving workshop!

The workshop is going to be based on my own designs; we will be making a pair of my daisy earrings to get into the swing of beadweaving....


...and then we will learn peyote stitch to make a bracelet base to add fringing and lots of embellishment to create one of my clustered floral "bouquet bracelets."


I am so excited to be teaching beadweaving as it's the part of jewellery making that I am most passionate about...I just have to hope that people will like the designs and want to come to the class. If you are interested, the link to the jewellery school is here (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

I also have a new bracelet design to show too...I'd call it a cross between a beadwoven bracelet and a charm bracelet, full of loopy fringing and beaded leaves with gorgeous glass flowers and leaves added as dangles giving the appearance of a garden of flowers and foliage. It currently has the name of 'Victoria's Garden,' since I was watching The Young Victoria when I started making this. Hopefully one of these will make it into my Folksy shop in the not too distant future. There are a few bigger photos of the piece on my Flickr account if you want to see more.



Hope you like!


N
XOXO

Thursday 23 September 2010

Giveaway winners announced!

Thank you to all who entered the giveaway - unfortunately it fell victim to "competition spammers" on the last day (yesterday) so I had to sift through all the Twitter entries to sort out the genuine entries from the spam. I feel a bit sad that there are people who obviously just use the twitter search facilities to find any giveaways to enter, and I feel justified in disqualifying these entries. I am giving away a piece of handmade jewellery that will have had my time and effort put into it, therefore I feel I am at liberty not to accept entries from people who probably had no idea what the prize even looks like or that it was handmade.

But enought about that...onto the winners!

So everyone's names went into the hat...yes, this is my horse riding hat! (I don't own many hats and this was the first one that came to hand!)


And I picked out a winner, who will receive a custom Daisy Garland bracelet...and I also picked out a runner up who will receive custom Daisy Garland earrings.


Drum roll please!

And the winner is.....BeadyPool!


And the runner up is....PrestoBeads!


Congratulations to the winners, I will contact you at some point today to discuss your prizes :-)


N

XOXO

Friday 17 September 2010

Folksy Friday...breaking out the woolies!

Walking to the bus stop on my way to work there was a definite autumnal chill in the air, despite the lovely sunshine, so today's Folksy Friday post features some of my favourite knitted and crochet woolies that we are going to have to start getting out of the wardrobe now that summer is well and truly over.



Bliss Knits Sara Carr
Toggle Victoria Jackman Knitted Textiles
Edie O'Hara Designs Lemonade and Lamingtons

1.) A delicate berry coloured scarf by Bliss Knits - I also think her wooden kitty model is fab!

2.) I love the The Hungry Caterpillar childrens' book, so I think Sara Carr's whimsical caterpillar scarf is very cool

3.) I'm not a fan of myself in hats (I think they make my ears look odd!) but this navy blue one by Toggle with it's flower detail makes me think perhaps I like hats after all.

4.) This gorgeous scarf from Victoria Jackman Knitted Textiles is seriously tempting me - lots of purple and the little flower strands make it a winner for me

5.) More purple, this time in the form of a lilac cowl by Edie O'Hara Designs...I love the textured stitch that's been used and it really does look like it would keep you nice and snug

6.) Can you tell purple is my favourite colour? I couldn't resist adding these sweet little crocheted wristwarmers from Lemonade and Lamingtons - I'm a big fan of fingerless gloves and these are a lovely amethyst purple shade and have that extra button and flower detail too


Hope you enjoyed this week's picks!

Remember, there's still time to enter my GIVEAWAY...win a handmade Daisy Garland bracelet - for entry details see the previous blog post.

Happy Friday!

N

XOXO

Tuesday 14 September 2010

It's time for a GIVEAWAY!

Today I reached the milestone of 500 followers on Twitter...that's right, 500 people want to listen to my jewellery chatter and other day-to-day ramblings, crazy huh?

So to celebrate I am going to have a giveaway...

The winner of the giveaway will receive one of my Daisy Garland seed beaded bracelets in a colourway of their choosing. Depending on how many people enter (and how much beading time I have!) I may have a runner's up prize of a pair of my daisy earrings too.

A few examples of previous colourways of the bracelet, you can choose one of these if you like, or come up with your own.



101_0423



How to Enter:

You have four different ways to enter this giveaway...for each one you complete your name will go into the hat (or whatever receptacle I choose to hold the names!) once, so if you do all three you will gain yourself three chances to win!

1.) Leave a comment on my blog telling me what would be your perfect colour scheme for the daisy bracelet if you won = 1 entry. (Please post with a name of some sort [i.e. no anonymous replies] and add an email address/other way of contacting you when you fill in the comment form so I can get in touch with you if you are the winner).

2.) Twitter about the giveaway - simple copy the following text, ensuring that you have the @Hollybirdbeads part so I know that you've tweeted - "I've entered the Daisy Garland bracelet giveaway at @Hollybirdbeads http://is.gd/fag9d Have you?" = 1 entry

3.) Blog about the giveaway = 1 entry (Either post a comment here saying that you've blogged about the giveaway or send me a tweet so I know to add your extra entry)

The giveaway closes at midnight on Saturday 18th September, and I'll do the draw to pick the winner ASAP after the closing date and announce the lucky winner on this blog.