I am bad blogger...update and a Folksy Friday in one!

The blog has been a bit neglected in the last few weeks...naughty me! Alas real life has been keeping me super busy what with hen parties, work, birthdays etc, so I have quite a few bits and bobs to post, as well as a Folksy Friday post too.

I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace on the 8th October. Having never been before I was amazed at just how many stalls and stands there were, all full to bursting with yarn, fabric, cross stitch, beads and much much more i.e. heaven! Here's a pic of my purchases from the day.

My little stash includes a ribbon pine cone christmas decoration kit and some 2.75mm circular needles for having a go at knitting a sock in the round on circulars (because dpns just hate me!) as well as some bright and cheerful Regia sock yarn to practice with. As you can see I'm almost done on sock number one - it's not the neatest sock in the work because I was just getting the hang of it, but I really like this way off knitting in the round so I'll definitely be on the look out for some nice sock yarn for my next pair. I also couldn't resisit buying a beadweaving pattern from Heather Kingsley-Heath's beautiful stall - I was very tempted by her Albion stitch books too but they might have to go on my Christmas list instead! My only other purchase of the day was another 2 balls of Sirdar's Indie yarn to finish off the Florence waistcoat pattern I have been knitting out of a recent copy of Let's Knit magazine. Here's the finished piece....quite proud of it, though it could probably do with a bit of blocking - the yarn is lovely and soft though and was really good to knit with.

There have been a few new items listed in my Folksy shop in the last week or so. These include a simple, yet, sophisticated spiral rope bracelet featuring some lovely bright violet silver-lined seed beads and one of my floral bouquet cuffs in a "glittering gunmetal" colourway, which I would love to keep for myself (even though I already have one of these bracelets which is mine!).

And finally, there's time to squeeze in a Folksy Friday post for today too - the theme for this one is 'favourites,' so I have been having a look back at some of the (many!) items I have favourited on Folksy to put together this selection.








1.) I love the cute whimsy of this necklace by Cherryloco Jewellery with the bunny chasing after a strand of carrots.
2.) This dreamy cluster necklace from Nanuk jewellery features some beautiful paua shell as well as a silver clay dragon which I just adore - this piece is really tempting me (perhaps I should get my boyfriend to read this blog post? hehe)
3.) More jewellery...this time some earrings from Ali Bali Jewellery - I love these for the fantastic patina colours she has achieved in the texturing of these silver clay pretties.
4.) The beautiful oceanic greens and blues of this bowl by Charlotte Hupfield Ceramics just draw you in and would make a fantastic table centrepiece for a special occasion.
5.) Yet more jewellery...a necklace of textured butterflies from La Belle et la Bete - I love the way they are linked together and that the wings are angled to give the impression that a host of silvery butterflies have all just landed on your collarbone.
6.) Now that I can knit socks I can't stop looking at brightly colour sock yarn, hence why I love this hand dyed yarn by Abstract Cat Crafts.

Phew...that was a long post! I am off to the Big Bead Show at Sandown racecourse tomorrow so I hope to have a new post after weekend to tell you all about that.

N
XOXO

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

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

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.







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

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.

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.

Folksy Friday...Highland Fling

I decided on a Scottish theme for my Folksy Friday post this week since I am currently on a week long break in a lovely rural village where my boyfriend's parents now live. Hope you enjoy this week's picks as much as I am enjoying a holidau in some beautiful countryside!

1.) Some beautiful artwork first in this wonderfully wintery print featuring the iconic Edinburgh Castle by Chris Anderson Artwork 

2.) I love this little highland cow card fantastically rendered in pen and watercolour from Sophie Martin Illustration

3.) This funny Scottish take on the well known 'keep calm and carry on' poster by Hole in my Pocket made me smile

4.) This beautiful cuff by Aileen Clarke Crafts takes it's inspiration from the Scottish seas and also uses local handspun yarn

5.) I adore scottie dogs so I just had to include this very cute little scottie tartan brooch from SpoiltPig

6.) And lastly and unsual little notebook with a cover made from a jigsaw puzzle - I particularly like how Dumfries and Galloway (where I am staying) has a sheep on it - there certainly are a lot of them around here!

Happy Friday!

Nicole

XOXO

Too many jewellery makers?

After finally getting myself organised enough to open and actually start listing my jewellery on Folksy, the next thing on my creative agenda is to take the plunge into craft fairs. I have been trawling away on the internet looking for fairs to apply to, with the aim of doing some around the Christmas period so I have time to actually make enough pieces up so I don't turn up with a very bare looking table. In addition to the trouble of finding fairs which I could get to reasonably easily by public transport (I don't have a car) of the listings for several potential fairs I managed to hunt down, several popped up with what is probably an oh-so-familiar phrase to a lot of crafts people - "no more space for jewellery."

I know that there are a lot of people out there who make jewellery as a hobby. The UK Beaders forum where I am a member has 2600 members (although not all of them are UK based), we have had several new jewellery making magazine publications arrive in the last year or so and jewellery making worshops seem to be popping up all over the place; clearly, making jewellery is very popular. I can understand why people take to this area of crafting more so than others; you can start making pieces with a few basic, cheap tools and online bead shops offer a wide range of choice of all things glass, crystal, ceramic, metal and wooden to create your own wearable piece of art. However, this success seems to be a problem when it comes to jewellery makers wanting to sell the fruits of their labour. It seems to be the case that you often either have to get in very, very quickly with your application, or have already had a stall at a particular event and therefore be 'known' to the event organisers to stand a chance at getting a place as a jewellery maker.

So what is the solution here? Some fairs do seem to be trying to accomodate as many jewellery stalls as possible by actively looking at potential vendors' work in order to make sure that of those they accept, they end up with a range of stalls - after all, there are so many different jewellery making styles/fields: beadweaving, wirework, stringing, precious metal clay, polymer clay, ceramics, textiles, silversmithing etc. I know I would not mind having a stall if I knew there were a fair few other jewellery makers there, but that they had different styles used different materials to myself. I would hope that this would be appreciated by those visiting a craft event too, it would, after all, go some way to ensuring that there is something to suit every budget and indeed, a variety of different tastes.

Another potential solution, and one that I recently Tweeted about whilst I was trawling for events, was this - why not have craft fairs soley for handmade jewellery?

I attended the Treasure UK event as part of London Jewellery week, which was an exhibition of jewellery - mostly contemporary or fine jeweller showcasing new and established designers for trade buyers to scout out potential new talent to stock or to talk commissions for special pieces, in addition to jewellery being on display and for general sale. It was a fantastic event with a wide variety of work and it seemed to be successful for many of the designers too.

So, my fellow beaders, why couldn't we have something like this for small-scale handcrafted jewellery designer-makers? We women do love our jewellery, so I see no reason why people would not want to attend a totally jewellery based craft event, especially with all the different styles and techniques we have to offer. If it can work at Treasure (didn't hear anyone complaining about there being "too many jewellery stands" - and me and the boyfriend were there for a good few hours looking and talking to the people behind the designs!) then I really believe we could make it work for us too. I have heard of a few of these kinds of events taking place in Northamptonshire with reasonable success, so I think it would be fantastic to have one in London. With UK Handmade and Handmade and Fabulous launching a campaign to get Queen of Shops, Mary Portas on the side of all things handcrafted, the handmade movement in general could do with as much promotion and publicity as possible, and I think a jewellery fair has the potential to really be something quite special.

Any volunteers?!

In all seriousness, I would love to hear peoples' comments, ideas, feedback etc on the subjects raised in this blog so please feel free to post in the comments area or if you want you can contact me via email at hollybirdbeads@hotmail.com.

Nicole

XOXO