Capesthorne Hall

I am really thrilled to be attending the Christmas at Capesthorne Hall event.  I'll be selling my jewellery, but I'll also be demonstrating how to use PMC.

Capesthorne Hall is a beautiful Jacobean style country house, set in 100 acres.

The fair is taking place on Friday 27th November 6.00pm - 8.30pm, Saturday 28th & Sunday 29th November 1.30pm - 5.00pm.

So please come along and visit and don't forget to say hi to me!

Gosh, aren't my posts sporadic at the moment!! There is such a lot to get done, time isn't on my side!!

I spent Tuesday running a private tuition day at the studio. I had two lovely ladies who made some great work, and hopefully they learnt lots too! I really enjoy private tuition - the people who book usually have previous metal clay experience and want to expand their knowledge in certain areas. Group classes don't always fit in for everyone, so its great to be able to offer this service on a more regular basis now that I'm in the studio.

The rest of my week has been taken up with day-job work, and trying to get my head around my marketing leaflets etc. I've designed a leaflet which I'll be dropping through letterboxes local to the studio (have to put my trainers on I think!), I made it a 3-fold leaflet so that I could maximise the information on there, but now I have to sit and fold them all up!

Tomorrow is going to be a lovely day at the studio. One of the ladies that came on my first ever class up here in Cheshire is coming to my studio. She's been on lots of classes, and we've become good friends, so we're just having a play-day tomorrow. I can't wait - it'll do us both the power of good. Bronzclay is definitely on the agenda tomorrow. Although I've played with Bronze, I haven't fired and finished anything yet, but that'll change tomorrow so watch out for some bronze pieces soon.

Metal Clay Weekend

Two posts in one day!!

I've managed to finalise the details now for a weekend of classes at my studio. Anyone fancy a weekend in the lovely Cheshire countryside??

To have a look at the details of the classes available, please click HERE

Any questions, just let me know and I hope to see lots of you in June!

Workshop Update

As promised, here are some inside shots of the workshop space. I was going to take them when I first arrived this morning, but forgot!

So, here's a before shot





After a couple of hours of swearing at the furniture! Here's an after shot

I didn't get as much time here today as I would've liked, but I'm quite pleased with the progress so far. Fingers crossed my next day there will get the sorting finished off, I may even spend a couple of evenings this week trying to get it all done.

I thought the blog looked boring without many pictures of my jewellery! So here you go, they may be bad, mobile phone pictures, but at least you can see some of my recent metal clay work.

I'm working on some new pieces ready to launch my Etsy store. There'll be a range of these necklaces with matching earrings. They are highly polished silver pillow-shape beads, simply strung on sterling silver necklets. There are countless options for these in all sorts of different textures. They look really pretty on - in fact I'm tempted to keep the ones I've made so far!

These lentil shape beads are lampwork beads by the fantastic Claire Morris. They had a top decorative layer of glass that I decided to cover up!! I painted some silver paste onto the top, and left it fairly uneven so that it took the shape of the glass underneath. It silver has cracked in some places which I love because it adds to the texture of the glass. I think there's about 10 of these beads, so I see them being split up into a few different pieces of jewellery.

Better pictures will follow as soon as I can get my hubby to take them. We're currently looking into equipment to set up a proper lighting / photography area. This will mean much better photos and hopefully, even I will be able to point the camera and take a decent picture! Well, maybe!

Becci

xx

PMC / Art Clay Class

I spent a very lovely day yesterday teaching a beginners metal clay class. I had a lovely group that just seemed to gel, we had lots of lovely chat as well as them all making some fantastic first pieces. I think I've managed to convert more people to the world of PMC and Art Clay!!

It has got me thinking today about teaching. I've had a bit of a love/hate feeling about teaching. I've come to the conclusion today that the reason I've not enjoyed it so much in the past is that my creative time has been very limited with me being a stay at home mum. It meant that the creative time I did get was mostly spent teaching rather than creating. Now that I've got more creative time as my little girl is in pre-school, I feel like I can get a good mix of both teaching metal clay and actually working with it and making new jewellery. So, teaching is definitely part of my business plan (yep, I'm being disciplined and writing one!!), I've got lots of new class ideas which I now need to develop and of course need to come up with a class schedule!

Mailing List Competition

So, there's still a lot going on behind the scenes here at Fired Silver!! This means no time for blogging unfortunately, but hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have some exciting news which will then mean lots of blogging cos I'll have lots to talk about!

Anyway, as there are lots of new things coming up, I thought some of you may like to join my mailing list to be kept up to date with all the new product lines, news and classes. Don't worry you don't get bombarded with emails, I'll hope to make it a monthly newsletter, or more often if I have something exciting to share!

I'm running a prize draw for those who sign up to my mailing list before the 14th February 2008. I'll draw a name from the hat, and you'll receive a surprise! Needless to say it'll be silver!! So if you fancy taking part, just sign up to the newsletter at the top of the screen here, and that's it. I'll announce the winner here on the 15th February.

Bye for now!

I've been rubbish at this blogging lark lately haven't I!! My personal life is VERY hectic at the moment!! Some of you who know me a bit better, know that I currently live in a rented house and have my own house which is a building site!! Well, things are moving ahead with turning the building site into a house again, so it's keeping me busy along with normal everyday life stuff!

Although I'm not finding much creative time at the moment, there are still things going on in the background here. I've finally settled on a banner design for my Tiny Charms business. All I need now is samples made so that pictures can be added to it. I wonder what job number that is on my long list!

I have been making some pieces of jewellery and have a collection growing for my hubby to photograph. I will show you these though

They are the top halves of 2 magnetic clasps. I decided that I wanted to add colour, so enamelled these and was really pleased with them. Then I realised that I've completely forgotten to add any loops to the side of them so that they can be attached to the piece of jewellery - this is what happens when there are too many distractions!

I have got some more being made now to replace these. And I definitely won't forget loops again!

Interesting couple of days

I've been quiet for a couple of days haven't I!

I'm really giddy at the moment, I went to Kilncare yesterday to get a new controller for my kiln. Mine has been broken for months and months, so I've been limited as to what I can make, but there's no stopping me now! I did my first firing today and it's fantastic!

So the pieces that you saw as work in progress are now fired, except for the glass work. Everything's going around in the tumbler now, so hopefully there'll be photos soon.

I had planned to do some more work tomorrow, but I've been asked to step in and teach a beginners class for someone tomorrow as her tutor is ill. I'm quite excited as I enjoy teaching and it's a place I haven't been before. There's also the chance for me to teach there again if tomorrow goes ok, so I just need to come up with ideas for new classes - no problem there, I've got a long list that I've never got around to doing anything with. It's a small class, so should be a nice day.

I put this piccie up on Frit Happens, but thought it might be fun to show it here as well - it's my work in progress.

I think it's sometimes hard to imagine how pieces are going to turn out, so seeing them part made gives you a bit of an idea

There's a mix of things on here, it'll be interesting to see what you think of the finished pieces compared to the WIP!

I'm getting my kiln repaired on Friday so watch out for lots of lovely glassy goodies, as I haven't been able to do any glass work because of the kiln ggggrrrr.

New Class Dates

I've set a date now for my next Beginners Class. It will take place on Saturday 7th February 2009 and runs from 10am to 4pm.

I'm also going to run another open studio date as we had so much fun last time, so that will take place on Saturday 21st March 2009.

Finally, a new year!

I'm glad to see the back of 2008, so here's to being happy, healthy and positive for 2009!

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who's supported me and bought from me during the last 12 months. I still get really excited with every sale!

So what's new - being poorly the last few weeks has meant that I've sat down and tried to think about how to drive things forward for the next 12 months. I don't do resolutions because they just get broken! So I've worked on what I'm going to sell, where I'm going to sell it and how I'm going to market it. I've done some experimentation through 2008 with ideas and products to see what works and what doesn't. Now I just need to focus and try to achieve a the goals I've set for the business.

I've set up a Fired Silver shop on Etsy. I've sold on Etsy before (under a different name), but have brought my range all under the one brand. There's nothing in the shop at the moment, but at least it's there and all the boring policy stuff is written.

I've also set up a group on Yahoo, I'll use this as a sort of fan club - someone else's description, not mine! I will use it as my mailing list and it's the people who are registered there that will receive updates on newly listed items, special promotions and sales etc. If you'd like to join, please go to Join my Mailing List Don't worry, you won't be bombarded with emails, just one or two per month.


Finally, a picture! I made this ring as a birthday present to myself. I will be listing these for sale though, as I really loved making it. They'll be custom made and the purchaser will be able to choose from a range of stones.

Frit Happens Challenge Piece

Well, I managed to finally get this piece finished. It's not the best photograph, but I'm so pleased with the finished piece, I couldn't wait to show it!! The challenge topic was Autumn. I also thought it would be interesting to take stage by stage photos so, here's a few of the piece in progress

This pendant is totally different to what I usually make, but I quite enjoyed if for a change, and that's what challenges are about isn't it!! What it did do for me, is make me realise how much I like enamelling work. I don't do it as often as I would like and having a play yesterday was great fun.

Must get on with "proper" jobs today though!

A few pairs of earrings

I've been listing jewellery on Folksy today, three new pairs of earrings. Quite simple designs, but I really love them. This pair are small silver ovals with a really pretty pink czech glass flower.

This next pair are just little curved hearts strung on some lovely long v-shape earwires.

Finally, another simple design, all silver, using up some rings left over from a chainmaille project! With the large size ring, these earrings are full of movement.

After a tiring day yesterday, putting jewellery together was about all I could manage today! I've got some pieces that I was working on yesterday, but didn't finish, but they'll have to wait until my energy returns!!

Folksy

Ok, so I'm lovin Folksy! I'm slowly but surely getting my shop up and running. I hate listing items so it's taking a while, but I'm getting there. I've also had my first sale on there too (thanks Elaine!).

Here's one of the items I've listed today, and is also a new product line - magnetic clasps. There will be lots of these to come, but they take quite a long time to make (especially this one!) This is one of the larger clasps, but I have a range of 4 sizes available. A lot of them will be fairly simple with lovely textures on, some will sit flat the same as this, but others will have the holes positioned so that the clasp is vertical.

I've also made a couple of simple curved heart pendants. I love this shape heart and the necklaces are great little gifts for girls too! I've sold quite a lot of this style necklace and it's still as popular as ever.

Here are the tags I mentioned in an earlier post. Each customer will get them custom made for them, so they can choose a font to match their existing fonts on their website etc, or they could have their logo imprinted. I think tags give a really professional finish to a piece of handmade jewellery and I hope fact that they can now tie in with the rest of the makers' image will mean that they're popular!