Fruit Cake, Files and Firsts.

Let's just imagine that I could be totally self-employed by this time next year (though not a Del-boy millionaire). It's taking a lot of hard work, long days, longer hours, but I'm beginning to see the possibilities. Something I just couldn't imagine while I was just selling jewellery to an already saturated market.

Someone once told me, and I read it somewhere else, you're unlikely to make a living making and selling jewellery, and to be honest they are right. It's taken me nearly three years just to break even. I tried diversifying, using polymer clay as well as beads, which was moderately successful, and making other items like candle holders, compact mirrors and crochet hooks. Only the crochet hooks have been really successful and I really must get some more made and listed when the weather cools down a little.

Then I viewed the whole market from a different angle. Jewellery making is a very popular hobby, so popular there are TV stations dedicated to it. No wonder sales are few and far between with so many people making their own. Hmmmm....making their own....well why don't I share some of my designs in tutorial form? I wrote a couple of tutorials, and guess what, they sold like hotcakes, over and over again. I wrote more, more sold, a couple more, and they sold. Now they threatened to take over my jewellery shop on Etsy completely. So I opened a new shop just for the tutorials in the middle of July, and have been steadily doing well ever since.

Someone said to me I should sell my doodles as well. Now this one I seriously baulked at, as I didn't believe I was good enough. I showed someone else, they said the same. Then I noticed several sellers selling colouring sheets for download and I thought...hmmmm. So I dragged out my big pile of doodles, scanned them all in, coloured them and listed them in yet another new shop...Artzentric...

I've had a lot of fun with these...first the drawing of them, which is incredibly relaxing and helps to get a busy brain to calm down, secondly colouring them in on the PC, which also helped me learn about various facilities in my programs, and thirdly enhancing them. Take this one for instance. The first is the original, then the coloured-in version, then an enhanced version.

I may get these printed up at a later date and see how they go as prints. Currently I am only listing the uncoloured version.

So, that deserves cake. My partner is diabetic, but he can eat this cake without any spikes in his levels, (except that he loves it and tends to cut himself a huge slice, so I have to watch). This is not to say I recommend it for diabetics, quite the opposite, but a treat for himself now and then when things are stable is ok for him. It's one my grandmother used to make all the time and every time I taste it, it reminds me of many happy teatimes around her table. I reduced the sugar by half, as the fruit makes it sweet enough anyway, and it works a treat. Here's the recipe. 

8oz Self Raising Flour

8oz mixed dried fruit

8oz butter or margarine (I use Vitalite as he's dairy intolerant)

1 tsp mixed spice

4 oz sugar

3 large eggs.

My method. Whack everything except the fruit and one tbsp of the flour into a mixing bowl, and mix thoroughly. Coat the fruit in the remaining flour and tip into the mixture. Stir until evenly distributed. The mixture should slowly drop off the spoon, if it's too stiff, add another egg bit by bit until it's the right consistency. Put it all into a greased and floured 8 inch deep cake tin (line it with greased greaseproof paper if you want), and bake at 180*c for 1-1 1/4 hours until a skewer or knife comes out clean.  Leave to cool and resist eating it until at least the kettle has boiled. :)

Oh and theres a new tutorial up, for my bracelet. 

Find it here

So what was the first? I have my first beading class coming up in September, as a guest designer at the Elephant and Dragonfly Studio in Canvey Island, Essex. Really looking forward to that. There is still room for more, so join the page and ask about it. 

Busy Times!

What busy times ahead. This little cottage industry growing and coming on in leaps and bounds. I've so much to tell you about what has been happening in the last couple of weeks since my last post.

First I have extended my Willow collection to include a wedding collection, which I am really pleased with. It took a while to do, but it was really worth the effort. Made with white super duo beads, silver metallic seed beads, and clear ab crystal beads, I really do think this makes a stunning bridal ensemble.

I also have a chance to do a class, teaching this particular style, which I'm still trying to arrange.

A few days ago, I got a beep on my phone telling me that I had an email. On checking a good friend of mine had mentioned me in a tweet. I had to look to see what she was up to, as it was pretty randon being a Wednesday evening.

Well it turned out that a local hairdresser was looking for a local jewellery maker to supply her shop! Now I couldn't turn that down could I? I contacted her, we eventually spoke on the phone and agreed terms. It turns out the hairdresser has a huge front window she wants to fill with more than just hair product, and give customers a 'little bit of Norfolk' to take with them. So if anyone wants to see my jewellery 'in the flesh' you can go to Hairtech, Church Road, Hovent, Wroxham, Nofolk.

So I have spent the last few days sorting through stock, making a spreadsheet, packing and labelling. There hasn't been much time for making things. I've also had to remove a fair bit of stock from my Etsy shop too, but there is plenty left to see.

However, I have managed to make a few bits and pieces, with a new bracelet design, for which I'm writing a tutorial, and some earrings, which have actually been packed off to the hairdressers, but can be made to order. These had a great reaction on Facebook, so I'm showing them here too.

One last note, is that I have decided to close my Folksy shop down when listings run out in November. I don't want to spend ages spelling out everything reason I am doing this, and believe me there are many. Suffice to say, there are many ongoing problems on the site that are not being resolved, after two years of sellers including myself, complaining about them. It's sad in a way, as I have made friends with many crafters from there, but the good news is, they are all on Etsy!

Anyway, here are a few pics of my latest makes...

     

 

 

 

Twins, Tutorials and Teacups

Well, here we are at the beginning of August, and I haven't updated my blog since May. Very remiss of me and I apologise to my reader.

Why? Where have you been? What have you been up to? comes the chorus of questions..or not.

I've been knee deep in beads. I've stopped working with my polymer clay for a while and gone back to my first love, my little seedies. Not with the bead embroidery yet, but I did discover those fantastic little fellows called Super Duo beads.

 

These are such brilliant little beads, lending themselves to new shapes and textures, and it wasn't long before I'd adjusted too working with them and immediately began designing a couple of pendants. Then I thought 'why not try writing a tutorial for them?'.

So I had to set about finding a program that was either free or inexpensive to make the diagrams. That wasn't hard, I just went on a beading forum and followed up a couple of recommendations for Inkscape. Totally free, easy to use, and voila! The diagrams were sorted.

The first tutorial went up for the Star Flower Pendant on Etsy, and sold..and sold again..and just as I did all that...Etsy only went and made it easy for everyone by providing the ability to upload the file to the site, and for the buyer to then instantly download it from their purchases page after payment. Nothing else to do. No sending out by email any more.

 

Encouraged by that and a commission I had had for a pair of earrings in the same design as the pendant, I made another one, and another for little leaf earrings.

 

 


Now, the leaves have grown into my willow range, with the basic leaf design incorporated into earrings, necklace and bracelet, and these make my latest tutorials. The jewellery itself is popular too, and I'm currently working on a wedding set in white and silver with clear AB crystal beads, and so far it is stunning. These will be on show once I've got more white Super Duos to make the bracelet.

 

So, amid writing the tutorials, I began to notice that they were taking over the front page of my Etsy Shop, so I've opened a second shop just for the tutorials, right here.

I have to say I'm loving all aspects of making the tutorials, from the initial design, scribbled in pencil in a notebook, to researching that nobody has already done it (it happened with some earrings I had, the design was so similar to mine that I would have been accused of plagiarism. It was purely accidental but I stopped working on them right away and threw away the paper design and gave the earrings away.), to making the diagrams, beading the samples, writing the whole tutorial and selling them to people who want to make MY things.

Meanwhile, my partner's Amputee Support Group, WalkOn Crafters, has received a start-up grant, so everything there is go go go! We have our first meeting this week, and now the nerves are setting in and we are beginning to think it'll just be me and him looking at each other across a table in the middle of a hall. Maybe we'll be surprised. I hope so.

A New Method in Polymer Clay

Besides all the crochet hooks, which are proving really popular, I decided to try to work out how to do polymer appliqué. First of all I had to find out what this beautiful technique was called, which took a bit of doing, but I had that ‘Of course!!!’ moment on discovering it was actually Polymer Applique.

This is the thing with polymer clay, you can use it to mimic so many other techniques usually used in other media, such as the Mokume Gane used in Japanese metalwork, which easily lends itself to clay. This has a result not dissimilar to embroidery.

Now, usually once you start searching the internet, you can usually find instructions on just about anything, but I found nothing at all, which was frustrating. Not even the Russian blogs mentioned any method, although there were plenty of stunning examples. (they are so good over there aren’t they?) There were a few paid tutorials, but as usual I like the challenge of working it out for myself. However, by chance I came across a blog which showed pictures of appliqué work at a meeting. No detailed instructions but enough to tell me roughly how it was done. The only tool really needed is a needle-tool, used to press the tiny petals and leaves into the clay base, adding fine shape and texture.

After a bit of practise, here are the results.

  

 

I also decided this would work well with my candle holders too, and even I’m amazed at the results.

All of this is very time consuming as each petal and leaf is applied individually, with a fine needle tool, but I found it was more than worth it with the end result.

New Directions

No not the band, don’t get excited, it’s only me and my ramblings again.

What a busy time! My Partner’s support group has moved into phase 2, where we now know the old group has actually been disbanded, and not just abandoned, so we know where we can go with it now. I only wish the people we need to help us would go up a gear too, it’s all a waiting game at the moment. You can find details of his group here.

I mentioned last time that I had written a couple of tutorials for my bead pendants and earrings. Well I listed them on Etsy, and I’m selling one every couple of days, which is great! I’m still waiting for feedback on them, but one lady has come back and 'favourited' it a few days after she bought it, which is positive so I’m over the moon. There will definitely be more to come in the next few weeks.

Quite a while ago I caught sight of polymer clay covered crochet hooks. At first I thought they might feel bulky or heavy, but on further research people have said that they are actually more comfortable to hold and work with, easier to grip and seem to be more balanced. So I bought a couple of sets with the intention of covering them. They have sat around for weeks doing nothing, but when a friend of mine gave me something rather expensive and didn’t want anything for it, and this friend crochets a lot, I decided to at least make up one of the sets for her.

It didn’t take too long to make up 12 hooks, I kept it simple, after all it was my first set, with a pearl white background and the pink roses shown in an earlier post on this blog. I must say I was quite pleased with them. Last week I nervously handed them over to her as a thank you, and waited for the reaction. She was thrilled with them, so much so that she got her wool out in the middle of the coffee shop and started to crochet.

Well, just as a little bit of market research, I put them on my facebook page. Right away I was asked by several people did I have any more designs, any more hooks etc. So I scrapped all my plans for that day and made single samples of six designs, and picked up three orders that night!

I’m adding those singles to my Folksy shop for May, but will be more than happy to make up sets, pairs, etc to order.

 

 

Over on Etsy, someone told me about the ‘On Fire for Hand Made’ team, so I applied to join them. I have to say it’s one of the best teams on there in my opinion. There are plenty of team challenges and activities, but not one of them is in any way pressurising you to take part (reverse psychology? I feel more willing to take part). The commitment is for one hour activity each week, that is it. But for the last week since I joined, my shop views have trebled daily, I am added to at least three treasuries a day, two sales as a direct result of those, and a possible bulk order to bricks and mortar shop in the USA for my bead pendants and earrings.

I have more exciting news for May but I’ll leave that for another day. Meanwhile, here are some of my more recent makes.

 

 

Sofas, Sales and Spliced Canes

My my hasn’t time flown since I last blogged? It’s been slightly manic here to be honest, with new furniture arriving (at last, I’d nearly fallen through the bottom of my armchair), and having to move things around in our little flat to accommodate it. This has meant that my partner’s computer desk has had to go out of the living room and into the bay window in the kitchen, which is where my craft areas is…was. I am now shut away in the bedroom. Oh for a spare room but let’s not go there.

I’ve also been busy helping my partner with his amputee group. We’re slowly getting it off the ground. Our problem is, there was a similar group once upon a time, but the Chairman died, and nobody took it over. We have to find out if it is still registered, or if it was officially disbanded, and if there were any funds already in place. If it wasn’t, then we will simply take up the mantle and continue the original group, but we’re waiting on others to dig into it a bit more and find out.

There have also been lots of commission work to do. March was a good month, with Facebook sales taking the lead for once,  Etsy coming up trumps, and my first sale on WowThankYou! Folksy remains quiet again.

I found a new spliced flower cane and decided to give that a try, and I love the results. So plenty of beads, which have been made into bracelets, and a pendant which sold straight away. I did make another pendant, but I got carried away with that one and it turned out rather large. Although the colours were gorgeous, it was so big it actually looked clumsy, so I wasn't going to sell it; but I dropped it and a petal broke anyway. Some things are just not meant to be. 

Bracelet made from spliced flower cane.

Pendant with spliced flowers (sold)

Made from the rose cane made for this blog earlier

A brooch made using the spliced petal cane.

Then there has been time spent not actually making anything, but writing a tutorial for my super duo flower pendants. On a beading forum, I read that many people use the program Inkscape to form the diagrams needed for beading tutorials. What do you know? It’s completely free, so I downloaded it, searched for some tutorials on how to use it, and found a tutorial dedicated to making beading diagrams on this blog (thank you to the writer). I’d already figured out the beads in the diagram myself, but those thread arrows were something else! In that tutorial, it was so easy!

So, after much trial and error, I finally produced a draft version, which I then sent to Bonny Lass on Folksy who was featured here last year, along with the beads she would need, to test it and critique for me. Didy did a brilliant job and sent me the results with lots of notes and suggestions, all of which I followed, and have now produced my first tutorial, which you can purchase here.

There will be more tutorials coming up, the next two I think will be for earrings. I was asked to make a pair of earrings similar to the pendants, and the results were gorgeous. The recipient has told me she gets lots of compliments on them. They took quite a bit of working out to get the pattern as close as possible to the pendant, so I have notes everywhere. Then my leafy earrings will be included in another tutorial too.

 

Finally, I have to mention the poor long-suffering cat. You know the one, the cat who howls the place down outside as if we've refused to let him in, when in fact we've only just let him out! He was confused and upset when furniture was being moved around (I think memories of building works were still fresh in his mind), and when the sofa went out he didn't like it at all. So when the new sofas arrived, I thought he'd just go off and sulk for a while, but no! One of the sofas is in front of the window, and he found a comfy place as soon as it was in situ, where he settled down on the back and watched the world go by, and within the hour, he was curled up fast asleep on the other one. So no matter what, we have the Royal seal of approval, and all is well with the world.