Edinburgh jeweller

Created for Bis

BEFORE  I has some time off last week and decided it was time to jazz up the mirror in my hallway. It was painted a teal colour (which matches the living room) but it was a bit plain and I had some buttons in a cardboard box not being used! We glued them on in a mosaic-type pattern. It was fun to try to make them fit! AFTER I'm pleased with the results - definitely not plain anymore!

From myrevelment

Our lilly pond, taken by Gary Ullah Photography It is coming to the end of the teaching year for me. I've taught and trained for most of my career but for the first time this year I taught a jewellery making class. I taught Silver Clay Jewellery at the Mary Ward Centre in London. It's an interesting experience. It is different from teaching an academic subject (I teach Psychology there as well). For starters everyone is doing something different and it's not always easy to keep track of it all! Also demonstrating techniques is fine but it can be a bit nerve wracking with everyone watching - you don't want to make a mistake and cut your finger! Oh, wait, I did do that! I did enjoy the classes that I taught though. It's great to have the students for three hours at a time so they can really get engaged with it all. And it was lovely to see what they had made by the end of the course. They all learnt new skills and that's all you can hope for. There will b...

There have been a couple of very welcome developments for silver clay artists here in the UK in the last few days. Firstly, Aida have announced that silver clay prices are to be cut between13-14% with immediate effect. This follows an increase of 30% that came into effect on 1st June 2012 (see my blog post on this here ). Art clay is not at the price it was pre-June this year but it is still pleasing to see that prices can go down as well as up! The best price I have found online in the UK today is at www.metalclay.co.uk but make sure you shop around. The other piece of very exciting news is about the Rio Rewards PMC Certificate . It has previously only been available in the US. However, Lisa Cain and Julia Rai from the Mid Cornwall School of Jewellery have arranged for it to be taught in the UK in May 2013 by Rio Grande senior instructor Patrik Kusek . Many serious silver clay artists have taken the Art Clay certifications available in the UK but this well recognised PMC...

From Postitive Outlooks on Facebook

I was pleased to be asked to speak about social media at the London Jewellery School networking event last week. The event was attended by members of the London Jewellery School all of whom were new designer/makers of different types of jewellery. Hayley Kruger , another tutor from the Jewellery School, spoke first about her extensive experience and her career. She gave lots of invaluable hints and tips about what she had learnt in her various roles in the jewellery industry. I learnt a lot from that! A display of some of my pieces  I spoke about how to use social media, especially twitter, facebook etc, to connect with potential customers and those that have already bought. Hayley and I both displayed a sample of our work. I also showed some of the cards I have from moo.com to demonstrate how I use the mini moo cards as labels for my bracelets. I wrote a blog post about that here All in all I feel it was a really fantastic event with lots of questions and discussi...

From that girl