Edinburgh jeweller

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I am a big fan of christmas and I love looking out for thoughtful gifts for people. I have a hidden board on pinterest to keep all my ideas! (which you can't see - sorry!). For christmas this year I spent a couple of months knitting some of my gifts! I knitted five scarves and was still knitting furiously on 23rd December! I got them finished in time though. I was very fortunate to be given some really thoughtful and useful gifts myself this year including I got this book from Gary - Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong . As someone who teaches both Psychology and jewellery making I have become increasingly interested in how I can link these two parts of my life together. Gary is a photographer and he also gave me a calendar he had printed with images of our 2013 trip to Venice . It's a lovely daily reminder of our holiday which is hanging right by my desk. (I took the dodgy photo of the calendar by the way!) My niece gave me this love...

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I have been very fortunate to be able to attend masterclasses in metal clay with a number of fantastic artists. I spend a large proportion of my income on doing this as it is my passion and I know that by spending a couple of days with someone you learn so much more than you ever will from a book (although I love books too!) I am now looking at the masterclasses for 2014 (I'll write about those in a future post!) but I thought I would think over what the artists I have studied with so far have taught me. Not just techniques as there have been too many of those to list, but a general ethos to inspire and inform my work. Julia Rai is a British metal clay artist, fantastic teacher and director at the Cornwall School of Arts Craft and Jewellery . She was the first person in the world to achieve Metal Clay Masters registry level 4 (there are 5 levels). I have taken five accredited courses with her and have learnt more every time. I think the main thing I have taken from studyin...

Happiness project - Gretchen Rubin

I have been very fortunate to just have to work for 11 days in a row! I'm fairly new to working as a jewellery artist and freelance teacher and had found in previous months that not everything I took on happened. So I filled up the beginning of December expecting that something would get cancelled. Except it didn't! And I ended up working a lot of long days in a row. But I am grateful for the work. And that I got through it! And for the back massage I had booked myself as something to look forward to!