Edinburgh jeweller

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...

My love and I spent a beautiful week last week in Venice, Italy. Here is a photo of me looking out over the lagoon to the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. I didn't take one photo while we were there, which is one of the benefits of travelling with a photographer! I got to enjoy the scenery while Gary was capturing it. Please do have a look at his fantastic photos that can be found here on flickr . As usual for us we spent a lot of time in and around churches (we have also visited Wells Cathedral  and Winchester Cathedral in England this year). I love church architecture and art. I find it very inspiring for my jewellery designing, particularly for enamelling. Our Venice church visit count was seventeen! The highlight of our church going was the Basilica di San Marco which I think is the most impressive church I have ever been into. The mosaics are just astounding, truly astounding. We also visited the island of Murano, famous for glass. I enjoyed some window shopping looking ...