Cinnamon Jewellery

Purple has been my favourite colour for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I had a dark purple carpet, purple flower curtains, lilac walls and a purple bedspread in my bedroom - I loved it! When it comes to buying beads I'm always drawn to the purple ones and sometimes have to tell myself no. I didn't manage it when I saw these dyed purple freshwater pearls on Lima Beads though and ended up buying them! They are lovely, quite small (5mm) but a real electric purple and very shiny. I decided they would look great with oxidised sterling silver so I made these disc earrings last week using my new larger size disc cutter, slightly thicker sheet silver than usual (the price of silver these days!) and the pearls. I cut a hole in the disc slightly off centre then texturised and domed them, added the pearls, into LOS, cleaned and polished and ready to be photographed. I always find silver a bit tricky to photograph due to the reflect...

Beaducation.com  are having another wonderful giveaway to celebrate National Craft Month! Included in the giveaway are copper, sterling silver and gold-filled blanks, mini nuts and bolts for cold connecting plus hole punch pliers and chain. All you have to do is visit the Beaducation blog  and leave a comment! Simple! You can also enter more than once by Twittering, facebooking and blogging about the giveaway. The winner will be chosen at random on 28 March so there's still time to enter! Good luck!

It was a nice surprise to see one of my  enamel pendants  in Folksy's Featured Items on their main buying page today! They have a gorgeous bright selection of items with red as the theme to coincide with Red Nose Day yesterday and there really are some lovely things in the selection - we're a talented bunch on Folksy! ♥

Every now and then I get a message through my Folksy shop or Artfire shop  asking if I sell wholesale. Yes I do and I'm happy to discuss my terms with the sender. There's just one catch - as it's a potential business "contract" I really do expect the initial inquiry to be business-like and professional. Here's an example of a recent wholesale inquiry - are you doing wholesale? if yes please let me know.I will buy. email --------- That's it, no contact name, no other information! Doesn't exactly fill you with confidence does it? I normally ignore this type of inquiry but I did reply pointing out more info and a contact name would be helpful and not surprisingly no reply was forthcoming. In complete contrast I was contacted by a fellow Folksy seller just before Christmas asking if I sold wholesale. She gave me information about where she would be selling my jewellery and a link to the the gallery so I could check it out. I know I don't h...

I've admired enamelled jewellery for a while now and not too long ago did a blog post about Etsy seller tekaandzoe  and her wonderful kiln enamelled creations. I didn't think at the time that it was something I would ever be able to do as the cost of kilns plus lack of space would be a problem for me. That wasn't until I saw an advert for a torch enamelling tutorial from US jewellery supplies website Beaducation  by Steven James . It's a great tutorial showing the basics on how to torch enamel on copper. Of course I bought it! I then spent hours scouring the internet for more information on torch enamelling, where to buy the tools I'd need and of course the enamel powders. There are quite a few UK sites selling enamelling supplies and tools but as usual I found the US sites had more choice (why do we always lag behind?) I bought some enamel powders from a couple of UK sites to begin with - Cookson Gold have a good selection but bear in mind th...