Purplelicious

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 reflection - they can turn out too bright or too grey depending on the angle but a bit of trickery with a piece of white card, which in other words means me holding said piece of white card at different angles to reflect some light onto them, normally sorts it out! I think they're rather glamourous and they will be appearing in my Folksy shop later today.

Beaducation Giveaway - National Craft Month

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!

Featured! Folksy Top Picks

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! ♥

Being Approached For Wholesale - The Good And The Bad

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 have any control over what people do with my jewellery once they've bought it wholesale but it was nice to be given the information. Needless to say the wholesale sale went ahead.

So a few tips for anyone who wants to buy wholesale from online handmade sites -

Find out the seller's name - it's usually in their profile or at least use their shop name to address them!
Give a brief explanation as to why you want to buy wholesale and an idea of quantities
Give a contact name

It's easy to feel the potential wholesale buyer is doing us a favour but in fact it's the other way round - they have an opportunity to buy unique handmade items at a discounted rate to no doubt sell on for a reasonable profit - the least they can do is approach a seller in a professional manner - they may find doing so will result in more success :D

Torch Enamelling - What I've been Up To Recently!

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 the leaded enamels have to be sent by courier which costs £11!

So armed with my prepared copper discs, a not very suitable trivet (I've since bought two much better one's from Thompson Enamel), a small kitchen sifter as the proper enamel sifters I'd ordered hadn't arrive yet (patience is a virtue I know!) and a few opaque enamel colours I nervously "had a go".

My first attempts were amazingly fine which surprised me, just one colour on flat copper discs, although I was slightly alarmed when the red enamel powder turned black on contact with heat (that's normal!) and that was it I was hooked! As I read somewhere recently - enamelling isn't difficult to do it's doing it well that's the hard part.

What I've learned so far :

• You must wear a particulate mask when using powder enamels - some enamels contain lead, arsenic, cadmium and boron - not the sort of stuff you want to be inhaling

• You can use a butane torch for enamelling - it works fine for small pieces

• Yes you do need to counter enamel (enamel the back) your pieces. Copper and enamel expand and contract at different rates when heated and cooling down and counter enamelling the copper helps stabilise the tension between the two reducing the chance of warping and cracking

• Transparent enamels do need to be washed if you want to use them over other colours otherwise they can appear cloudy. You can get away without washing them if you're using them directly onto copper though

• A fired piece that appears fine at first can fiendishly change after a couple of minutes, hours, days or weeks! Cracks, pits, tiny hairs that you didn't see at the time of firing and black spots can appear which can be very frustrating

• If you see a black spot in the enamel as you're sifting don't hope it will "blend in" and not show when the piece is fired, it will!

• Enamel pens (available from Thompson Enamel) are not very easy to use

• Two thin layers are better than one thick one

I'll stop for now but I could go on for much longer! Below are some of my fledgling enamel jewellery designs, I'm still finding my way and having fun experimenting. I'm pleased that some of my enamel pieces have sold which always helps when you're trying something new and wonder if anyone will actually like it! I'd love to hear from anyone with enamelling tips or anyone who's thinking of having a go themselves :D

Ivory and Coral Flowers

Purple and Lavender Discs

Opaque over Transparent

Seafoam Green and Chestnut Brown Flowers

Seafoam and Nut Brown

  Terracotta and Sterling Disc