I am intensely busy at the moment and wish more than anything that I could clone myself!

And I feel like I should take a moment out to tell you about it all (or is that whine?). Actually most of it is good busy-ness with things happening for my jewellery and various other interesting bits and pieces going on too.

Although it’s hard to know how long I can keep up the pace - I’m currently working from when I wake up to when I go to bed every day of the week.

Today I found out that a buyer for McCleod’s Daughters (an Australian television drama) has just bought several of my pieces for the show and she also requested a special piece be made asap. So I suspect my work is going to be on the telly at some point! I’ve never seen the show but I’ve seen the ads … and, well, I’m not quite sure what to make of that! But it’s all good, really.

The shop where the buyer purchased my work is also selling a lot more for me than usual for this time of year, so that’s keeping me busy as well - and there’s still the whole of the Christmas season and January sales to go yet!

Plus I’m getting stuck into doing some marketing for my Etsy shop as right now is really the best time to be doing it as we start heading into Christmas shopping season. So there are quite a few things to be done in that regard - I have a long list!

For starters I’ve just had a flier printed to promote the shop and that arrived today. I’m really pleased with how it came out and as of tomorrow it will be winging its way to various other indie designers, people going to craft shows, friends, family and anyone else I can think of!

I’m also doing an exchange of promotional material with a few other Etsy people (hi Meshell!) as I’d like to send out a little pack of promos for other indie designers with my sales - and I hope they will include my promos with their sales.

On top of all of that, work (yes, I also have a job!) is incredibly hectic just now. Tomorrow I will send their new newsletter to the printers, having almost completed laying it out. In a couple of days I will need to start on laying out the annual report - and I’ve not even made a start designing it yet! Plus I need to get an interim version of the new St James Ethics Centre website up and running in the next few weeks - which is a very big job and only part of the monster-size task of finishing the whole thing. We’ve been working towards this since February!

Plus I also need to work with my lovely friend Marc van de Griendt, a really wonderful illustrator, to come up with a nifty and thoughtful Christmas card for the Ethics Centre, something we’ve been doing for a few years now. Above is the card Marc did for us last year.

And soon I will need to start gathering content for the next issue of Filings, the newsletter for JMGA-NSW of which I am the editor. Plus there’s a meeting to discuss a national contemporary jewellery and metalsmiths body which will be held in Adelaide at the end of October and in which I’ll be participating. And ongoing Committee meetings and the like as well.

At some point I need to actually get enough sleep, eat properly, excercise enough and possibly (maybe perhaps) get a life! But I’m thinking most of that will need to wait until after Christmas.

PS. My Etsy front page list is being chatted about on the Etsy forums It seems it was a hit - hooray!