To say that I’m fairly busy is a bit like saying that Jupiter is a fairly big planet. So I won’t report more about the relentless hard work that is my life right now, and will instead quickly share with you a new Etsy find.

Unicorn is a new Etsy seller from the UK who specialises in beautiful vintage china tea and coffee cups. And today I received this pair of deliciously beautiful and delicate coffee cups of my very own!

They arrived in a lovely and sturdy ‘Tea with Alice’ box which I’m looking forward to putting to use when I have time to think about how!

Make sure you check out Unicorn’s lovely wares on Etsy (that goes double for my favourite stalker!).

Now … back to my bench.

If you race off very quickly (but please do come back!) you might just manage to get an entry in to one or two competitions in which my work is one of the prizes. Both close this week – one today.

Indie Obsession is running a great holiday gift giveaway which you can participate in. Click away to do so and you might win one of my Japanese etch pendants with butterflies, amongst many other lovely things.

Plus there’s the equally great Rare Robin Competition run by Rare Bird Finds. There are over US$1300 worth of prizes to be won – including a gift voucher from me to the value of US$55 – if you participate in voting for your favourite online shop. Do some more clicking away to vote.

Of course I’d love it if you voted for me in the jewelry category! To do so, just put http://simonewalsh.etsy.com into the ‘funky jewelry’ section.

Yes, it’s that time of the year. I’m completely exhausted, completely behind with everything and getting closer to being completely over it!

I’m finding myself needing to meditate in public to try to prevent myself from lashing out at people who irritate me … and needing to take more frequent breaks to stop myself from making too many silly mistakes with my work … and last week I very badly hurt my neck just doing a stretch when I woke up!

I honestly cannot recall the last time I had a day off completely. And it’s been several weeks since I had even a few hours off, other than those few hours of the day when I sleep.

So, yes, this is less an informative blog post and more of a whine! Just because I need to get it out of my system and – you guessed it – get back to work.

However, I’m dreaming of 19 December when I fly off to be with my family for Christmas and can no longer do a great deal of work. Then there will be all of lovely January to pull myself together, try to get my health back into some sort of order and generally sort my life out. Oh, except I’ll probably have a lot of jewellery needing replenishing around the place!

Anyway … there’s my whine. And now I must work.

As mentioned previously, I’ve spent a bit of time recently working on a series of three pieces for an exhibition called Takeaway, which is the JMGA-NSW members’ exhibition for Christmas.

Takeaway is a now annual exhibition aimed at selling work as gifts for Christmas. The idea is that when you purchase an item from the show, it is replaced with a polaroid photograph of the piece and you get to take your jewellery or object with you when you buy – all wrapped up in a little cardboard takeaway container.

I decided to make a series three of saw-pierced pendants for the show using vintage ironwork patterns cut out of sterling silver. The pieces are then domed. One side is oxidised a browny-black colour, the other is left relatively bright and shiny.

The exhibition pieces feature three ironwork patterns and each piece has two domed pieces with the same pattern. The pieces can be worn either with the oxidised or the shiny silver sides showing. The pendants are suspended on a fine sterling silver chain and have another small cut out pattern at the end to weight it.

The pendants have now been sent off for the show, which opens this Thursday. I’ll be interested to see how they look on display as I’m not sure how confident I am about them. Part of me wishes I’d had more time to spend on them.

I’ve also created a simpler version of one of these pendants, which you can find in my handmade jewelry shop.

Takeaway opens at Gaffa Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney on Thursday 23 November 2006 at 6pm.

The lovely Jena from Modish has my handmade jewelry shop featured as her site of the week, which is a very nice surprise indeed!

So pop over to Modish to check out the blurb about my jewelry – and to generally have a look around and find deliciously good things which you’ll find hard to live without.

Yes, it’s finally arrived. There’s a few little teething problems, as can always be expected in an upgrade of this scale, and a few things still to come, but overall it’s great.

It looks crisp and professional, sellers’ images are a much bigger feature of the design and there’s lots of nifty new features for buyers and sellers alike. So get yourself to Etsy.com and my handmade jewelry shop in particular to have a poke around!

For a comparison, here is my jewelry shop before the upgrade:

… and here it is today, all shiny and new:

Etsy Metal Treasury list

Today I’ve also put up another Etsy Metal Treasury list which you can peek at as well. As usual it will only live for 48 hours before it will turn to dust – so be quick!

In other news I sent off three pieces for a selling exhibition today – it was a relief to see the package disappear into the postbox … another little (?) job out of the way … just another several million to go!

The work is three neckpieces for the Takeaway exhibition being organised by JMGA-NSW at Gaffa Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney. The show opens Thursday 23 November, 6-8pm. It’s open until 5 December. The idea is that you take work away with you when you buy it and it gets replaced with a polaroid photograph.

Soon I’ll put up some images of the work I’ve made for the show.