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.

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.

Yes, I have finally managed to get some new pieces into my Etsy shop today, with a few more still to come soon enough – and lots more in my head that I need to make!

Firstly there are my Elvis cufflinks, as promised – and now with a better photograph.

I’ve also put up a Warholesque Marilyn Monroe brooch – see also my Marilyn pendant on black silk.

And there are some simple earrings, one pair with soft blue vintage glass flower beads, the other with deep red vintage glass beads, both of which are suspended on handmade, hammer-beaten sterling silver loop chain with handmade sterling silver ear wires.

Etsy.com closing … and an Etsy Metal sale!

This weekend the lovely Etsy lads (and a few ladettes, I’m sure) will be slaving away to implement Version 2 of Etsy – and this means the site will officially be down for the weekend.

The new version will be bigger, brighter and better – and well worth the wait and the weekend of downtime, I’m sure.

However, to celebrate the forthcoming change – and to make up for the closure – the Etsy Metal street team is having a sale. Most team members are participating and you can get up to 20% off in our Etsy shops for one day(ish) only!

The sale officially starts at 6pm GMT today, Thursday, however, I’ve put mine up now as I simply must go to bed at some point! It will most likely end at 6pm GMT Friday.

You can purchase my handmade jewelry (and my Christmas pudding coins!) at 15% off for the next 24 hours – or at least until I feel overwhelmed and need to put a stop to it (yeah, yeah)!

To get your discount, make a purchase through Etsy, but before paying for it send me a conversation mentioning the sale. I will then send you an adjusted Paypal invoice for you to pay with the discount taken into account.

No, you must be dreaming. Just as I am … sound asleep in my bed so I can get up very early in the morning and trek off to the outskirts of planet earth (otherwise known as Parramatta).

So given that we’re both dreaming the same dream, I’ll share some new stuff with you which I’ve very quickly (and fairly badly!) photographed (yes – in my sleep!).

I’ve been working very long and very hard on lots of jewellery over the last few days. Yet I feel like I’ve made very little progress! However, I’ve been working on a fairly large batch of pieces all up, including a few new pieces which always take longer the first time around as I generally problem solve and pin down design elements as I’m working rather than before I start. But I have finished a few new pieces tonight, which is a start!

First of all is a reversible pierced pendant. It’s been hand cut from sterling silver, domed a little and given a muted black oxide finish one one side and a shiny silver finish on the other – it can be worn either way. I’ve suspended it on a very delicate sterling silver chain which has a couple of turquoise beads to weight it at the end.

I’ve had these sorts of very detailed cut out pieces in mind for months now and I’m relieved to finally have one complete! I hope to have a series of these pieces underway soon – including earrings and possibly brooches.

Plus I’ve finished some cufflinks – because men need jewellery at Christmas too! One design is using some castings of a jacket which I hand carved a number of years ago. I’ve used the design for a number of pieces, but I don’t think I’ve ever made cufflinks with it before, which seems fairly obvious now I think about it!

The other pair – which are very difficult to see properly in my very hurriedly taken photographs (too many dark reflections!) – are a stencil cut out of Elvis Presley. These fit in with my recent cut out pendants of Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Deitrich. For the cufflinks I’ve soldered the cut out panel onto another sheet of silver. The background sheet has then been oxidised black where the cut out areas are.

Anyway, there’s your sneak peak! I hope to have these items (and maybe even some more!) photographed and in my jewelry shop in the next day or so.

Night night!

I’m still not feeling fantastic, but I have been getting on with a lot of jewelry making work – most of which involves a lot of piercing (otherwise known as sawing, but piercing is such a great word!).I’m re-making a few production jewellery pieces that I’m behind with – butterfly wings, forget-me-nots, blossoms … and a batch of etching.

And here is a hurriedly taken photograph of where I’m up to thus far:

Plus I’m working on some pieces for a forthcoming exhibition, Takeaway which will be held at Gaffa Gallery in Sydney later this month and is a JMGA-NSW members’ show.

These pieces (I think I’ll make three) will all be neckpieces featuring sterling silver pendants. The pendants will be made up of two squares of curved silver, both of which have been cut out into an intricate European-style pattern. One side of each panel is blackened, while the other will be given a relatively high polish.

Having cut out a couple of these pieces I decided I’d also make some non-exhibition versions for my jewelry shop and selling through other outlets. These will feature a single panel of silver rather than two.

So I hope to have those up within a day or two with any luck.

By the way, I did make it to the opening of Expeditions on Thursday and was amazed by just how much work is in it – around 200 pieces, with an incredibly diverse selection of work and skills on display. I was also amazed by the turnout to the show – it was really packed inside and out and it was very difficult to see the work properly!I confess to feeling disappointed about the way my Istanbul box has been lit – ie. not well at all! This means that the highly detailed interior can hardly be seen. So, yes, disappointed, but I’m getting over it!

The lovely Brandy at Indie Obsession is having a great gift giveaway which you should race off to now and enter!

You might win one of my Japanese etch pendants with butterflies, as well as plenty of other wonderful indie goodies to make you happy!

Quick – go there now!!

The Etsy Metal street team has been fortunate enough to have another Etsy.com home page. Hooray for us!

The list features my Japanese etched pendant with butterflies.

By the way, if you’re someone who does (or might!) shop on Etsy, be aware that Etsy.com will be closed this weekend, 5-6 November 2006, presumably from early Saturday morning US time to early Monday morning. This is so that a new and very spiffy version of Etsy can be implemented and launched.

So if you want to buy some handmade things in a rush – including from my very own Etsy jewelry shop – you should do it now!