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.

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!