I’m thrilled to announce the rather sudden and slightly unexpected arrival of my very own online handmade jewelry shop … along with an extensive redesign of my website at www.simonewalsh.com.

To celebrate the launch of the jewelry shop I’m offering blog readers a 15% discount on purchases for a two week period. When you purchase just use the code: makeme and your discount will be calculated when you checkout. The code will expire on 10 October 2007.

Why now?

The job of redesigning and rebuilding my website, along with adding a fully functional shop to it has been on my list of things to get done for an age.

However, I’ve been increasingly losing confidence in one of my selling venues for a while now. As of last week this reached crisis point for some reasons which have been made public elsewhere, along with a few things going on behind the scenes. This made me realise that I need to be more self-sufficient in terms of my business, along with focussing on other venues.

Given that I reached this decision so close to Christmas, it prompted me to decide last Friday that it was imperative for me to drop absolutely everything to redesign my website and get my own shop up and running as quickly as possible.

And I astounded myself that after only three days of (extremely hard!) work I had entirely redesigned the site, rebuilt it from the ground up, got it working in Internet Explorer (with much ranting and muttering of course), had it validate as standards compliant and had the shop design built and the basics of the cart set up. Phew!

Now it’s a few days later and the new content is finished and the shop is full of my handmade jewelry.

Other venues

If you feel like shopping for other handmade or indie design items along with any from me then I highly recommend Mintd.com, where you will also find me at simonewalsh.mintd.com.

I’m a big fan of Mintd and would encourage you to put it high on your list for buying handmade and indie design items this festive season.

To be transparent and as I’ve previously mentioned, I do work with Mintd to help promote the site but I’ve taken on the role because I like it and think it has a bright future, so I do recommend it personally quite apart from any professional involvement.

Plus I have some work available on Bouf (prices in Pounds Sterling) and at the lovely Moose (prices in Australian dollars).

And of course you can still find me at Etsy – I’m not going anywhere at this stage and will continue to operate my shop as usual.

I’ve started listing my new work in my jewelry shops, so I thought I’d give you a bit of a peek here.

My favourite new piece from my handmade jewellery range is this damask pendant, inspired by a detail in a highly decorative damask pattern. The pendant has another damask pattern etched into its surface. It’s made from sterling silver, which has been heated to form a white silver oxide in the etched areas, while the raised areas have been sanded back to leave a shiny silver finish.

I have created a version of the damask pendant which hangs on black natural silk thread. I have also made a version suspended on a fine sterling silver chain, which I’m yet to list for sale.

After cutting out the damask pattern I loved the silver shapes I was left with and decided they’d make a perfect pair of earrings. So here are the matching damask earrings.

This small and simple sterling silver pendant also has a pattern etched into the surface, this time a detail leaf pattern. Again I’ve used the technique of building up silver oxide on the surface and sanding back the raised areas to create a shiny silver contrast.

The etched leaves pendant has been domed slightly to give it a more organic shape and is suspended on brown natural silk thread. I also have an etched leaves pendant on green silk thread.

To match the pendant, I created these etched leaves earrings using the same techniques above. These are post earrings which are entirely made from sterling silver.

These strawberry earrings are the result of a fun experiment after making some flower shapes in sterling silver and then trying to figure out how I was going to make use of them. I put them together with these large Czech glass beads and made a strawberry!

And here are the flower shapes again! This time in the guise of three pendants suspended on a strand of lovely rich purple natural silk thread. There is one larger flower with two smaller versions. Each has been cut out by hand and then domed.

You can find the five petal flowers neckace on purple silk in my Mintd shop. There is also a flowers necklace on black silk in my Etsy shop.

As you can probably see, I’ve made quite a few changes in the way I’m photographing my work, in large part brought about by getting a much smaller light tent, meaning my lighting is a lot closer to my work. I’ve also been experimenting with backgrounds to give a bit more depth to the images. Let me know what you think.

You can see more images of the above new handmade jewelry and more on Flickr.