As of around midday today I have been the proud owner of a sparkly new Macbook Pro and an equally sparkly new iPod nano (bright pink of course … are there other colours?).

I was very dedicated and didn’t even unpack it for at least an hour or so before I had a few other tasks out of the way. This is mostly because I was fully anticipating spending much of the next few days migrating things, reinstalling things, digging out ancient registration numbers and encountering moments of intense panic as things went wrong.

But I forgot one simple little thing … this is a Mac. Such things are just not part of my reality anymore. Moments into the process of first starting up the new machine I clicked on a button to say I wanted to migrate from my old Mac … I then hooked the two machines up with a cable … and it was all sorted out for me. Yes, it did take an hour or so to move everything across, but then there was about 50gb worth of data.

And then I finished the set up on the new Mac … and everything is here in perfect working order exactly as on my old machine without me needing to lift a finger to do anything further.

Lovely.

And now it’s all set up and functioning dreamily … and I just need to figure out what to do with the old one. It’s incredibly faster and therefore happier than my old Powerbook - which was the only major problem with it. It’s also quite a bit less worn out looking, but other than that it looks almost identical.

Now I’m trying to get my head around my iPod and how to organise it. But that shouldn’t take too long. And then life will be complete … or something.

PS. Are you paying attention, Meshell? I wonder if this means I’m officially stalking you now!

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.

I seem to be having a bit of an off day today, so I will blog about a few pretty things I have gathered over the last day or so which might well cheer all of us up (if you need it, of course!).

Yesterday I was walking along not far from home, minding my own business and heading for a much-needed coffee when a delivery man with a box of flowers stopped me and asked, “Do you know where this street is?”. He showed me the card on the flowers and they were … for me!!! I giggled and showed him my driver’s licence to prove that I wasn’t just making it up and he thought it was pretty funny too! They are from St James Ethics Centre to thank me for my efforts in getting their interim new website up and running.

So I’ve taken a few photos of them as they’re gorgeous and are providing a bit of inspiration for some new pieces I hope to get made this weekend. To see more of the flower photos head over to the set of them on Flickr.

And today I went into the city to get some supplies as I realised last night that I didn’t have enough silver to get me through the rather mammouth amount of making I want to do before the middle of next week.

I also decided to drop into my favourite gemstone beads supplier as in the middle of the night a while back I had a vision of a new flower piece with a very particular type of bead in the centre - a light, powdery blue disc.

I’ve not been to the gemstone place in forever - mostly because I always spend far too much money there on things I know I’ll never use! However, they had exactly what I had in mind. The beads are turquoise, so they weren’t cheap, but it was a long strand and should see me through a lot of work. I also couldn’t help but pick up some matte dyed yellow jade (a lot less expensive!).

And I was also really excited to see that at the moment they have a really interesting collection of vintage glass beads - something they’d never normally carry as they specialise in precious and semi-precious stones. Apparently they bought a lot of them from a woman in the US who was retiring and who had originally bought these beads from a bead making company which closed down in the early ’70s.

So I grabbed several short strands of the ones I most liked - in blues, reds, yellows and greens. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can come up with in terms of how to use them in my work - I have several lurking ideas. As you can see my stash of beads now looks very multi-coloured! And I like seeing the pearls and garnets and lapis lazuli all mixed in with the glass too.

Anyway, I suspect I have a very long few days of making ahead of me now that I’m surrounded by beads, a lot of silver and a whole lot of designs. I hope to have some new work to share with you soon!

At around 5am this morning I finished uploading and fidding about with the new St James Ethics Centre website - well, the interim version of it. I’m sure there will still be a few teething problems to sort out as things get settled, but so far I’m very happy with it and very relieved to finally have made it this far.

It’s been a very big job indeed for just one person to get it to this point. The planning/scoping, site organisation/navigation, visual design, CSS and XHTML coding, content editing, content writing, search engine optimisation, etc. has all entirely been done by your’s truly. Although there has been lots of input along the way from the programmer who now needs to complete the rest of the project - which includes lots of rather spiffy functionality that the two of us have been working out for much of this year - forums, blogs, a wiki, RSS feeds, a full user accounts system and much more.

In a fit of complete exhaustion and ‘over-it-ness’ I have decided to take a few days away from work and this project. Instead I plan to finally catch up with jewellery-related things. I have a lot of making to be doing - and more besides. So I should have some pretty things to share soon enough!

There are other interesting things going on too.

Tomorrow night I plan to go to the opening of the Expeditions exhibition in which my Istanbul box is showing. So I will actually be out and being social, which will be odd!

Although I also did a little bit of socialising in Adelaide over the weekend - yes, I was in Adelaide *again*. This time for a meeting of a small group of people representing contemporary jewellers and metalsmiths from around Australia to discuss the way forward for creating a national body. It was an amazingly productive meeting and instead of getting bogged down in complications we actually resolved a lot of stuff and finished early! It seems the focus for the national group will be a website, which I think is a fantastic idea and which I hope to be involved with if I have the capacity. But more about that later.

I’ve also just got around to reading a flier that someone at the meeting in Adelaide gave me. It’s for some gold and silversmithing masterclasses being held at the Australian National University in Canberra in early January. One is purely silversmithing - forging, alloying, ingot preparation, finishing processes and more. I’ve never done much in the way of real smithing before and I’m very keen. Even despite the fact that I’d need to spend five days in Canberra!

Plus there’s another exhibition looming that I must make three pieces for (seeing as that’s what I’ve said I’ll put in!). This one is run by JMGA-NSW. The exhibition, Takeaway, will be showing at Gaffa Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney later in the month. It’s a pre-Christmas selling exhibition, the idea being that when you buy the work you take it with you in a little cardboard takeaway container - and your purchase is replaced by a polaroid image of it. More about that when I’ve got something to show you!

And in personal news, a legal matter I’ve had floating around for a little while to do with a car accident I was injured in (as a passenger) several years ago has suddenly been resolved much more quickly and positively than I’d ever expected. This means that some money is heading my way and that’s going to make life easier and may even allow me to invest in some tools I need, amongst other things. Although of course it doesn’t make my rather persistent neck/headaches go away! But it will help me feel less grouchy about that.

So … consider yourselves updated! And I promise I will write more interesting things soon.

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!

Yes, it’s been quiet around here for a few days.

I’m currently in Adelaide and am mostly embroiled in non-work stuff - my Mum’s 60th birthday, hanging out with my three-year-old niece, delivering said niece back to her abode in the country, dying from pharyngitis, wishing I was getting more sleep, etc..

On Thursday I shall return to Sydney and to working - although have a rather daunting array of things to get to which will mostly bore you and not be worth writing about, such as design and typesetting for a newsletter and an annual report! But hopefully I’ll get some jewellery making happening in the mix as well.

So seeing as I’m being quite boring on the jewellery making front, I’ll share one of my favourite finds on Etsy.

This seriously lovely accordian booklet, The Deer Garden, is made by printmaker ohmycavalier, whose Etsy shop can be found at: ohmycavalier.etsy.com, where you will also find a really great array of cards (I love the undergarments series) and even pin cushions.

Enjoy!

… And I have purchased some presents for myself!

From the lovely Oblivious Designs at Etsy I have purchased the keyring photographed, as discovered via Oblivious Designs blog, as discovered via Brandy’s great and gorgeous Indie Obsession blog.

For some reason I’ve been living without an interesting keyring for years and it’s time it stopped! I’m looking forward to its arrival - the fabric is really lovely. Thanks for your help with the purchase, Brandy!

A rather more substantial present to myself - in terms of price at least - is the Nikon D50 digital SLR camera. I felt a little bit sick spending so much money in a single purchase. But, to be honest, I could easily spend that much on shoes alone in the space of a year and I’m just going to have to deal with only having 30 odd pairs of shoes for a while. Oh the horror!!

I’m very hopeful that the camera will help enormously on the business front - selling jewellery online particularly requires crisp, clear photographs and for a long time I’ve been limping along with a camera which is brilliant for landscape and people snapshots, but really not cutting it for close ups of jewellery. I’d like people to be able to see what they’re buying much more clearly than they can now - and with any luck in a few days this will be the case. I can see a long day of photography ahead of me tomorrow if it’s a sunny day.

Jewellers & Metalsmiths Group website

In other news, I’ve also overnight built a new website for the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia - NSW (JMGA-NSW). It’s a very basic site to help us provide information to members and others now that the organisation no longer runs the sadly now defunct Pyrmont Studios and our Pyrmont Studios website is very much out of date.

If you’re a contemporary jeweller or metalsmith in NSW I strongly suggested you become a member - it will be good for your health! And that of contemporary jewellery and metal!

Next week (4 September) is the organisation’s AGM at the Powerhouse Museum. At this point I’m expecting to be continuing on as Newsletter Editor, a Committee position, for the next 12 months. But who knows what might happen!

I’ve had a very busy week or two setting up my new Etsy shop to directly sell some of my handmade jewellery, as well as finishing off a re-build of www.simonewalsh.com, a website that had been in ‘one day’ mode for longer than I care to remember!

The website probably looks not much different to most of you who visited before, but it has actually been entirely rebuilt to be standards compliant with a CSS layout and the content has been substantially updated. There’s also a new section to showcase some of my web and graphic design work as well.

Because I clearly have a lot of spare time (ha!), I’ve also decided to complement this work by building this blog for myself as well. The blog, Make Me, will be where I keep people informed of what I’m working on, thinking about and creating. It will be a place where I can generally ramble on about things should I feel the urge!

So, to give a quick rundown of what I’m working on:

art stuff:

On my bench are a few pieces of silver which are the beginnings of an art object I’m making for an exhibition entitled Expeditions which opens later this year. The piece will be a small non-functional box which relates to a visit I made to Istanbul earlier this year. I’ll write more about it as work progresses.

I also need to start thinking seriously about another exhibition which will be held in November called Takeaway. This show is for members of JMGA-NSW with the idea being that buyers will take their purchases away from the gallery in a takeaway box - in the empty space will sit a photograph of the piece. I have some ideas for what I’m going to do and will also write more about this later.

jewellery:

It might still be August, but I’m already gearing up for Christmas in terms of saleable jewellery. I’m slowly adding to my Etsy shop as well as catching up with demands from retail outlets. I also have a number of ideas for new pieces which I just need to find some time to actually get started on! I’ve recently made a large batch of findings and have also purchased a rather chunky amount of silver, so time is all I need.

web design:

This is what seems to eat up most of my life just now. I’m working closely with a programmer to build a whole new website for St James Ethics Centre. It really is being built from the ground up (fortunately with the exception of most of the content) and is an enormous amount of work, having taken up a large chunk of this year already and seeing me work up to 80 hours a week on it. Again, I’ll write more about how that pans out.

other stuff:

There’s always a lot of other stuff happening!

For example, I’ve just completed yet another issue of Filings, the newsletter for JMGA-NSW (Jewellers & Metalsmiths Group of Australia - NSW) of which I am the Editor (a voluntary Committee position) and there’s the AGM coming up in just over a week. I’m also just about to start work on building an interim website for the same organisation to replace it’s currently very out of date one, both in terms of content and code.

I’m also fairly seriously considering another year of University next year - in the Visual Arts arena, of course. I will need to research and write out a proposal by the end of October. Eeek!

…

And that’s about it for my first blog posting. Keep your eyes peeled for more!