A while back I answered some questions for an article by the lovely Angela of The Jewelry Report, a blog for jewellery makers. I really enjoyed answering the questions as many were specific to the process of making jewellery and written by someone who knows a thing or two about it.
The resulting article has an introduction to make me blush:
Australian jeweler, Simone Walsh, is an inspiration to all one-man-band jewelery designs. Not only does her jewelry reflect a sense of originality and dedicated to quality, but her success is a testament to her hard work and dedication to being a successful business woman. Yet every…single…piece is completely handmade. Here she gives us some insight into that productivity, and I really feel that this gal is someone that many aspiring jewelers, and established jewelers alike can (and should) look up to.
So if you’re interested in reading the rest of the article with the Q&A I completed you can find it right here on The Jewelry Report.
I spent some time at my bench this weekend making some jewellery for one of my consignment outlets along with for my own stocks. And the results of my labour all needed to be tumbled in steel shot to become bright and shiny.
A batch of handmade jewellery fresh from my new tumbler.
Recently I purchased a sparkly new Lorotone tumbler to replace the wonderful but now old and slightly decrepit tumbler my Dad made for me years ago using bits from his shed).
It’s taking me a while to get used to the ways of my new tumbler. Because I’d used my old (and rather eccentric!) one for such a long time I knew exactly how much shot, water and tumbling compound it needed and exactly how long my work needed to be tumbled to get the result I wanted.
Of course my new tumbler is different and it will take me some experimenting to get those things right.
It’s been making me think about how very familiar we all become with the tools and equipment we use extensively. Changing those things can be a bit disorientating at times. But of course change can be a good thing!
Tags: blossoms, earrings, handmade, Handmade jewellery, handmade jewellery, handmade jewelry, indie design, jewellery making, jewelry, jewelry making, pendants, sterling silver, tools, tumbling
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One of the things I’m particularly enjoying (and planning to make use of!) about my new location is all of the little inspirations I’m finding in nature up here in the Blue Mountains.
Whether it be in my fairly densely planted cottage garden or out walking in the national park, there certainly are a lot of them. Also nature seems to constantly evolve fairly dramatically here as the year moves forward, at the moment most notably in terms of flowers, with some disappearing and new ones appearing.
At some point soon I’m hoping to start working on some handmade jewellery designs incorporating some inspiration gleaned from my new surroundings.
So I thought I’d share just a few little inspirations with you. You can find more from the area on my Flickr – including from a long (and exhausting!) walk we took last weekend through some gorgeous rainforest in a ravine not far from home.
Sometimes it feels a tad depressing to be working in a field where the cost of your materials is down to the sometimes extreme whims of a market which has absolutely nothing to do with what you make.
At the moment both silver and gold are priced higher than they have been for a very long time. However, especially since the global economic crisis kicked off the price of gold has been going crazy as investors have been sinking their money into it, seeing it as a much safer bet than the stock market.
But as someone buying gold as a material to make jewellery with and not as an investment (or to make investment jewellery with), this is definitely unhelpful!
The photograph above is of a piece of 14ct gold (that’s 14kt for Americans) which is 0.5mm thick (0.02″) and 35mm tall and wide (1.4″). It set me back AU$245 (currently around US$200). Ouch!
Silver has also been going up and up for the past couple of years for all sorts of complex reasons. It is currently costing around double what it has done for most of my career. But to give an idea of how much more expensive gold is by comparison, 14ct gold is currently around 28 times more expensive per gram than sterling silver at trade cost.
Gold is a wonderful material to work with, but it does indeed hurt when a very small business like mine needs to purchase it.
As for what I’ll be making with my teensy little piece of gold … well I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete at this point. I have been using thinner gold as highlights in a few handmade jewellery pieces for a while now, but I would like to make some pieces where gold is more of a feature.
Stay tuned for details!
Tags: 14ct gold, 14kt gold, business, costs, gold, handmade jewellery, handmade jewelry, jewellery making, jewelry making, making, metal, silver, sterling silver
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Finally last weekend (which was a long one in Australia) I was able to get back to my jewellery bench, now set up in the studio space in my new home.
I spent the weekend completing an order for the National Portrait Gallery shop in Canberra, along with making some urgently needed jewellery for my own supplies seeing as I’ve been badly running out of the jewellery in my shops.
Above are just a few of the little silver blossoms I cut out in sterling silver on the weekend. Each of them were then soaked to remove the paper (with the shape drawn on it), sanded, filed, tumbled and then finally turned into finished jewellery which was then tumbled again.
I seem to spend half of my life making these little blossoms as they form some of the most popular jewellery pieces I sell, so it was no surprise to spend my first weekend of making since moving doing yet more of them!
As for how my new studio is working out, well so far so good! The space is almost fully set up, but there are a few loose ends to tidy up.
The only issue I found on the weekend was that the three large windows let in so much light (in spite of the room being painted so dark) that heating or soldering metal can be difficult because I can’t see what I’m doing! All I need to do is remember to pull a blind or two down before I start and it’s fine, however.
This is not going to be set up as my ‘dream studio’ seeing as I’m still renting and things like fume extraction, heavy equipment which should be bolted to the floor or heavy furniture, etc. are currently out of the question. But soon enough I hope to be working towards just that!
As mentioned in previous blog posts, I’m moving home and heading for the hills.
But it’s not just my personal life that is being impacted by the move as I am also moving my studio and my office, given that I work from home.
So if you’re considering purchasing handmade jewellery from me in the near future, please be aware that currently all items listed in all of my shops are in stock. However, it may take me two to three business days to post your order, particularly between 9 and 18 May.
Also I am now in the process of packing up my studio. This means that if any items are sold out they are unlikely to be remade for several weeks – it’s better to get in quick than risking the item you want being out of stock later.
I am now also unable to undertake any custom work, beyond changing the length and colour of necklaces as indicated in some of my jewellery listings.
But the good news for customers is that when I’m finally set up in my new home I should have two much more functional working spaces, which I’m hoping will lead to being much more efficient. And I’m very much looking forward to being inspired by my beautiful new garden and surroundings!
It’s Easter – already! The year is whizzing past.
In Australia we are fortunate to get a four day holiday for Easter. Huge numbers of people go away for the weekend – and equally huge numbers stay at home to avoid the traffic created by the people going away!
I am one of the latter and plan to spend the weekend catching up with friends and making some jewellery – and of course nibbling the odd hot cross bun (better than chocolate!).
A treat for you!
For those others who will be around this weekend I’m offering an Easter treat in my handmade jewelry shop – if you make a purchase, just enter the code easter when you checkout and you’ll receive a 15% discount.
The discount is valid from Good Friday through to the end of Easter Monday and will work in my Australian jewellery shop as well.
Enjoy your Easter!
I’ve just added some new handmade jewellery to my sale section, including this forget-me-not necklace. Plus I’ve further discounted some older pieces already on sale.
Everything in the sale section is being retired from my range – something I need to do from time to time to make the range more manageable. So once they’re gone, they’re gone!
As an added bonus for blog readers, if you purchase anything in my shop, use the code extra1 when you checkout to get a 15% discount – including on items already on sale. This discount will expire on 27 March 2009.
This is valid in both my Australian jewellery shop and international (US$) jewellery shop.
Yes, I am finally finished the big web-related job I’ve been working on since late last year, along with another small one.
And finally I can get back to jewellery making and all sorts of other things for myself – until a couple of other lurking web jobs come to fruition, anyway! There is also the possibility that I’ll be moving up to the Blue Mountains in the next little while, which is exciting.
But this weekend and early next week I plan to spend a lot of time at my bench catching up with making work and attending to a whole lot of neglected bits and pieces. And once I’m caught up I’m keen to get to work on some new handmade jewellery!
If you’re interested in what I’ve been working on, the smaller project was for an exhibition of contemporary jewellery called Luminaries, which was organised by the Jewellers & Metalsmiths Group in NSW and shown from 2006.
There are plenty of photographs of some wonderful work by some of the luminaries of Australasian contemporary jewellery.
The much larger project was for the Corporate Responsibility Index in Australia. This was a complete redesign and rebuild of a site that I first created years ago and which was badly out-dated.
Although the front end of the site isn’t particularly complex, the new site runs on a content management system, which is what made it a much larger job to set up. But the good news is that most updates to the site can now be handled by the Index staff.
Well, nearly – Christmas is almost here! And once it arrives I shall be collapsed in a heap after a few very busy weeks involving lots of jewellery making.
I thought I would provide a quick update about festive season shipping for those of you who are still shopping for gifts.
It’s now getting very late in terms of delivery outside of Australia, but it’s not yet impossible that your gifts will arrive in time as I find the post office to be very efficient at this time of year. However, as each day passes it becomes less likely. If you’d like to take a chance, visit my handmade jewelry shop to make your purchase asap.
For Australian customers, you should be fine to order by standard delivery until around 17 December. From then on I strongly recommend that you upgrade to Express Post, which you can do when you checkout from my Australian handmade jewellery shop.
Note that my suggested cut off date for Express Post within Australia is for orders to be placed by the end of Sunday 21 December. After the following day I will be away in an area where overnight delivery is not guaranteed – I can still post your items, but it’s not certain that they will arrive in time.
The festive season is heading our way faster than a speeding bullet!
This year I’m hoping to encourage people to shop early to avoid too much of a last minute rush.
So if blog readers would like to purchase any of my handmade jewelry for Christmas, place your order by Monday 1 December 2008 and use the code early to receive a 10% discount.
Visit my handmade jewelry shop to use the discount code. The code is also valid in my Australian handmade jewellery shop for Australian and New Zealand customers.
Those of you in the US can think of this as a Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale, of course!
Festive season deliveries
The earlier you place orders for Christmas gifts, the more certain you can be of the items arriving in time. However, I suggest customers keep in mind the following dates:
- Australian customers: order by 17 December for regular post and by 21 December for Express Post
- New Zealand customers: order by 17 December
- Other customers: order by 14 December
Orders placed after these dates may still arrive in time, but they may not.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Just a quick note to wish all of my US readers who celebrate it a very happy Thanksgiving!
Yes, I’ve been ill – for days now. But bizarrely enough it’s actually enabled a lot of productivity on the jewellery making front (although a lot less on other fronts) – as you can see below!
Some of the jewellery I’ve made in the last few days, some finished, some not quite finished
For some reason I’ve been left with sharp stabbing pain in my head after a short-lived virus. The only thing I’ve found which has given me any real relief from the pain is to keep busy at my bench. I think the combination of a lot of varied movement with having my ipod blaring in my ears has helped to distract me from the pain. Doing almost anything else has made it worse – including working at my computer, watching television or even just laying down!
Thankfully I’m on the mend now, but I’m also thankful that I’ve been able to get so much making work done, even if I’ve had to neglect a lot of other things.
Much of the handmade jewellery in these photos will be sent off to outlets I sell through, including the sparkly new National Portrait Gallery in Canberra (which opens on 4 December), but some of it is for my own handmade jewellery shop.
