Yes, I do have another life!
Or at least another aspect of my business life. That is the web design and graphic design part of my working life.
Recently I’ve been working hard on building myself a website for that aspect of my business – something I’ve neglected while I’ve been busy working on other people’s sites!
And finally it’s done (well, as done as a website ever gets!). If you’re interested in having a look you can visit the Web design & more website.
If you’re interested in the ins and outs of running or promoting a website, you can also check out my web design blog.
After proving to myself that I am my own worst design client, I have finally completed a much-needed redesign of my main website at www.simonewalsh.com.
This has also been rolled out to both of my shops – the international jewelry shop and Australian jewellery shop.
The previous design of my site and shops was done in a great hurry after I lost confidence in the primary online selling venue I had been using to that point and decided I needed my own independent shop to best look after my business.
In the space of about three days I had the site design mocked up, built, tested and rolled out. This was an impressive turnaround time, but I had always meant to go back and rebuild it with a design I was happier with. And finally it’s done!
If you encounter any problems in using the new design please let me know.
Next to do is a redesign of this very blog – another project that’s been on the cards for a long time! I hope to get to that in the next few months with any luck.
A launch discount
To celebrate the launch of the redesign you can take advantage of a 15% discount using the code redesign when you checkout (valid to 19 August 2009).
This discount code is valid in both my handmade jewelry shop (prices in US$, shipping everywhere) and my handmade jewellery shop (prices in AU$, shipping to Australia and NZ).
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.
