Mini tutorial - Improvised bead rack

This is hardly a tutorial so much as a shared idea. If you only occasionally make beads a dedicated rack can take up too much valuable space in your craft room. On the fairly rare occasions that I make beads I improvise a rack using large cutters like this, the top of a can that doubles as a bangle mould, or a shallow box (Green and Blacks miniatures boxes work very well, you just need to reinforce the corners with tape as repeated baking in the oven weakens the glue).

So there you go - see how inventive you can be!

I'm Craft Britannia Shop of the Week #75!

Wow, I had a blog-neglect wake-up call today... I forgot the link to my own blog!! I'm utterly embarrassed and chastened. I promise I'll post more in 2014.

Things I have neglected to post about include a lovely working trip to see my fiance in Tunisia, turning my living room into a sweatshop for most of December to produce homemade presents for friends and family for Christmas, and my shop being Craft Britannia's Shop of the Week #75!

Check out my Craft Britannia Shop of the Week interview here.

And here's some eye candy too, 'cos you're lovely ;)

Be careful what you wish for...

Only last week I was complaining that I was so busy with editing work that I had been forced to neglect my crafts. Well, here's a lesson in being careful what you wish for, because two of my clients have turned out to be flakes, and I have had to accept that they're simply not going to come through with the goods.

So I spent yesterday at my very lovely client's ceramics studio in Bermondsey pummelling clay into submission and generally having a wonderful time. There's something exceedingly therapeutic about thwacking a pound and a half of wet clay onto the wheelhead and wrestling with it until it runs smoothly through my hands. She has new bats too - the wooden kind for clay, not the furry kind, although with the squeaky flash going off in the next studio it did sound like there were delinquent bats in the belfry! Anyway, these new bats are smooooooooooooooth and most importantly, level. I threw my biggest and best bowl yet. And now I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I don't, so here's a shot of the rest of my day's output instead.

I'm so excited for that red in the top photo - it's a velvet underglaze - doesn't that just sound gorgeous?

And while we're on the subject of gorgeous things - and of the fickle nature of freelance workloads - here with unprecedented frequency is the next Craft Britannia Shop Of The Week!

May I present to you the wonderfully named, and incredibly talented Feather and Sixpence. Their quirky watercolours are cool, warm and fuzzy all at the same time. They're like listening to The Lumineers on Bonfire Night with your hands wrapped around a hod toddy and your sweetheart's hands wrapped around you. Check them out, I urge you.

Shop Of The Week - Fabrilushus

Well I didn't quite manage to keep up with my - frankly rather ambitious - idea to blog about the Craft Britannia shop of the week every week. Life sort of got in the way, and between running my own Etsy shop and building a freelance editing business, there wasn't a lot of time left for promotion!

I intend to remedy that as best I can, by promoting the current SOTW - a lovely, generous and friendly lady called Jilly's shop - FABRILUSHUS.

You can read an interview with Jilly over on the Craft Britannia Blog. This gorgeous lavender sachet is one of my favourite items in her shop - isn't it lovely?

Fame for my Face Cabochons!

Last week I got an email from a lovely Swedish lady called Halinka who had seen this post on my blog and wanted to order some of my cabochons to use in her own designs. I agreed and sent her three cabs, and she wrote back a couple of days later saying that she LOVES them and has written a blog post about them. Well, how about that? :)

Please visit her blog (IE works better than Firefox for some reason) and give it some love. My cabs are discussed towards the bottom of the post. Check out her amazing beadwork while you're there!
http://mybeadworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/button-bracelet.html

Waving not drowning

Hello! I'm still alive, despite all evidence to the contrary. Announcing that I intend to do anything regularly seems to be a death knell for this blog ;)

Since I last posted back in August, my editing work has picked up. I put in a lot of effort for very little return initially, and then as soon as September hit all the authors seemed to come back from their summer writing retreats and start their search for an editor - me, for a couple of them :)

I have had two manuscripts on the go, which has been stressful and hasn't left much time for anything else. All of which serves to illustrate the ebb and flow of freelance work. Feast one month, famine the next!

Actually this suits my creative side rather well, since while I am waiting for work to come in, I can busy myself with work of my own - stocking up my Etsy shop in anticipation of Christmas (Yule, Winter Solstice, Thingymas, Commercial Season) - and when I have editing work in hand I can put down the polymer clay and get on with it.

I think with freelance work there is a balance to be struck. You will be unhappy if you need to be constantly supplied with work from external sources, because it just does not happen that way in the current economy. You need to have your own interests, and preferably ones that make a bit of an income, so you can be productive and make use of the inevitable down time - perhaps even see it as a perk of the job.

We'll look at how you make ends meet in another post!

Craft Britannia!

Hi All,

Just a quickie - I'm supposed to be working on my new blog A Very British Editor preparing for its launch and instead I am on Etsy, chatting to virtual friends :P

I am a member of a very active and friendly team on Etsy called Craft Britannia. They're a group of lovely women and men all from the UK who work hard to promote each other and help each other out. They have a great blog, which is also in my blog roll over on the right of this post. Every week they have a Shop of the Week, where they interview one teamie and promote their shop. This week it is a lady called Alice and her shop The Sequinned Sheep.

I'm going to try to post here once a week to tell you who the shop of the week is, and to give them a little love. As crafty enthusiasts yourselves, I hope you will enjoy the opportunity to read about how another crafter uses their skills, and also see some awesome handmade stuff.

So without further ado, I give you The Sequinned Sheep *wild applause*

Interview with Alice on the Craft Britannia Blog

And some knitted eye candy from Alice, just cos I love ya.