Lovely Customers

I find it very difficult to let my shiny things go once I’ve made them. I spend hours cutting, carving, sanding, polishing, only to package up my glittery little creations and send them out into the big wide world, to be owned by other people.

So, it’s brilliant when you get an email from a customer saying that they’ve received a shiny thing from you and telling you how much they love it :)

I came into work on a dark and rainy Friday morning to find a lovely email from a customer in America telling me how happy he was with the little silver moustache charm he had ordered from me. It brightened by day rather a lot. He even sent me a picture of himself wearing it and kindly gave me permission to use it here.

Meet Scott:

Awesome moustache, I think you’ll agree.

Scott makes some rather nice pictures, also occasionally featuring moustaches, which can be seen here:

http://www.scottwrightart.com

In other news, I sold a silver cloud necklace and have a commission for a new name necklace, which I really like doing, so all is currently good in the world of shiny things. Which is nice.

Models!

One of the questions I am most commonly asked by visitors to my website is "...but do you have any pictures of it being worn..?" This is definitely something I need to work on for my site.

A few weeks ago, a friend I skate with at rec league asked if anyone was interested in helping out at a photoshoot for a very cool book she's doing on roller derby fashion. I offered my services as photography assistant in the hope that I could (a) learn some stuff about photography and (b) sneak my jewellery into some shots.

And here are the results:

I think they turned out really well. The jewellery isn't super-clear, as necklaces have a tendancy to move around a bit, but you definitely get the idea of what the jewellery looks like on, right?

Many thanks to Ellen for letting me hijack her shoot, to http://www.dannybournephotography.co.uk/ for the pictures and the patience, and to my gorgeous rollergirl models, Anna, Danelle and Erin.

A Week of Cats and Cake

I have, as ever, been just a little bit rushed off my feet recently. People are buying my jewellery, which is lovely, and I very much wish I had more time to make new shiny things.

Rather excitingly, I sold some non-roller derby things too.

A little cloud necklace:

And a tiny moustache charm, to a lovely artist.

Helpfully, it turns out that I am no longer invisible to Google, hurrah! When I built my website, I used a flash based program, which looks very pretty and all, but is picture based and has no text for Google’s little spiders to crawl. Aha, I thought! I shall be clever and put titles in white text against my white background so Google has something to find, but so they don’t show up and ruin my pretty pages. Have since discovered, however, that Google frowns upon such things, considering them sneaky and suspicious, and therefore ignores the websites.

So, I spent ages going through my website, removing all my secret headings and using something called Alt-tags to create a text version of my title pictures and everything else. And, it worked! I’m now getting a regular stream of hits on my website with a whole range of search terms. Oddly, my most popular is “Essex necklace”, closely followed by “moustache jewellery”.

I’ve had loads of requests recently to sell the silver AFI necklaces I’ve blogged about previously, but have turned them all down, as the artwork belongs to the band, and not to me.

I’ve also had a few requests for commissions, but nothing that’s been finalised as yet. Fingers crossed for something fun...

Anyway, back to the title of this post, I’ve been away at home for a few days. It was really nice to see my family and have a bit of a rest. And cake. I did eat an awful lot of cake. Also got to visit my godmother, June, whom I’ve not seen in forever, and her beautiful Birman cat – check her out:

And here’s my mum’s gorgeous but grumpy little kitty, Pudding:

I was a little bit naughty when I was at home and bought a new camera. “Another one?!” I hear you cry... Yes, I know I only bought one last year, but that one was purchased on rather a whim and didn’t really do what I wanted it to for the jewellery photography, so I’ve now bought a lovely SLR, which is what I should have got in the first place! Went for a Canon EOS 550d. Had a bit of a play with it just in point and shoot mode and here’s some of the results. Nice, no?

Now, I just need to learn how to use it properly. Have ordered a book, which was recommended by a proper photographer and everything.

Right, enough of my wittering. Off to poke bits of metal with sharp things now.