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.