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.

I Has a Website...

I have FINALLY finished my website, hurrah!!! Well, when I say finished, it's as complete as it's going to get till I finish the shiny things currently skulking grumpily on my workbench.

And here it is:

Pretty, isn't it? Although, knowing nothing about web design, I did make it full of lovely pictures, and consequently it is a little slow to load, so please be patient with it.

You can find it at http://www.laurengrace.co.uk/

Oooh, and I also made a facebook page - see?

I have fans and everything. Come and like my page at http://www.facebook.com/laurengracejewellery and then I can have more :)

A Small Shiny Roller Skate

I have finally finished my silver roller derby skate charm, hurrah!

This was a project I started way back in 2009, as I wanted to do a skate charm that looked like my Riedell 265 skates.

You may recall that my initial attempts at sculpting the boot in silver clay were somewhat disastrous and looked like this:

Which is rubbish, obviously.

Attempting to sculpt the trucks and axles was even worse, as silver clay is far too brittle to do anything delicate with.

So, I decided to ignore it for a while instead. Obviously, this wasn’t helpful to the overall getting it finished plan.

Finally, defeat was admitted and a modelmaker specialising in sculpting tiny things was called in.

And so over to the very talented (and also terribly patient) James Freckingham of Robotic Industries, who deciphered my scribbly pictures and paragraphs of wittering about wings and delivered me an adorable little replica of my skate. Hurrah! Here it is.

I decided to shorten the wings a little, so it looked like this:

Then off to the caster! Who may have wanted to kill me... Apparently it was terribly difficult to cast, many moulds were made, but finally my little silver castings arrived. Tada!

And, after cleanup, soldering, polishing and attaching wheels, my little silver skate finally looked like so:

Which was exactly what I wanted, yay! A small silver roller derby skate charm, which looked just like my 265s. Except my skates sadly don’t have wings...

A few different angles:

It turned out much heavier than I had thought – the charm weighs around 15 grams, which is a big old chunk of silver!

I also did a couple of special ones with sparkly gemstone attachments to represent league and team colours.

I think they look rather nice...

Roller Derby Charms - New Photography!

Unhappy as I was with my recent photography exploits, my lovely friend Dan arranged for his photographer friend, Paul, to come over and take some new pictures for me. And he was happy to be paid in beer! I wish more people would work for beer, it would make my life much easier. Dear Mr Website Designer, please could I have a website? Here is some beer. Sadly, things don't work like that in real world. Sigh...

Anyway, I digress. Paul turned up with a massive camera (it turns out that yes, size does matter...) and a ton of flash guns.

And here are the results:

Much better, yes?

So, now I just need to get me one of those big cameras, some photography knowledge and learn how to build a website and I'll be sorted. Simples!

Silver Roller Derby Charms and Photography Fail

Thought I'd best have a go at photographing the new charms.


Sadly, it turns out my camera is a bit rubbish at capturing shiny things and refuses to focus most of the time. Eep!

Did a bit of research on the interwebs and have decided I would either like a Canon SX10 IS or a Canon G10. Currently, I cannot afford either, as they're both around £300, but I figured if I can clear out my wardrobe and sell enough stuff on Ebay to pay for it, that's like getting a free camera, right...?

Anyway, after much muttering and a large glass of wine, I managed to get a couple of shots that are kind of okay, and will do for now until I can afford a better camera.

So, there you go. I now need to learn how to be a jammer, as that helmet's my favourite I think. If you've ever seen me skate, you will realise how likely that is to happen ;)

Now I just need to finish the mannequin head and get some decent shots of the hats. It has progressed slightly and now looks like this:

Still needs some more work. That is what I shall be doing tonight, seeing how the bank says I'm not allowed to go out and all...