Fancy New Website!

And finally, after many a false start, I found a website builder I was happy with and created a website for my jewellery in less than a week, which I consider quite good going.
 And here it is:

Alexis Southam Jewellery

Please pop by and have a look and let me know what you think.  Be sure to check out the sketchbook, its great fun to flick through.
So there was I thinking I'd got the website side of things sorted until I started reading about SEO and what it takes for your site to get found by Google. At least I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the evening, best put the kettle on before I get stuck into this whole new challenge!


If anyone else is thinking of making their own website, I highly recommend having a look at  www.wix.com. It was a really easy site to use, you have complete freedom over your design and the support is also very good.  Best of luck!

Fancy new camera

 

 My ancient camera finally gave up the ghost and conked out recently which I was quite sad about, but it gave me the perfect excuse to splash out on a fancy new Digital SLR camera! Now I just need to learn how to use the bloomin' thing, which is a lot more involved than I realised. Apertures, depth of field, shutter speed, ISO, I've got to learn a whole new language to get the most out of this serious bit of kit,  but here are a few guinea-pig shots of the workbench to get me started.

A little Christmas inspiration from Etsy

New pieces in progress

A sneak peek....

Nest Necklace

.....new pieces I shall add to my online shop very soon.

Nest Earrings

Ideas ideas ideas!

Ideas are like buses, nothing for ages then they all come along at once!

Oh Dear...

Well, my poor blog and my good intentions have suffered the consequences, and have had to take a back seat while I've been working on commissions and jewellery that will pay the bills. Its such a shame, I was doing so well, but at least I was distracted for happy reasons.

This blog has been so good for me and for stirring up ideas that I'm going to keep it going, but it will be more of a 'this is what I'm up to at the moment' blog.

And with that in mind, this is what I'm up to at the moment.....

......embarking on a clean-up of a very messy but industrious workbench.

I'll be posting more interesting photo's of what I'm working on very soon, but if you look very closely, you can make out a silver tiara in the middle of this one somewhere!

Day 85

So after being away on holiday for a while, I come back to my poor neglected blog empty handed, there was no way I could make a piece every day whilst camping in the wonderful Scottish highlands, although I did try ( resulting in a ring made of the wax off an Edam cheese and a stick on brooch made of moss) but rather than add a lot of pieces I'm less than proud of, I've decided to continue with day 85 from today....

.

...and this is day 85's piece, a ring made using a piece of sandstone found on a beach and silver, inspired by the wonderful landscapes I've been camping in.

Day 84

Day 83

I may have been slightly influenced by all the Easter eggs that  haunt me on every supermarket trip at the moment, some buttons, made by hand drawing intricate patterns on plastic.