New Jewellery

I have been ordering new beads and componets, books and tools and working on designing new kits for Beadaddict - however I have had time to design new pieces - bracelets and earrings mostly, involving new design kits for Beadaddict - I could not stop making these, and now I have a great pile of them in various colours - I seem to be attracted to blues, greens and bright things and have suddenly taken it into my head that I need to know how to crochet as I feel I could make some nice jewellery using crochet and beads - I am struggling a bit, but am sure trial and error should rectify this.

In the past couple of weeks we had a visit from Swarovski crystal (we are Swarovski crystal retailers for beads on the other site, Beadaddict) and we had the new area Manager and the UK Manager here for tea and biscuits and a lovely afternoon of looking at their new colours and shapes...they also took a look at my jewellery.Above: Latest Kit Designs for BeadAddict - once I started making these, I wanted to make them in all sorts of colours....

Washing the Horse

"Show me the horse, and I will show you the man"...(or woman!)

Had a fun day washing my horse, Merlin - here are some photos, taken by my Dad.

Showers and soap are only good if your Mummy is with you to give extra kisses...

Not his favourite thing, but he smells sooo good afterwards.

SLC Designs Studio

Finally got on with editing some studio photos - this is where I work....

Atlanta, America

Just returned from Atlanta in the USA - a couple of weeks attending bead shows, looking around bead shops and meeting bead people (so just your average sort of trip away then). The weather was generally awful though I did get sunburnt one day....the rest of the time it was chilly....and one night it even snowed!! (I so wished I had taken my thermal underwear....) I am hoping to return to the States later on in the year to attend another bead show and take some more classes - just seeing other people's work and the way that the other students interpret the same instructions is fascinating - I used to do some teaching and enjoyed it as a way of keeping in touch with other people, but I have not done that for a while.

Whilst away I took a jewellery making class to learn a new technique which involved a piece of wooden dowelling - I will be making some pieces using this wonderful new 'tool' in due course, went driving in the wilds somewhere or another (got hopelessly lost for a while), visited a