Spring jewellery, shopping and entertaining!

Can you believe it’s spring! We’ve had a couple of beautiful warm days when the when the jumper came off, leaving me in a short sleeved shirt and all the doors in the house were open with a lovely warm breeze flowing through. Bliss. Then the next day it turned Cold (with a capital ‘C’!) and then the rain started. Again. Now as I’m married to a farmer, I can’t complain about the rain at all – but it’s staggering how much we’ve had this year in comparison to the last decade! I’ve even slid sideways down my dirt road to the front gate. Please imagine a look of intense concentration as this was happening LOL. Luckily it dries out fast so we're back to cool but sunny weather and driving down the track is just fine!

I’ve been incredibly busy on the jewellery front thus my absence from the blogging world. I’ve finished the spring-summer collection and have been loading it onto the website, so if anyone was checking in on the site, there’s been lots of new things to look at every day. I’m close to finishing now, just in time for my first spring outing at Quirindi Show this weekend on 11 and 12 September. The following week is Merriwa Show on 17-18 September – so a very busy fortnight in store.

Apart from jewellery I’ve also been a ‘gardening fairy’! I was the recipient of this gardening goodness recently having three wonderful girls come and help me prune roses, weed and plant white agapanthus at the front of the house (which has been kept very bare due to the lack of my gardening talent).

Last week it was time to return the favour – three of us attacked one of the other girl’s gardens, digging up and planting a huge circle of agapanthus (purple this time!), pruning lavender and chopping down and removing the debris from four large (15 foot high) shrubs. We did have her husband’s help with the chopping down part though! It’s amazing how much work you can get done in a few hours with a few of you. Another stint as a garden fairy in a couple of week’s time – the rush is on now spring is here.

We had the pleasure of a wonderful lunch with friends on the weekend. It's been so long since we entertained, I had forgotten what a great time we have getting together. I'm almost considering hosting a Christmas or New Years party, but well, we'll see about that when it all gets a bit closer.

I've also enjoyed the pleasure of quite a bit of online shopping in the past week. With both a beach holiday and wedding to attend in the near future and a lack of suitable clothes available in town (I looked!), I took the plunge and must say I'm happy with my purchases. I can see why people love to buy from me too - the buzz when the mailman delivers and then finally trying the goodies on that you were trying to picture and measure if they'd be right is immensely satisfying!!! And all without going to town. It's times like that when it hits home how the WWW has changed our lifestyle.

Today's pic is from the new Under the Sea range, with soothing colours reminiscent of the seashore or with corals and pearls from a mermaid's treasure box! This necklace is made with faceted aqua amazonite and lots of sterling silver - perfect to make a summer statement!

Christmas wishes

Oh my ... I can't believe its been almost three weeks since I posted here! It is rather indicative of my life of late though!

Things have been go, go, go, with many commitments for the children - an end of year dance concert and rehearsals, the end of year presentation at school, my son finishing primary school and being enrolled at the local high school - and it culminates this week with a piano recital that somehow I am organising as well!

Naturally things have been busy on the jewellery front (many panicked husbands have been calling me!) with orders left, right and centre. My Coolah show went extremely well and thankfully while hot, it wasn't 45 degrees C plus like my last outing!

I have my final show for the year this Sunday in Tamworth at the monthly Peel Street Handmade Market. I'll be there with the talented Kasia Tatar, a lady who has a great future in jewellery in front of her (I carry a few of her lovely items on my site). As she doesn't have her own site, I will have to tell her all about Ethikl - a new Australian artisan marketplace that I read about on Your Cheeky Monkey.

It's hard to believe that Christmas is barely a week away now! I certainly haven't had time to do any great treks to town for Christmas shopping, so thank goodness for online shopping ... providing they all arrive in time of course! If you're located Stateside and you're still looking for little somethings to add to your gifts, do check out the Vintage Soap Shoppe on Etsy. Angela makes the most delicious looking old-world soaps that I'm sure anyone would appreciate.

Of course, for Christmas around here I think we'd all love about 6 inches of rain - that would make us all feel better and the cows would certainly appreciate the grass! We seem to have slipped straight back into drought, which is both worrying and depressing. Any rain we have had over the last couple of months has been immediately followed by a few days of hot winds and the ground just dries up instantly. Australia - the wide, brown land indeed!

Well, since I can't make it rain and nothing I do seems to entice it, I will just ignore it as much as I can and look at my pretty gems and pearls. The torsade photographed above has lashings of pink pearls, lavender pearls, rock crystal quartz, amethyst and apatite. Far better than looking at dry, brown paddocks!

As I probably won't post again before Christmas, I wish you all the very best of the festive season and hope that Santa brings a special gift, just for you! (Just like he has for this Aussie stockman!)



Cheers
Annette :)

Confetti coloured pearls and some great Aussie shopping sites

I just realised that its father's day next weekend - eeek. And that I haven't got my father anything, so I'll be late, AGAIN. *insert much guilt icon here ;) * In desperation I hit the 'net trying to find something for him. He's not the easiest person to buy for - he is elderly now and can hardly see or get around. He used to love reading but is now confined to hearing-books and he pretty much needs round the clock care. Not easy, huh?

So, in my desperate search I found some brilliant sites after floudering around for a few hours....and most of them came from the wonderful shopping blog http://www.mynewshinyshoes.com/ . I saw this site in its infancy when, in fact, I was featured on it. But haven't looked at it closely since. Well, what a great surprise when I looked further! Amongst the huge amount of sites there, one really appealed to me.... http://www.tesora.com.au/ - the best gadgets/novelty items/gifts for someone who is quirky/has it all/is difficult to buy for. Things like a LED lit compact mirror, leather bound notebooks, wind up racing grannies and fighting grandpas, air powered water rockets, and even a tool kit in PINK! Needless to say, my dad is getting those wind up racing grannies- he'll get a giggle out of them! The other great site I found via mynewshinyshoes was http://www.urbanbaby.com.au/ . Obviously a babywear store but I fell in love with a beaut little bib with animals all over it that is really cute and unusual - and perfect for a new baby gift that I need to buy. I am also keeping in mind the riverstones that can be engraved with whatever you like. There are some in the picture saying 'hope', 'love', 'peace', 'trust', 'truth' and so on which really struck a chord with my mellow side. And finally there was http://www.redballoondays.com.au/ - for something really unusual - like a ride in an ex-military jet! Cool!!!

Anyway, on to the piece for today! (A good match for the necklace the "flavour of summer" just the right, isn't it.....) Now pearls are a perennial favourite with almost everyone. I love their sheen and glow and the flattering light they cast onto your face. Perfection in the production of freshwater pearls from China and the resulting increase in such production, means that pearls are a lot more affordable and to make them even more appealing, they are treated into the most amazing variety of colours. The pearls are treated by either irradiation, dyed or bleached. Most freshwater pearls are treated in someway - the white ones are bleached, the coloured are dyed or irradiated, the natural coloured ones are soft peachy-lilac-apricot tones which are gorgeous too. The treatment is permanent and I wash all my pearls just in case, although from memory only one strand has ever had excess colour come from it.

The difference between freshwater pearls and 'cultured' pearls is that freshwater pearls, as the name implies, come from mussels that grow in freshwater and cultured come from oysters in salt water. The process of culturing however is much the same. Note that the treatment of coloured pearls does not apply to 'cultured' or naturally occurring saltwater pearls eg. black pearls do happen naturally.

The pair of earrings pictured above won't last long. They haven't been seen by anyone yet, so I can enjoy looking at them for a week or so before their first outing! I have made these by selecting a variety of bright, confetti colours in a variety of shapes and sizes. The bottom pearls are top drilled, so hang like briolette drops, and then each pearl above that has been wrapped securely with sterling silver to a delicate sterling silver chain. They will swing deliciously when worn and are such girly-girl colours that many people will be disappointed that they can't also have a pair! They take a surprising amount of time to make actually, so I'm glad I didn't decide to make more than one pair!!