New job and swimming!

I feel very much like I've vanished lately! I started a new job at the beginning of last week and it comes with a fairly hefty commute, and I've spent most of my evenings totally wiped out!

The weekend was good though and I'm very proud of myself as I completed the Marie Curie Swimathon!

It was a great afternoon on Saturday, and myself and two friends managed to swim 5km to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care, and did it in a faster time than we predicted so were very happy!

So far we've raised about £250 for Marie Curie and are sooooooo happy with it, but if anyone can spare £1 then we are still busy collecting and all donations are incredibly gratefully received.

I love chain :)

I've been making some new necklaces lately, much simpler than my usual fully beaded designs but striking for all that. I'm trying hard not to just steal them myself...

Though to be honest one of the things I love about making jewellery is the ability to always make a piece of jewellery to match an outfit - even if it's only half an hour before I go out (which has been known!).

For the new necklaces I've been using sterling silver chains as a base and making a beaded pendant to go on it. Generally I'll choose a colour to base the necklace around; sometimes based on a particularly lovely bead that I want to include, and then build the pendant around that colour using glass beads, wire and chain.

This is one of my favourites:I love it partly because of the colour - I think the mix of turquoise and blue works really well, but I also love the little heart pendant that I added as a focal point. The chain that this one is on is a spiral chain; it's a bit more interesting that a basic curb chain and looks really pretty.

One of my other favourites is this purple one:My favourite thing about this necklace is the little cream dove pendant. It's so pretty and goes really well with the purple and white beads which made up the main part of the necklace. I hung this one on a snake chain; it gives a really different effect from the spiral chain I used above as it holds its shape more (you can see the way it curves around rather than hanging to a point) and makes the chain more of a feature of the necklace.

What do you think?

Ladies that Lunch

I've just been offered a new job! I should be starting in April and I'm really starting to look forward to it, hopefully I'll still have enough time for jewellery making too!

My new job involves a bit of a commute, so unfortunately I'll no longer be able to meet my Mum for the odd long lunch and bit of shopping in the middle of the day...

The excuse of a new job to buy lovely new clothes has not been lost on me, but unfortunately with a rather detrimental effect on my bank account, not yet half way through the month and the money is gone! Ah well!