New Gallery Pieces

A while back I mentioned that I was accepted into a gallery and I have been working on pieces for them ever since.  I'm very excited to announce that today I sent a package to Trinket & Fern in Portland with some new pieces made especially for them as well as some pieces chosen from my inventory to compliment the rest.

With an eye toward Fall, I made some leaf pieces with autumn colors.

Maple Leaf Necklace

Autumn Leaves Post Earrings

Autumn Leaf Necklace

 
As well as a more subdued set.

Leaf Impression Necklace

Leaf Impression Earrings

My favorite piece is this Sea Urchin Necklace with a champagne cubic zirconia in the center and a sterling silver chain that was hand-knit by me.

As I said, I have also chosen a few pieces from my current inventory, including my Copper and Silver Flowers and Leaves set, a bracelet and a butterfly necklace.   To see the whole collection and for some alternate views, you can click here.

Also, a reminder:  I will be at the Winter Harbor Lobster Festival this Saturday from 9:00 to 4:30.  I will have some new pieces for that show in nautical and botanical themes.  I hope to see you there.

Lastly, some news:  For those of you who have been interested in taking one of my classes, but cannot during the day, I am working on something in the evening.  I'll post more information as I have it.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun (?)

Wow!  Has it been a week already since my last blog post?  By this time I had planned to have a blog post all written about the new Fast Fire BronzClay I received, but I haven't even opened the package yet.  I'm itching to, but I have been busy... Mostly I've been busy being sick with a nasty non-strep throat infection.  Thanks to the medication that keeps my autoimmune disease from attacking my body, other organisms can sneak in and wreak havoc.  I'd like to say I've lost weight because eating anything felt like swallowing razor blades, but I'm sure the high calorie ice creams I managed to choke down made up for any calories I might have lost.

But I've tried to keep busy.  I have been accepted to a gallery in Portland for which I am making new pieces and a show this weekend as well (Saturday: Winter Harbor Lobster Festival).  I am working on pieces and displays for that.  I have been able to procure some more louvered closet doors (cheap!) and I'm expanding the upright displays I first tried in Belfast.  I'll post photos once I'm done.

In the meantime, a sneak peak at what I'm putting in the kiln.

And what has been out of the kiln and is in various stages of finishing.

And don't forget to check out the first ever giveaway by the Metal Clay Heads going on right now!  It's going to be awesome!

A Couple of Little Changes

I'm always trying to make my life easier, especially when it comes to updating my website.  A while back I made some changes so that my blog feeds directly to my site so I don't have to put important things in manually.  That saves a ton of time.  Another time saver has been linking my website to my Flickr page so I don't have to manually make new pages for photos every time I want to add new pieces to my gallery.  Now I just upload to Flickr.

And now I have discovered Google Calendar, so instead of just having a list of upcoming events, I have a calendar which I update on Google and then it's automatically updated on my website.  There are also some tools for my followers, too.  You can go into my calendar to get more information on an item (I think you might even be able to map it with Google maps, but I haven't tested it yet).  The calendar is also searchable and can be viewed in several formats.  For those who want to be reminded of events on my calendar there is a button for that, too.  And for those who want to add my whole calendar to their calendar or get a feed of my calendar, you can do that as well.  I was thinking the search tool might be useful for those looking for upcoming classes.  Here is the page:  http://www.willowandme.com/showschedule.html

I have also put a feed of my upcoming events on my blog and you can click on any of them for more information.

For those of you on the Etsy Maine Team, I am trying to work on something similar for our team site so that everyone's events, shows, etc. will be on there and easily searchable.

Probably many of you who are more tech-savvy than I will have known about this for a long time.  I have known for a while that there was probably a way to do it, but I just hadn't taken the time to investigate and figure it all out.  I hope that this little change will be useful to you and time saving for me!