I had a big project at work today so I wasn’t in and out of my chair as often as I normally would - sitting in one place for eight hours has caused my knees and neck and hands to seize up. Ibuprofen to the rescue! One hopes, at least.

I’ve got about a week left before the summer season opens at Arts North but oh man I can’t focus. I’m all, HOUUUUSE and keep finding myself out buying trivets and dishes and cleaning supplies. Luckily I created large amounts of jewellery before Girls’ Night Out in April. I did manage to make extra earrings and rings, which have historically been my best sellers, so that’s good. I do want to make some more beach glass and coal pieces, and I’d love to be able to get some really original pieces created instead of just production pieces. I just … can’t. 

Oh man. I just remembered that after next week I’m going to have to start packing. I HATE PACKING. 

I’m violently excited about the prospect of a custom-built studio for working in. I’ve got drawings done to scale and everything! It’s going to be both gorgeous and functional. I bought a pile of red/white/teal fabrics for decorating with. 

We’ve been trolling flea markets and used furniture stores but it’s hard to buy for when we’re not technically in yet. We really need to live in it for a little while before we buy real furniture, I think.

And of course now I’m procrastinating by writing in a journal I have ignored for months. 

I seem to be posting a lot of jewellery news here, and it’s sort of not the right place to do that. It will instead be at a new journal page, which I wanted to host on gaylebird.com but I got fed up with the technical bits and just set up a hosted one at wordpress.com. I have copied my last few jewellery posts and from now on, the jewellery will be kept out of nightingayle.com.

Check it out and bookmark it! http://gaylebird.wordpress.com/

I think I screwed up my camera settings; pictures keep coming out all grainy and I have to resize and de-noise and brighten and colour correct, and it’s no fun whatsoever.

But! Look! A necklace that could be worn as a crown:

And a commission for my friend Elinor, called “The Earth in the Night Sky”:

I’m struggling with my light box - I burnt out a bulb yesterday and got a replacement today, plus a side lamp, but it still doesn’t seem to be bright enough. Or angled properly. Or something.

Anyway. I needed to take some photos to be featured on Arts North, so some of these are old designs, and some new. Enjoy!

I followed (vaguely) some instructions for creating your own light box today. Basically, I cut out the sides of a box, covered them in tissue paper, and inserted a piece of white cardboard for a backdrop. I still need to play with it, but I’m very pleased.

At first, I didn’t have the top hole cut large enough and I couldn’t get enough light in the front:

So I cut the hole bigger:

Which is a fantastic improvement. But when I brought the photos into Photoshop, there’s still a huge gap in the white balance. I definitely need a second light, but I couldn’t find one anywhere in the house that I was willing to unplug. I guess it’s off to Zellers today!

I also took some photos of the Labradorite pendant I made in the same style. One in the light box, looking very bland:

And one in my hand under a direct light to show the brilliance of the labradorescence (the top flash actually gets redder in certain light:

I don’t think I could love these two pendants more. Also new on the worktable recently: Crowns! Ok, just one for now, but the second one is already better than the first. This one isn’t really great, but I learned a lot from it and it’s pretty cute.

That’s all the jewellery news today. In other news:

• I have a doctor!
• I closed my eyes at 10:33pm last night neither opened them nor moved until 7am this morning. Then I rolled over and slept for another hour and a half. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve slept through the night in my whole life.
• I joined the gym pool! There is a gym there but it’s mostly the pool that’s making me giddy. It’s right next to my office, so I don’t even have to move my car. I might even jump on the bicycle machine for a while, as that’s what the physiotherapist had me doing for my knee. And then into the pool. And then the hot tub oh my.
• I had a fresh mango/kiwi smoothie for breakfast. Yum.
• There’s a jewellery fabrication class two weekends in February. A workshop! that’s not at 2pm on a Tuesday! I can actually GO and LEARN stuff like silver sheet and soldering and such!

Aaaaand… that’s about it.

So the show! Had to load and unload the car in the pouring rain; had a four-hour set-up that was completely killer on the back and knees and feet on the concrete floors, which became a recurring theme throughout the weekend. BUT we suffer for our art, no? I think the booth was worth it. Check it:

How we envisioned the booth, blankly:

How it came about:

Which now I see the front was a little messy but whatever, you couldn’t notice in person, promise.

I had the COOLEST neighbour, Lynda Lou MacIntyre, from whom I bought an extremely gorgeous mounted watercolour print of an Ingonish shoreline.

I remembered everything except bags (duh) but I bought paper grocery bags for Saturday. I did a lot of upselling of neckwires, both manufactured and handmade. People absolutely adored my Mix & Match Fruit & Veggie earrings.

I made only about half of what I expected, and many exhibitors said it was very slow; much slower than last year. HOWEVER. I got a LOT of interest including an official invitation into www.arts-north.com. Gave out a bunch of business cards to people who were very interested. Almost nobody walked right by; some people who were going to keep going, instead stopped in the middle of the aisle and came over! Also many many many people said some variation of “your work is beautiful / stunning / amazing / different / unique / gorgeous” … “different” cracks me up, ’cause it’s the caper way of saying it’s weird

We were judged on new products and while I didn’t win, I got Honourable Mention for Best New Product!!! That was based on the two neckpieces I did for show-stoppers, which can be found here and here.

I did a couple of really great pendants based on the style of that last piece, one of which is here, a rough-tumbled emerald which I love:

As you can see part of here, I printed and cut and folded wee cards that had some information about various gemstones and placed them in appropriate areas.

I learned that people don’t look up; that nobody knows what a pendant is unless you put it on a string; that if you don’t watch it, rings will get stolen; that people love buying earrings; and that people try on jewellery to see how it looks on them, not just to see if it fits (that would never occur to me - if I like a piece I BUY IT).

My parents were an enormous help and I can’t love or thank them enough. My dad even bought Swiss Chalet (mmmm ribs) for a Sunday night break-down treat!
More pictures in the Flickr Set, plus if you pick “all sizes” on them you’ll get larger pics that show more detail!