Challenge 52: Weeks 6 & 7

Apologies for the delay, I know how desperate you must all have been to read my latest contributions to the blogging world....!!  My laptop appears to have fallen out with Blogger, and basically I can't sign in, or even get to the sign-in page, so I am currently borrowing my sister's laptop to update you all on my progress in my Challenge 52.

It has been a busy couple of weeks!!  I have been making lots of new stock for my craft fair (more on that soon), so apologies to anyone who has been looking for new items in my Folksy shop and not found any, I have been keeping it all for the fair!  however, my preparations are going well so far, so if I have enough made up I may list a few new bits on Folksy too just to blow away the cobwebs.

Anyway, back to my challenges.  For week 6 I took a trip up to London and finally bought some display items!  I don't think I have enough, but I have spent a lot of time deliberating over exactly what to get, and what 'scheme' to go for, and now I have some basics I can play around with them and see what I need more of and what else I need.  I decided to go for black diplays, rather than my originally planned white or clear, because I already have a rather attractive black bust that I use for my photographs which I wanted to be able to take, I have a chunky pink necklace which looks fantastic on it.  Below are the displays I have so far.

I make mostly necklaces and pendants, so I have a few busts, although I think I may need some smaller ones too, and a few earring stands as I am in the process of making lots of new earrings with some beautiful new stones I have recently bought.  The wirework 'tree' is for my charms and pendants, although shopping locally I did find this rather beautiful jewellery tree, shown modelling a pair of earrings!

I only bought one to begin with, but I may get another, or leave it as a focal piece.  I really like it, I wish I had found more display things like it!  I love that it fits in with the plain black, but is a little bit different.

Week 7 of my challenge came about through one of my work colleagues wanting to buy one of my bracelets like my Springtime Bracelets.However, she wanted a blue bracelet, so i said I would make one up especially for her, and this is the result:

I was very pleased with how it turned out, and fortunately so was my colleague!  I usually use a mixture of three different types of beads - glass, pearls and semi-precious stones - so that the colours and effects are all different; some matte, some sparkly, and some pearly, but in this case the glass beads have been replaced with two slightly different coloured pearls, giving the whole bracelet a slightly metallic blue look.

I think I have made up for my missing posts with this super-long one!  Hopefully my Blogger problems will be sorted soon and I will be back to normal with my next Challenge 52: Week 8!