FLUX Exhibiton at the MAC in Birmingham

 

Has it really been almost a whole month since the last time I wrote? Yes, I guess it has. It’s the busiest time of year for most jewellers, and I’m no exception: the Christmas rush for me started in mid-October with getting pieces ready for We Are Birmingham and Brilliantly Birmingham’s FLUX Exhibition. As soon as I finished those, I had two more opportunities come up: Open Studios in the Jewellery Quarter and Angel Christmas Fair in Islington.

 

Open Studios and Angel Christmas Fair finish this weekend, while FLUX runs until 9 January and We Are Birmingham lasts a long time. At the beginning of December I started running a promotional offer: 20% off Etsy orders for people who were fans of my Facebook site, and an additional discount for personal friends. This has kicked off a string of Etsy orders to fill, which has been great! I’ll be spending the next four weeks away from the studio, as I’m getting married on 1 January and need to stop doing studio work and start doing some wedding work, so I’ve updated my Etsy so that the only pieces for sale are pieces I have already made so I can get orders out quickly and it won’t cut into my wedding prep.

 

As part of Brilliantly Birmingham, I had a really exciting opportunity come my way this week: a chance to do a live radio interview on BBC West Midlands! I was really nervous because I wasn’t sure what to expect: I hadn’t been given a list of questions and had never done any sort of radio interview before, so I was a bundle of nerves! I told myself that instead of thinking of it as a live radio interview that would make me look like an idiot if I messed things up, I would pretend that I was just having a conversation with someone I just met. That seemed to work well enough to keep me from messing up too much. If you’d like to hear the interview, it’s on iPlayer until 16 December: I’m on from 46:30 – 53:00.

 

This month I also had a chance to get involved in another side of Birmingham’s jewellery culture: I ended up in a modelling contest being run by the Jewellery Quarter marketing initiative and a local newspaper. I saw it advertised and thought it looked fun- the winner got to model jewellery and work with different Jewellery Quarter publications. I thought it would be a great way to get involved in the JQ community, so I went to a casting call. I ended up being made a finalist, and the 3 girl finalists and 3 boy finalists got to spend the day doing a photo shoot with formalwear and jewellery from the Quarter. It was such a fun day- taking a break from the studio to spend a day having people put makeup on me and play with my hair was a great change of pace! We spent the day at Harris and Gibbs, a fantastic salon in the JQ:

Harris and Gibbs Salon

 

We spent the morning having our hair teased, fluffed, and played with, then spent the afternoon getting makeup done, dresses and jewellery on, and being photographed. They took tons of photos, and this is the only one I’ve seen (I think I look really weird in it, but as my friend Juliane pointed out, we always think we look weird from any angle other than head-on)

Slightly Embarrassing Model Photo

 

The winner was decided based solely on text votes, and although it was close, I didn’t win (I would imagine it’s because I had more important things to do with my time and money than sit around text-voting for myself all day)… I made some great contacts during the contest, though, and may follow up on those contacts and see about doing some modelling in the new year. We also did a video shoot, so you can see my little bit of the video here (you’re welcome to watch the whole thing, or you can skip to 2:00 to see my little section)

 

So just to recap: the reason I haven’t blogged in a month is because I’m planning a wedding, did 4 large jewellery shows in the space of a month, fulfilled lots of Christmas orders, went on BBC radio, and became a finalist in a modelling competition. Oh yeah, and helped my fiance move. TWICE. I’m probably missing out on some other things that have happened this month, but I think I’ve covered the main ones. I doubt I’ll write again before the wedding on new years day, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you- hope it’s great!

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