Mr Blackbird in Flight

It's a beautiful blue skies Easter Saturday day here in Perth, and I took advantage of the this to take some supplementary photos of my Mr Blackbird necklace before posting him on Etsy. Hope you are all looking forward to the Easter Bunny tomorrow... I'll be at an 8.30am Egg Hunt. Sheesh...kids....whati's the rush??? Happy Easter to those who are celebrating!

Unwrapping my new website

It has been an eventful weekend! Swiftly following Unwrapped Market of yesterday, which was a very well attended event, the lovely Moz has got my web page up and running. Be one of the first to visit it at http://www.oddgirlout.com.au/ . What you see at the moment is precursor of the site to come, and we're interested in finding out what everyone would like to see on the 'real' site, so please feel free to visit and email in your feedback and suggestions.

I'm going to be loading new stock to my Etsy store over the next few days so that the lovely people who visited the Odd Girl Out stall at Unwrapped can find the pieces they saw there.

In the meantime, here's a photo of me holding down the fort at the market.

Listen and Learn

On Wednesday night I attended a talk by Perth jewellery Sophie Kyron as part of the Fremantle Art Centre's Fashion Talks series. I always love going to the FAC, if only to look for signs of ghosts (it's apparently the most haunted building in the Southern Hemisphere) and the talk was held in the lovely inner courtyard area. It was very interesting to hear that Sophie is not a trained jeweller and it seems she almost 'happened upon' her successful business, which creates jewellery sought after by mere mortals and celebs such as Kate Ceberano and Toni Collette.

And as for me...the unwrapped market is drawing ever closer and I've just edited over 100 images of the new jewellery I have created, ready to create a catalogue tomorrow. The wonderful Moz is creating a banner as we speak and with any luck we will be ready to go on Sunday.

Bow Wow - WOW!

Last night I was very pleased to particpate in a fundraiser held by the fabulous 'Ladies Who Disco' at the Geisha Bar in Northbridge. The fabulous DJ Missy held the floor with eighties tunes, which were enjoyed very much both by people who experiences that decade the first time (cough) as the young trendsetters cutting up the dance floor in Madonna and Wham tribute looks.

My jewellery together with fabulous clothing from fashion icons Wheels and Doll Baby was raffled at the end of the night to raise money for our furry friends at the Dog's Refuge Home WA.

Also this week, Ali J has blogged about an article in Xpress Magazine featuring our goodies which will be on show at the Unwrapped Market in South Perth next Sunday 16 March. They used a nice picture of my bluebird necklace in the article, which gave me a buzz.

Celebrities one most resembles trap

Ok, there are about a hundred things I *SHOULD* be doing, such as finishing the financials on my business plan for my small business class tomorrow, writing a marketing plan for my new client, making some of the 250 pieces of jewellery I am trying to finish for the Unwrapped Market on March 16....but instead I'm fooling around on the internet. I found a link to a site called My Heritage, which offers a couple of little tricks, one being facial recognition software that tells you which celebrity you most resemble. In my vanity, hoping to get a result such as 'Cate Blanchett - 98%' or 'Megan Gale - 107%', I uploaded a photo from last Christmas. Drum roll please......

I HAVE A 84% RESEMBLENCE TO CHRISTOPHER WALKEN!!!

Try it yourself at My Heritage .

P.S. It is some kind of consolation that my lovely partner Moz looks 55% like Denise Richards...but not really.

Commission time

I was lucky enough to be commissioned Sandra to make a necklace and matching earrings for her friend's birthday. Sandra is a former teaching colleague of my mum's (both of them retired at the end of last year) and first saw my jewellery when I visited my parents in Melbourne for Christmas. She purchased an orange butterfly necklace for her son's girlfriend for Christmas and apparently it was a hit - so she called up to request this special present, to be given by her and another friend.

I rushed home from an intensive marketing workshop that I conducted with a new client on Thursday morning (both businesses booming at once!) and spent the next five hours rolling, cutting, stamping, brushing, piercing and baking the individual beads to make up the necklaces. The first image shows some of the finished beads arranged on my table ready for stringing.


Unfortunately, in my dedication to the task at hand I neglected to do something very simple - drink enough water - and ended up feeling very ill by the time the beads were ready to be strung. It can be very hot here in Perth and it's pretty important to do something as basic as keep your fluids up, but I tend to become extremely focussed when I am making jewellery and forget basic things like eating and drinking. Believe me - it's about the only time I do forget to eat!! So, the upshot of all this is on Thursday night I went to bed feeling rather ill, necklace unstrung, and my partner ended up eating leftovers instead of the nice Valentine's meal I was going to cook him. I finished my commission the next day after recovering- and here it is, ready to be gift wrapped and packed off to Melbourne. I hope Sandra's friend likes it!

Getting to grips with technology

As part of my "conquering the accessories world marketing masterplan", I decided it was time to get jiggy with all the technology out there to expose my blog to the world. Trouble is, I like the technology, but the technology don't like me much. uhuh. I've had allllll kinds of problems from some wierd website 'kidnapping' my technorati link, to my squidoo lens locking me out. Could it possibly be something to do with being a member of generation X rather than Y?

Anyhoo, back onto stuff I do know how to do, I rushed home and made some of these these bright jade - coloured earrings the other day after a long day at business school and made a little dragonfly from the left overs.



I've been experimenting with a new kind of translucent polymer clay and I'm really happy with the glass-like finish I can get. I've also been experimenting with making rings from this material, as the new clay is much stronger than the old kinds I used to work with, which would just break when used on items like rings that get a fair bit of handling. I'll update you on the experiment when I've reached my conclusions!