New Events, New Toys, New Items And A Give Away In The Folksy Store!!

Things are moving very quickly for us all at the Amethyst Studio's this year, and this week has been no exception. Not only do we have the fabulous Summer on the lawn event at Bletchley Park to look forward to, we have also been invited to take part in two more craft events - both being held at Milton Keynes Museum.

So to celebrate our progress, we have decided to have a little give-away at the Folksy shop! www.folksy.com/shops/AmethystSky
The first 5 people to 'favourite' our shop will receive this lovely Tree of Life pendant as a thank you gift.

All you have to do is follow the link above to our shop, click 'Favourite' and then send us a message through the store (There is an option to contact the seller on the side of the page) either giving us your address to send the pendant to, or an email address where we can contact you for further details. 

Good luck! x

In June this year the museum will be hosting a Country Fair, which will incorporate lots of different types of crafts, including ours, and we will also be attending the Victorian Christmas Market again in December. We couldn't be more excited!

If you would like to keep up to date with the museum and it's events do have a look at their face book page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Milton-Keynes-Museum

There are several new art works in progress too (which I will be updating the blog with later in the week) and Sara has been playing with a new little anvil, which was kindly made for her by Nicholas Packham who's work and art you can find here: http://www.ngp-artist-and-blacksmith.co.uk/

We recently acquired some copper wire and Sara has been working on some prototype designs and learning how to work with the metal and the hammers to produce more stunning pieces to add to our collection.
Below is an example of one of these prototypes -

I personally think that their addition to our collection will be amazingly popular - I love them already!

Exciting News From The Amethyst Sky Studio.

Today, we are excited to be able to announce the latest news from the Amethyst Sky studio.

This coming year we will be involved in several fabulous Arts, Craft, Vintage and Handmade fairs, not least of which will be the 'Summer On The Lawn' event, which is taking place at Bletchley Park on 3rd and 4th of August 2013!

We have been excitedly (and a little nervously) taking stock of all of the items that we have - both those for sale and those currently in production - and talking with our sister company Cerulean Sky Ltd (who are helping to organise the event!) about the marketing side of things.

The last fair we took part in was held at Milton Keynes Museum and covered 3 weekends in the run up to Christmas 2012. This event was a great success and, as you can probably imagine, the amount of visitors that the location attracted also brought many people to our stall.

The Christmas Craft Fair which is held there each year offers unique, handmade Christmas gift ideas for anyone looking for that special something that is a 'little bit different'. It seems though that last year, due to increased promotion of the event, the expected footfall at the venue was slightly underestimated, which was great!

However, this event seriously depleted our stock to the point where demand almost outstripped our supply.
This is an enviable position to be in to say the least, and we were astonished by the amount of sales we were making. Luckily, we were able to create more pieces during the event as we had already decided to make this event our priority for these 3 weeks, and had no other clients work or commission pieces booked in.

Having discussed the upcoming Bletchley Park event with our marketing team, it has come to light that the expected footfall at Summer On The Lawn  is expected to be somewhere in the region of 2.5 to 3 thousand people over the whole weekend.

This is fantastic, and not entirely unexpected since the venue is so fabulous and attracts many visitors, for varying reasons, all year round. However, this has presented us with a few small - and lovely - problems. How much stock do we need? and, how much should we take with us?

As a result, we are furiously working on new pieces to add to our summer collection, and putting extra effort in to completing works currently in progress. We have given ourselves some quite ambitious deadlines and goals for the next couple of months.This is so much easier cope with when you are as filled with excited anticipation as we are, and love to engage in the work that you do!

Cerulean Sky Ltd have also informed us that, along side the Arts, Crafts and Handmade goods on sale at the event, there will also be a farmers market, children's entertainment, re-enactors and demonstrations of Heritage artisan crafts by local practitioners. So if you are looking for a great family day out in the summer holidays, look no further!

One of the other participants this year will be Nick Packham, a local Smithy who is well know to us at the Amethyst studio. He will be demonstrating his blacksmithing skills for visitors and will be selling some of his fabulous sculptural work  - you can see some of his pieces here: http://www.ngp-artist-and-blacksmith.co.uk
(Nick is also an assistant curator of the Tecton Gallery in Milton Keynes - go check it out if you can, you won't regret it!) http://www.tectongallery.com

If you are interested in booking a stall at the event, either for your own crafts or for your produce, get in touch with our marketing team at:
http://www.cerulean-sky.co.uk - they will be able to send you more information and an application form to book yourself a stall!

You can follow us on twitter via @AmethystSkyArts, where we will also be posting updates and promoting our new pieces whenever possible.

Look our for updates and more information about the event on the Bletchley Park website too:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/calendar/event_detail.rhtm?cat=special&recID=680644

Most importantly - if you can - do come long to the event, we would love to meet you.

P
x

Amethyst Studio Retrospective

This weekend at the Amethyst studio we have been sitting in quiet (and not so quiet) contemplation about this past year, and how we got to where we are today.

 Sara and I have been in business partnership for a year this month, albeit from a very slow and cautious start. The 'leap of faith' that we took – going from being employees at the same company, doing jobs we weren't invested in, to starting out on our own - was filled with trepidation and fraught with doubts. We both have mouths to feed and bills to pay, and the possibility of this whole thing being a catastrophic failure was daunting to say the least.

Nevertheless, the idea of being independent of an employer, and making our own decisions about our futures was too exciting an opportunity to pass up. We had some back up from industry friends and most of the important people in our lives supported the idea. So we rolled up our sleeves, adopted the ‘Feel the Fear, But do It Anyway’ school of thought, and jumped off the precipice.

Since then the studio has gone from strength to strength, and we have found that – not only do people like our work – they have also commissioned us to do more personal pieces for them. I painted this piece for the Christmas 2012 craft fair held at Milton Keynes Museum:

It was originally intended as an advent calendar, complete with a polymer clay Santa, climbing a ladder numbered 1 - 24 on the rungs, but it wasn’t finished in time so the piece was put up for sale as a 3 tier folk house. The painting attracted the attention of one lady, who subsequently brought me a picture of her daughters new home, and asked me to paint one for her as a Christmas present ( complete with her 3 grandchildren looking out of the windows!) :

The finished piece was adjusted a little to suit the clients taste, and the little girl in the top window was moved to the middle right window (a request which wasn’t part of the original brief, but was easily changed)  This was one of my most satisfying pieces to date as, although the subject matter was a little odd and it was a real challenge to get all of the roof angles and lines right , I had created a bespoke piece of original art which was personal to the client and all within a deadline of 1 week! Additionally, the client has been in touch with me through email since Christmas to let me know that her daughter  and  grandchildren  were thrilled with the gift – this is almost reward enough in itself, as it is always nice to know that your work is appreciated.

Sara also had a few commission pieces to put together for Christmas gifts – these pieces were mostly created during the lull’s when we weren’t serving customers at the fair – It certainly pays to have your kit with you sometimes! – and I’m sure you will agree, these were going to make for fabulous gifts:

We have also been venturing in to the realms of fabric crafts recently too,  and yet another commission came Sara’s way when she was asked to make this stunning ring pillow for a friend’s wedding:

Last week, another commission was requested from a bride to be, who has decided that she doesn't want flowers to feature in her wedding at all, so Sara has come up with some very exciting designs for her bouquet, the bridesmaids posies and the button holes for the gents. She has also had some great ideas for table centrepieces so keep an eye out for those on the blog in the next few months too.  

Looking back over this last year, we have had some ups and downs and it hasn't been smooth sailing by any stretch of the imagination - we learned quickly that getting to where we want to be is going to be a Sisyphean task, luckily though –

thus far - the up's have been more predominant than the downs – and so the fight continues….

Finding inspiration in a sack full of old rocks?...

The designers at the studio got together last week to decide on our marketing strategy for this year, assisted by our sister company Cerulean Sky (www.cerulean-sky.co.uk)  who specialise in this area - go check them out, they're fab!.The meeting turned out to be fruitful, inspiring and (believe it or not) somewhat exciting - We are looking forward to a bright future, and some exciting prospects for all concerned if we play our cards right in 2013.

 We also took this opportunity to go through a huge bag of old stones and rocks which was very kindly donated to us by some industry friends who no longer wanted them. We have had this since before Christmas 2012, and have barely given it much thought - except when one of us stubbed our toe on the way past bag which was plonked unceremoniously out in the corridor. The stone is mostly still in its raw, unpolished form, and a quick cursory look through the bag when we received it resulted in the conclusion that the majority of it would be used for texture substrate on canvass pieces.

To our delight and surprise, we found it contained some fairly large pieces of Lace Agate, Carnelian, Tigers Eye, Rose Quartz, Bloodstone and much more -some of which we couldn't identify, so if any of you out there are rock hounds who might be able to help out with this -please do get in touch!.

Well, as you can imagine, the excitement level quickly reached a fever pitch, and we began sorting, scrubbing, ooo - ing, ahh-ing and OH - MY - GOD! - ing with every new discovery. Some of the bigger pieces were selected for polishing and have been set aside for inclusion in our new summer collection. Other pieces were so beautiful in their raw form, that we decided to get to work with them straight way: see what you think...

This piece of bloodstone is around 2 inches long and, we think would be suitable for a man or woman to wear, the wire wrapping is edgy, yet still classical. It will compliment any style, from the BoHo to the LBD, and the sliding leather thong means it can be worn at any length.

This Aventurine has been wire wrapped, with a small spiral design to accentuate it's almost hexagonal natural shape - it has been hung from a very simple tiger tail wire necklace, which has been strung with classical silver beads, which won't detract the eye from the main stone.  It's toggle clasp finishing makes it easy to open and close.

This piece was made by me (Paula) and is probably my favourite so far - this was my first attempt at wire wrapping, and creating designs with the wire. I chose to do another spiral design as it is simple, yet effective and complements this piece of Amethyst very well. Sara has been (patiently) teaching me the finer points of jewellery design and construction and I have to say, I am very pleased with the results.

 This stone, in its raw form, has presented us with a real challenge. More usually, we purchase stock rock that is shaped, polished and drilled, ready to use in our designs in a finished form. It has forced us to think outside the box, which can only be a good thing. The stone itself is beautiful nonetheless and will make for some stunning pieces for our new summer collection.

If you like any of our pieces and want to get in touch, please feel free to comment below, or contact us through the Folksy store - www.folsky.com/shops/amethystsky .

xx