'Make Jewellery': well making jewellery is certainly something I do, and I'm very happy to be featured in the 'Make Jewellery' magazine (out today) as their 'blog of the month'! Can't help feeling a bit of a fraud though, as I've been so busy recently I've let my normal weekly blogging schedule slip!

I guess the thing is that life as a jewellery designer / maker is a very seasonal thing: much more so than I realised before I became one. Of course you'd expect Christmas to be the main sales time, and it is, but that's just a part of the picture. Once the Christmas rush is over I find I need to turn my attention to a bit of admin, especially in order to meet the tax return deadline at the end of January. After this I have to get straight back into designing new jewellery because most of the application deadlines for the big autumn / winter shows are in March, and that means I need fresh images.

My collection this season is based largely on the imprints in my mind of the end of our garden: the bantam hens that visit from next door and line up on the bench, the view of the valley and hills, the silhouette of the holly tree and the often amazing skies. I knew I wanted to add to my series of 'bird brooches', using primarily silver and wood. Limiting my pallet is key for me: otherwise I easily end up with a horrible miss-mash.

I often think things through in the shower and sketch ideas on the steamy glass. Luckily no trace of most them remains, but a few make it on to the next design stage. I start playing with pieces of cardboard, and sketching on my iPad. I find this a terrific new tool as I can play around with the images, moving elements around in a way I can't do with a sketchbook.

Next I start cutting up pieces of wood and soldering together bits of silver, playing with all the separate elements and swapping them around in different formations. 

Deciding which formation to go with is the hard part, and I always put off the final riveting / soldering / gluing bit for as long as possible. Many seedling ideas get discarded along the way, and I accumulate a pile of unused 'elements', most of which will eventually get used somewhere, but maybe in something quite different!

These are some of the brand new finished brooches! 

I'll be exhibiting them along with the rest of my jewellery in 'Desire' Jewellery and Silversmithing Fair next week, so do come along if you can. Email me for a free private view invitation for Thursday evening (3rd March, 4.30 - 8pm). The show continues from 10am - 5pm on 4th - 6th March, in London SW15. Full details on the Craft in Focus website.

A further thought after my last post: someone - I think Sofia Bjorkman (of the Platina Gallery in Stockholm) - suggested that working with materials you don't like is a really good exercise. Your resistance to re-imagining and transforming them is reduced, which can only be a good thing. After my experience in the Robert Ebendorf workshop I can believe that, and it's something I will return to.

It wasn't until the tree surgeon had gone that I realised how influencial the bare winter branches of my apple trees had been in the design of my current collection. I'm so glad that I gathered some of the prunings to keep in vases indoors. They're just beginning to blossom now. I'm sure the buds still on the trees will be several weeks later.

I've never seen so many beautiful silver vessels in one place as in Goldsmiths' Hall this evening. I've always loved Hiroshi Suzuki's flowing, fluid style, and it was fascinating to learn a bit more about it.

Hearing Hiroshi talk was a real treat too. What I hadn't twigged was that the 'Aqua Posey' range which I have long admired is inspired by water, but there are also other pots based on fire, earth, and air.

Knowing their origins, these other vessels now make visual sense, and it helps to see 'Aqua Posey' in context as a snapshot in the development and range of a major artist talent.

Quite amazing. The exhibition is free, and continues till 6th March.

A flock of about 40 sparrows lives in the climbing rose outside my bedroom window, and they run their daily schedule in direct response to the sun rising and setting. This means that in the depths of winter we wake before them, and in the summer it's definitely the other way round.

At the moment we're pretty much in tune, and just after I wake they begin their 'song'. Which is not a good word for it actually, as it's not particularly tuneful. And because there are so many of them, and no orchestration, they sound pretty much like an orchestra tuning up.

As I'm in 'design mode' at the moment all sorts of things begin to translate themselves into jewellery in my head, and so yesterday morning I just had to sketch the sound of the sparrows as I lay in my bed.

After breakfast I began playing with some wax wire, and by lunchtime had assembled the wax doodles into a piece which I hope might become a brooch. It's with the casters now, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I get back next week!

I exhibited prints of my drawings of sounds at both Lustre and Richmond craft fairs, and it was interesting to see people's reactions. Some people loved them, were fascinated by the concept, and bought prints. Others seemed to think I was crazy! I promised one couple that I'd explain on my blog the background to the prints they'd bought, and so here it is!

Last winter I did a short course at the City Lit: Drawing Sounds. At first the teacher introduced the concept and led exercises to help us explore how we might make marks that represented and responded to sounds.

Then we drew pieces of music that she played. The first image is a close up of one piece of music I drew: it was classical music, and this is just a small portion of the picture.

In this image I've photographed the original drawing at an angle, so that it almost becomes a landscape. It reminds me of an image of one of my necklaces actually.

On the third evening we went up on to the roof of the building which is in London's Covent Garden. The noises of the city at night were amazing.

We each sketched the sounds we heard, and then when we could bear it no longer (it was freezing!) retreated to the classroom.

It was then time to use the sketches in our notebooks to compose our pictures. One of mine is shown above. I chose to represent the tiers of sound. The lower one shows the sounds of the streets below: traffic, voices, sirens. Above us were the sounds of the sky: planes, helicopters, wind. And then around us the air conditioning, people turning pages, footsteps on pebbles, and an increasing number of sniffs!

It was fascinating how each person focussed on different sounds and depicted them differently. We were all free to use the media we wanted. I used a mixture of pastels, marker pens and charcoal.

Several pieces of jewellery I've made have been based on these drawings of sounds, including my 'Pebble Crunch Brooch' in sterling silver with 5 diamonds, and a series of 'City Streets' pins, in oxidised silver and 18 carat gold.

 Really, when you think about it, drawing sounds isn't such a strange concept: it's no different to writing words, except there's no agreement about which shape represents which sound!

Last year I was invited to take part in a special project whereby 36 artists working in different media were invited to describe one of their works and submit both the work and the description for exhibition. 36 poets were then invited to respond to the art works, and 36 jewellers responded to the artists' texts.

The text I had was about people on buses, and to inform my response I took a bus journey myself. I was so irritated by the space-invading leg of the man sitting next to me that I decided to make a leg bangle. It's called 'You're not the only one', and its being exhibited as part of the Galvanize festival in the Bank Street Arts gallery in Sheffield until the 5th December.

Well Lustre was good but sadly it's over now! It was really good to have the opportunity to show some new rings. They are part of a paper-inspired special collection that Jennifer Millard and I made for an exhibition in Yorkshire Sculpture Park this summer.

The problem with exhibiting in a gallery is that - as a maker - you don't get direct feedback from the public, so it was lovely to fine that the Nottingham craft cognoscenti were very interested in my 'paper' rings, and indeed bought quite a few!

Half of the rings were cast in sterling silver from paper, and these really highlighted the lovely  textures that paper can have. The second half were electroformed on top of the paper with a substantial layer of fine silver: this was a great way of showcasing the sculptural possibilities of paper.

This first image shows two rings both made from the same Japanese paper cord: the one on the left is electroformed and the one on the right is cast. The second image shows four electroformed rings, and the third two cast rings.

Just found this video: love it!

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

I've been designing some stickers to use with my packaging. I want to be able to include a little reminder of the inspiration behind my jewellery with each piece I sell. I've done some based on my bird sketches, some on my sound drawings, and some with my sketches of moving people.

Moo.com are printing them, and I just hope they're ready for Lustre next week!

Went for a stroll along the Parkland Walk yesterday. The graffiti there is really inspiring: I love the sense of energy in it.