Goodbye 2012

With only 5 days until Christmas Day, Ruth Gordon Jewellery is shutting up shop for the holidays. Normal service will resume in the New Year after we have travelled from Leicester to Perthshire to Leicester to Saltash to Leicester. That is 1228 miles!

This year has been great both in my business and personal life. I have made some great new contacts with galleries and clients, I was featured ion insideKENT Magazine, I have set up the ACJ East Midlands group, I have helped organise the first ever ACJ East Midlands exhibition, I have three new stockists, two new online shops and a brand new rolling mill! There have also been some low points to the year but I'll focus on them in a later post.

This year I have been to some very inspirational places. I have visited France, Spain, Andorra, Czech Republic and many beautiful places in the UK including the wonderful Burgh Island. I have also attended two very motivating talks, one at the LCB (see A helpful evening in Leicester) and the other at the Leicester Print Workshop (look out for a blog post about this talk in the new year).

For a large part of the summer and autumn my attention was turned to organising my wedding so I didn't have as much time for my business as I would have liked but now I no longer need to make endless amounts of paper pom poms and pinwheels or rubber stamp luggage tags to make place settings.

My 'to do' list for January is already massive! I owe this blog about eight posts, four of which are sitting in draft form on my blog menu. I need to pick up the paperwork trail and sort out my inventory and contracts, I will be getting some brand new business cards which is always fun and I need to have a January sale!

But for now I'm going to sit back and relax. That is after my AAT Level 2 Accounting exam tomorrow! Just a small side project I've got going on, I go to college once a week to learn book keeping and accounting skills. Very handy when you are self employed!

Ruth Gordon Jewellery can be found in several galleries over the festive period and I would like to thank these galleries for their continued support over the year. I would also like to thank Amanda Charteris and the Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous team for all their support over the past seven months. They have a wonderful selection of online boutiques and sell gorgeous products.

Focus Gallery in Nottingham are holding an ACJ East Midlands exhibition where my work is featured until 15th January 2013

 

The excellent Peter Potter Gallery in Haddington has a great selection of work from all my ranges for sale.

Hung Gallery in Inverness are stocking my work with everything from cluster rings to acrylic bracelets for sale!

In Leicestershire the wonderful Wistow Gallery is currently stocking my work. They have a great range of my cold enamel pieces from rings to brooches as well as some nylon pieces too!

Thanks to all my customers, suppliers and galleries.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

See you in 2013!

 

A wee catch up....

It is always exciting when you find yourself featured in a publication of some sort (see my previous blog post - Promotional Rummagings) .I recently found out that one of my images had been downloaded from Press Loft by insideKENT magazine. I had a wee look online and found out that it is a free luxury lifestyle publication covering events all over Kent. You can read the magazine by downloading the current issue or pick up a copy at over 300 high traffic venues such as Waitrose and selected hotels, restaurants, shops and even a few gyms.

I downloaded the latest issue to find my Anodised Aluminium and Silver Earrings featured in the Trend Report. These earrings are available to buy for a mere £30 at Gift Wrapped and Gorgeous.

Also this week I enrolled in a college course. I had intended to try and go on a creative course, possibly enamelling, anodising aluminium or a polishing course but instead I have gone all business like and I have enrolled in a day release AAT accounting course. This will help me with my business but also I will have the skills to do some freelance book keeping during these tough times in the jewellery industry.

  

Yesterday my fiancée and I locked ourselves in the workshop and made our palladium wedding rings. It was a really good experience for us both. Doug made my ring and I made Dougs and as usual Doug was a natural (I have yet to find something creative that Doug can't do!). We haven't polished them up yet but I am pleasantly surprised how good they look already. I am not a palladium convert yet though as the solder is really hard to work with. I will post more about the ring making in my up-coming blog post about wedding jewellery.

It is also all go at ACJ East Midlands! Our Facebook page has 14 'likes' and there has been a steady stream of enquires about joining on group and getting involved in the winter exhibition at Focus Gallery in Nottingham. We were featured in the ACJ e-bulletin, ACJ Facebook Page, and in the ACJ LinkedIn group page.


Right...better get back to ACJ co-ordinating, preparing for college, wedding planning (40 days to go!), designing new work and general paperwork......after a cup of coffee.