Gayle Bird Designs

Some folks have been asking where to buy my jewellery this year. Here’s the list!

Centre 200 Christmas Craft Fair

Friday, November 11: 2pm – 9pm
Saturday, November 12: 10am – 8pm
Sunday, November 13: Noon – 5pm

Holiday Spirit at Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design

Tentative schedule:

Private Shopping Party, Thursday, December 1: 5pm – 9pm
Friday, December 2: 5pm – 8pm
Saturday, December 3: 10am – 6pm
Sunday, December 4: Noon – 5pm

If you happen to know my avon lady or my future mother-in-law, they’ll be holding private jewellery parties at their homes next month as well.

And of course, my work is available year-round at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design:

CBCCD is open year-round, Mon-Sat.
PO Box 1686,
322 Charlotte Street
Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P 6T7
Tel:  902.539.7491
Fax: 902.539.4807
www.capebretoncraft.com

My Etsy shop is currently empty; once I see what my returning inventory is like after Arts North closes this weekend, I might be able to put up a few items. I’ll keep you in the loop!

Hoo boy, I love this batch. I had several new sets of components I had wanted to try – enameled flowers I got from an artist on etsy, lacquered birchbark I’d harvested from a friend’s woodpile, skeleton keys my dad salvaged from his basement, and stamped bronze and copper filigree that I’d coloured and varnished myself. I meant to do four different styles, but somehow they all got mashed up into my steampunk line and turned into something crazy and awesome.

Some lovely soft colours of beach glass – yellow green, blue – wired together and placed on a ribbon necklace.

Yay!

You guys, I am so lucky. My parents, my future mother-in-law and my friends all love to hunt for beach glass and have been bringing me the most delightful finds. Plus, I managed to get out once or twice my own self! It’s completely re-energizing to stand on that beach, look across into infinity and just breathe in the salt air.

With the exception of most of the marbles, all of this was found within the past month or so. That huge amber-orange piece (whose colour & rarity I’m having trouble identifying) I was lucky enough to find myself, but the two red/orange art glass pieces were found on different days by different people!

And now, some of the final results:

Is this yellow? Or orange? Or honey amber? I can’t tell.

Teal!

A gorgeous A-grade Gray.

This isn’t quite gray, but it’s sorta getting there, which along with the super rounded state, suggests it’s really old. It’s sort of a flattened cylinder which makes me think it used to be a cup handle.

Gorgeous piece of Aqua. I think I like the antique gold wire on it; do you?

Fabulous yellow!

A smooth piece of Jade.

A kind of blurry photo of a nice piece of Lavender.

Cobalt! So pretty, that cobalt.

Fabulous piece of citron – sooo pretty when you hold it up to the light.

And finally, this amazing piece of art glass that is red which smoothly transitions to orange. It’s got ridges, suggesting it used to be a plate or bowl. It’s kind of small so I had to use smaller gauge wire. It seems like I only get 1 red piece a year, and this is it for this year! The other piece above appears to have come from the exact same piece, and it doesn’t really count because it’s so small I don’t think I’ll be able to use it. But it’s pretty!

In other news, I’ve been thinking of doing a bunch more shows this year. It’s a lot of work and I find them mentally and physically exhausting, but the sales are always good and we’ve got a few wish-projects for around the house, so I think I’ll go for it. Which means I’ve gotta get off the internet and go make some things :)

I hit the flea market & value village a couple of weeks ago. What a jackpot! Got a pile of watches for Laird to pull apart for me, some vintage and new earrings and chain, some metal bracelets I’ll use as the base for some steampunk pendants, and a little surprise….

… Belt Buckles! Not sure if it’s going to work but I plan to wire some clock parts and vintage bits to these and see if we can make some nifty jewellery!

I saw a lot of these digital watch components on Etsy and I HAD to have them. Being such a computer geek, I’ve always wanted to figure out some way to incorporate circuitry into my jewellery, but computer parts are always so clunky. But these seemed like they might do the trick… and when they arrived they were soooo much better than I had imagined! They’re *perfect* jewellery-sized pieces of circuitry, ready-made and all completely different! Bliss. I came home from work, opened the package and was so excited I quickly scarfed down some peanut butter sammiches standing over the sink, and went straight to the studio without even changing into comfy clothes.

These are the first five. There are about 20 more in various stages of completion. I feel brilliant.

My mommy got this one for her birfday present!

A preview of the early stages of some of these… many more in development.

I just love Christmas. People who see me in November probably think I’m a grinch but I just hate EARLY Christmas. It shouldn’t be months-long. But I love it when it’s here! In my family, my brother’s birthday is a week before The Big Day. We usually try to keep them separate – so I don’t get into the mood until about 6 days before. Which is NOW! I had a GREAT weekend – we got a tree, we got some Christmas Meat, had a great time out with Laird, and the neighbours’ house (which I can see from my kitchen window) looks like this:

Yesterday I made my customary Christmas chocolates – only this year they weren’t customary at all; I actually managed to temper chocolate this year and so I’m way beyond my basic bark. Plus, I made a huge batch of ganache and used it to create a pile of centers which I then dipped in various ways.

For those who don’t know, this is ganache:

It’s belgian chocolate melted into heavy cream. This is what’s inside truffles. It’s like the inside of a Lindt chocolate… only better. I kind of made way too much so had to come up with ways to use it. For instance:

This is a layer of ganache with a layer of skor and peanut butter bits, coated on one side with tempered dark chocolate and on the other with melted milk wafers.

This one is a layer of ganache, with a layer of melted mint chocolate chips, topped with green chocolate wafers and milk wafers on the other side.

Here we’ve got ganache bottomed with melted peanut butter chips and coated in cocoa powder to keep the ganache from being sticky.

And these? These are the ugliest, most insanely delicious caramels you will ever see, taste, or even hear about. It’s a layer of ganache, a layer of caramel lightly salted with kosher salt, topped and bottomed with milk chocolate wafers. When I cut them they exploded so I had to dip the bottom 3/4 of them in more chocolate to hold it all together… so essentially they’re double-dipped. Holy crap. They’re so good.

On the right above is a layer of ganache embedded with pretzels and skor bits, double-sided with white chocolate. Top left are more caramels.

CARNAGE.

This is the box of edges.. the “ugly” chocolates. I’ll be taking these to work :)

Nom.

Another quick update… these are the clay nautilus shells I made with watch parts embedded. Kinda cool, but a little clunky to wrap. I like the circles better (more photos later)…

I’m pre-loading a large jewellery display even as I make items, which was dumb because I forgot to photograph them individually first, but smart because it’s saved me at least an hour of setup on show day. What this means for you is, only group shots for the rest of the week.

…and counting.

Only time for a couple of quick updates this week… I took a peek at the calendar and apparently the show is in a week and a half! After my heart started back up again, I realized that I’m actually more than prepared for this… dozens of earrings, rings, beach glass and coal pendants, lots of steampunk (although they keep selling on Etsy, I still have a few dozen left), a bit of polymer clay/steampunk, some great gemstone cabochons, a few little surprises, and my big box of clearance items. That was sort of a mental inventory for my own benefit, but I figure you might like to know too :)

Pretty pretty watch-part pendants with some vintage earring bits as well. Nothing but picture porn today!