mettle design studio

Monday, 10 January 2011

Our Little Visitors

This beautiful spider cam to visit last night as we had quite a bit of rain at about 3am. As I love spiders AND rain, I welcomed both. This spider is a typical Australian house spider called a huntsman. They are not dangerous, although can grow to be enormous. This little spider is as big as my hand. A bit scary that big, but only the notion of it crawling on me. Otherwise I let them be in the house, especially in the summer months as they catch mosquitos and other little insects... I have to think of a name for both of them....

Any suggestions?

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

Things That I find Really Tedious About Running a Business

The things that make me yawn and push me to be lazy about my business are mostly 'bookwork' related, ie. doing my tax stuff especially, even though I have a great accountant, I still have to have all my paperwork in order.

Now in addition to that paperwork, I have been closely monitoring the Australian Dollar, as it has shot up and for a while has been pretty much one-on-one with the US$.....so.................

I have needed to change my US$ prices in order to accommodate our Australian costs... ugh what a pain!!! On top of that making stocklists with all the different prices and costs... I had done paper & pen ones, but decided that i must update them into my computer as they will be much easier to alter & keep track of...

So out comes Exel and a New List is born... Hurray!! At least I've started... BUT since I'm on the computer and not doing an all nighter filling wholesale orders, I have to distract myself to blog since it has been a while since I have put words on the blog...

Well, I had better get back to the business of keeping track of the business side of the business....
Exhausting... I much prefer just being in the studio...

And the worst thing is the price of Gold AND Silver has gone through the roof.........

Monday, 20 September 2010

Etsymetal Charm Swap #6

It's on again!! One of my favorite swaps. I'm a member of Etsymetal, which is a group of Metalsmiths who have stores on Etsy.com.

A few times each year (or maybe that's only twice a year) 20 of us (the group is much larger than 20) sign up for a Charm Swap. There's always a mad scramble to sign on, as there are so many extremely talented metalsmiths whose work we all would love to have. The Charm swap ensures that each participant gets to have 19 marvellous pieces of work (plus your own = 20 pieces in total) in a small form which can be placed on a Charm bracelet/necklace. Since this is the third CHarmswap that I have participated in, I already have quite a hefty charm bracelet (so far there are 40 charms on mine, and I anxiously await the next 20, one of which is mine). Here are some shots of my progress so far.

This is what I was toying with, as I came in to the swap late July, which didn't leave me much time. Some one dropped out as I was lucky enough to be one of the stand bys, so I was in!! YAY!!
A decision was made and I started on the Kikuchi Kamon Charm for the swap. I have now almost finished all 22 of them. We each make 2 extra Charms so that we can make up one bracelet to sell in our etsymetal store on etsy and one single charm to sell in the store as well.

These are the progress shots of the Kikuchi Kamon Charm that I am working on.

Saturday, 17 July 2010

Artists That I have Always Wanted To Collaborate with

Firstly, I have to say that I would be happy to collaborate with Furniture Makers, Industrial Designers and Metalsmiths/Sculptors and Lighting Designers.....

Here are some the Artists That I would Love to Collaborate with:
Joey Roth - Contemporary Industrial Designer (fabulous TeaPot & Ceramic Speakers!)
Akira Isogawa - Amazing Japanese Inspired Clothing
Ross Lovegrove - Wonderful Lighting Works
CYDWOQ - Fabulous Footwear.... I love footwear and have always wanted to make shoes...

I would love to collaborate on some home 'accessoires', detail on some "frocks", Lighting and Footwear.
I am waiting on replies for permission to use their photos, so this post will be upgraded.
Meanwhile, please check out these wonderful blogs and you will find out bout more collaborations: