March Meet The Maker - Workspace and Where…
As usual I’ve got a bit behind with my March Meet The Maker posts. I think it’s probably to do with how you work through a “process”. I’ve written about it before, how when you get to the middle it all gets a bit mushy and you can loose focus, and I guess I’m at that point with the MMM prompts. So, I definitely need to push through that and get back on track!
I’m going to combine two prompts today as they “kind of” go together anyway… Workspace and Where…
My workspace is a very special place. It’s a little haven of slightly dusty creativity half way up my garden. I’d previously rented a workshop in a local craft centre. It housed my own workspace and my jewellery school, but I ended up working back at home after they decided to evict me at the end of 2022. At the time, it was incredibly stressful, but it was actually the best thing that could have happened!
Bullying management aside, it really wasn’t the right place for someone making high quality fine jewellery anyway. Like so many “craft” centres, it was full of shops selling mainly low priced imported items. Someone once came into my studio and described it as “garden centre” craft, which I think absolutely summed it up.
I’m definitely not putting down garden centres in saying this, indeed I love a garden centre, and there’s a fantastic one just next door, but I don’t think many folks would go there with the intention of buying an engagement ring.
So, in summer 2023 after a few months of very hard work converting a cabin that we’d be using as our garage, I moved into my off-grid, solar powered eco-studio!
It really is a fantastic place to work. I look out of the window at beautiful countryside, Maddie has one of her many beds in there and the absolute best bit, is that it’s powered by clean, green (and free!) electricity from the sun.
It’s highly insulated, but heating with solar and batteries alone would mean turning my whole garden over to solar panels, so in the winter I have a tiny wood burning stove to stop my fingers from freezing. I know this isn’t perfect, but I live in the forest, so I do have a plentiful supply of my own wood.
The next part of the prompt is “where”, that has two parts to it…
Part one is a geographical “where” and as I’m not open to the public, I’m not going to reveal my exact location, but I can tell you that I’m in Gloucestershire, just on the edge of the beautiful Forest of Dean, and very near to the river Severn estuary. It’s “almost” like living by the sea!
As I’m only open to visitors by appointment, part two is the online “where”…
So…. I have a website, where you’re reading this blog, so you obviously know about that already. I also post this on Substack (although I need to catch up on that). Social media wise, I guess Instagram is the main place I post, but I do also have a Facebook page and also Bluesky. I used to be quite active on Twitter, but I’ve now stopped posting there for obvious reasons!
If you want to contact me, the best way to do that initially is definitely via the form on my website. You can use social media messaging too, but it might take me a bit longer to reply to those as I don’t always check them every day. I do also have a specific business mobile, but if I’m mid stone setting I might not always be able to answer immediately, so email/my website form is really contact method number 1.
Finally, if you’d like to follow what I’m up to, after March Meet The Maker, I have a mailing list (although if you’re reading this you might already know that) that I’m trying to send an update two around once every week or two. There’s a link to sign up to this at the bottom of every page on my website. This is also the place you need to go to if you’re thinking about commissioning me to make a bespoke piece from your old jewellery. My commissions slots are always filled up from the email I send out to my subscribers first but if you don’t want to receive the weekly updates there’s now also a “commissions list only” signup form.