For those of you who live locally, I've added a new left hand tab called 'Events'. My New Year's resolution is to 'get out there' a bit more, as it's always nice to meet new creative people, as well as forge links with new clients. So, I have named a few events I did last year, and hopefully the list for this year will grow and grow. If you want to hold an event in your area, please fill in the contact form and I will get straight back to you. Here's the link for events:

http://www.beckytoughill.co.uk/events.html

In other news, I'm currently putting the finishing touches to my Valentines cards during the day. New photos are going on in the evenings, and I will be listing new pieces on Folksy this week to get a wider audience.

This evening, I will be announcing a Valentines competition for anyone who shares a magic link, and all Valentine's orders made through the website will receive a 10% off next order voucher.

If you've not been over to the galleries yet, here are a few new pieces to wet your appetite with links to each.

When I first started making jewellery, I didn't realise at the time how difficult it would be to sell sell sell. By this I mean, market yourself and not only design pretty things that you enjoyed making and wearing, but things that others enjoyed buying and wearing. After all, as nice as it is to have a hobby, where exactly is the use of having lots of beautiful jewellery if you have no one to show it to, or even worse, not a soul who will buy it.

After attending many networking events locally, doing horrible town markets in remote street locations in the freezing cold (not to mention losing my sanity and when the wind blew, half my wares down the walkway), I realised that although both were great exercise, there had to be an easier way. I am not ashamed to say I was turned down by Design Factory and Craft In Focus, due to the fact that I didn't have ' a clear discipline', only one of the problems that creative people who are into everything like me, find really frustrating. It is almost as if, just because you want to have a go at different things, you're blighted by the attitude that you can't be good at them. As a total contrast to this, countless amounts of artists both past and present, find every day that seeing something that influences them and then using it in their work changes it. There is nothing worse than being pigeon-holed as an 'artist' or 'sculpturer' or 'photographer'. I use textiles, beading, wire work, photography and print in my work, where do I fit? And why do I have to? Can't I just make pretty things and sell them?

So what did I do? Well, I set up a website. This was a great exercise for me, although I'm not sure which was the most exhausting, running down a street after my wind swept earrings and necklaces, or surfing cyber space for useful hints as to how the devil I was going to get noticed online. This is still a huge concern, and as the way people shop and source things is changing, so is the internet and the kind of experience people expect. Certainly design and layout of a site is something that I have had to work on a lot in the last five years. Fancy flash is good, but if it is going to take ages to launch then its best not to bother. On average, people spend 15 seconds on a site before they move on, less if they don't like it. So its got to be the best 15 seconds they'll ever have; in cyber surf terms anyway. I'm not saying I give people that, but I try very hard to give a clear and clean identity to my jewellery, with a range of angles and perpspectives that will help to capture the essence of what that piece of jewellery or stationary is about. This is something that I am still playing with.

I am now about the launch my Etsy and Folksy sites. I'm finding out this is a full time job in itself. Circles, favourites, forums, treasuries currently makes as much sense to me as GCSE Higher Maths in Year ten with Mr Plaistow. But it's all part of the creative journey I guess, so I'd better get my creative toe-capped boots on and man up!!