Recently I blogged about making Jam for my friend Matt, for him to sell and raise money for a film he’s making. We’ve named it Dummy Jam as it takes after the man who inspired it – a deaf Scotsman name James Duthie, fondly known as Dummy Jim, who cycled to the Arctic Circle in 1951. It will be on sale at long last this weekend at the Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival and I’ve just designed the labels and printed them out.

Really chuffed with them and I couldn’t resist sticking them on the jars to see the finished product. What do you think?

The illustration is by Nick Currey and is an adapted version of the Dummy Jim logo used on the website.

There are 5 flavours of jam so far:

I spent some time last week adding a new shop to this website. I tried out lots of Wordpress e-commerce plugins and most of them were terrible, lacking severely in documentation and support and so impossible to implement. I then stumbled upon Ecwid and manage to set it up and style it in less that 2 days. The support is excellent and it’s so easy to use that I would definitely recommend it.

So I now have a shop. I still have a few niggly things to sort out, but most importantly I need to start adding products and will be spending most evenings this week doing just that, so keep checking back to see what’s been added.

This is a really exciting new venture for me and very necessary. I’ve been using Zibbet since the beginning of the year [...]
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Just a quick post to tell you about the Big Tent Fesitval which is on this coming weekend. It runs from Friday the 23rd July to Sunday the 25th July and is a jam packed weekend of fun and frolics set on the beautiful landscape of Falkland Estate in the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland. I’ll be there – why not pop along and say hello…

The Big Tent Festival is a fantastic weekend of music, arts and family activities mixed with stimulating debates on social and green issues. Wash this all down with incredible food and drink in the One Planet Food Village which celebrates the best in organic food and drink and you have a very special weekend.

Milomade will be accompanying ‘Audiences East Scotland‘ at their stall and displaying a range of goods made from [...]
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If you’re a follower of my blog, you’ll know that I was involved in a very interesting project recently which involved making a piece of work from another artist’s rubbish. I was sent a shoebox in the post with lots of interesting items within it and set to work on making a piece of work or two. You can read more about that process here. I just thought I’d write a quick post to update you on what has happened to the work…

I took my two necklaces up to St Andrews and they are now in an exhibition in the foyer of the Town Hall. I didn’t manage to get any decent images of my two necklaces before taking them up which is a shame – it was all a bit rushed at the time, so I think I’ll have to go uo next week [...]
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You may have noticed a severe lack of blogging lately. Well, I’ve been busy – very busy – not only with my recent craft fair at Ardross Farm, but also with website updates. Since I started working with precious and non precious metals and creating more ‘expensive’ pieces of jewellery, I’ve found it quite difficult to categorise what I do – is it jewellery? is it craft? is it both? Am I a Jeweller or am I a Maker or both?

It’s been difficult to figure out the best way to present my work and also what to sell at craft fairs. I would like to sell everything I make, but gathered all together it can be quite overwhelming and also confusing for the buyer. Some things are perfect for the craft market, others aren’t – so I’ve always been in a bit of a quandary.

I’ve [...]
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The lovely folk at Makers-Online have just opened their doors to entries for their Trash to Treasure competition. There’s a £200 cash prize and Rachelle Strauss from www.myzerowaste.com has agreed to do the judging! So get your thinking caps on and get creative with your waste and come up with  something amazing and enter the competition.

Recycling is something that most of us take for granted these days as we want to help protect our environment but how many of us upcycle? Upcycling is the art of turning something that would otherwise go in the bin into a brand new object. Functional or decorative, the possibilities are endless with a little bit of imagination.

I upcycle lots of things and most of my product range is made from recycled/upcycled items. Here are some examples…

All my stationery range (envelopes, notebooks, gift tags, paper garlands, confetti) is [...]
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I’ve just entered the Milomade Blog into the Little Blog Awards over at Dorset Cereals – if you’ve never tried Dorset Cereals, you should – very very Yummy – although a little bit pricey, but worth the pennies! I normally buy them occasionally as an indulgent treat. Anyway…

I’ve added my blog to their awards and I would really appreciate your support. So if you like my blog, please vote for it!

Click on the image above to cast your vote!

Thanks!

I was asking my Facebook fans to help me out with a dilemma yesterday and although they came up with lots of lovely suggestions, IKEA had the solution in the end. I’ve never really known the best way to display my hair bobbles and everytime I do a craft fair, I really struggle to find something that works. I’ve gone through so many ideas and after each fair I’ve always come out thinking ‘there must be a better way’.

I’m doing a craft fair in July – the weekend of the 10th/11th to be precise. Summer in the Loft at Ardross Farm – near Elie, above the farm shop – the same place I did the Christmas in the Loft Craft Fair – so if anyone’s about that weekend it’d be great if you popped by and said hello. All the details are on my read more »

I have to apologise for the delay in sorting out the winner of my 500 Facebook Fans Giveaway! I meant to do this at the weekend, but got so busy with other things and then my printer went wonky and my laptop refused to recognise it, so I had that to sort out as well. All fixed now and I printed off the names of my first  500 fans (still can’t believe I have that many!) and put them all into my trusty bowler hat.

My lovely assistant isn’t around today and the dog is all paws, so I had to pull the lucky winner out of the hat myself. A bit tricky to take piccies at the same time, but at least I was looking at the LCD screen of the camera and worrying about focusing rather than looking at the names in the hat – I wouldn’t [...]
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I got a lovely email from Central Station this morning saying that they’d selected my Map Paper Garlands to be the ‘Featured Work’ on the website. So I’ve got a lovely prominent plug for Milomade on the Bulletin page, on the Community page and on the Portfolio page. Chuffed to bits as I only decided to add a few more images to my profile last night whilst I had a spare half hour waiting for my bread to bake in the oven.

Visit Central Station › View my Central Station profile ›

Hot off the press is the Summer edition of the UK Handmade magazine and if you flick through to page 88 you’ll find quite a lengthy interview with me! It was a while ago that I was interviewed by Teresa at Mimi Pearl for this so I got quite a pleasant surprise today when I was sent a link to the magazine to see the interview in print. Chuffed to bits with it – hope you enjoy the read – check it out and find out more about me me me!

Click here to read the magazine online…

You might also want to check out page 14 for an tutorial I submitted – make your recycled origami bookmarks.

I had fun doing that one, so watch this space as I might upload a few [...]
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Wow – I’ve just noticed that I’ve got nearly 400 fans on Facebook – how amazing is that! I wonder whether I can rack that up to 500 by the end of June? I will need your help – so spread the word that another Milomade Facebook Promotion is on the cards – I will have a think about what to do for it – but it should definitely include all 500 fans, names into a hat and one lucky winner! Keep an eye out on my Facebook page and this blog for the details, once I’ve decided what they are.

A while back I wrote a post about Makers-Online stocking Milomade. It’s taken a while to get everything sorted, but I’m pleased to announce that Milomade products are now available through this online stockist. Why not visit my profile on their website to see what is available.

I’ve chosen a selection of my button jewellery, my sea glass jewellery as well as some of my stationery and the product range may expand in the future. Here are a selection of images to show you what is now available. Click on any of the images below to link directly to the product description on the Makers-Online website.

Each piece of sea glass I find is unique – tumbled and smoothed by the ocean not one piece of glass is ever the same as another. An armature [...]
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