Maker Page - Alison

I've been so caught up inbuying new buttons, commissioning new buttons, photographing new buttons etc, this poor blog hasn't had all the attention it need. Poor lonely blog.

And so here is the first of the Maker Pages. There are 4 more to come and with luck there will be many more in the future...


Alison of AliBaliJewellery

Alison makes handcrafted silver jewellery from her home studio in Edinburgh. I was delighted when she agreed to make a set of exclusive pure silver buttons for Boutonnerie.

In her own words...
I have a pretty serious day job and I started making silver jewellery as a means to de-stress at the end of a busy day.I've always been what you would describe as 'artistic', doing a short stint at art school in the early 90's. I make jewellery that I would like to wear. I love colour and texture and that comes through frequently in my designs. It was my love of texture which inspired me to use precious metal clay, you can achieve textures with this material that would be pretty impossible with traditional silver smithing.


Precious metal clay is worked with whilst wet. At this stage you roll it, imprint it, shape it, and work out any textures that are required. It is left to dry before being reworked and sanded.



It is then fired, using either a kiln or a torch. The fine silver particles in the clay bind together to form fine silver (99% pure) which can then be polished to the desired finish.





The finished pieces are all on the Silver Button Page.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...

It does seem, some days, as if this entire project is moving at a petty pace, but like a swan, while there may be calm serenity on the surface there is a great deal going on underneath.

Honest!

The commercial listings are almost finished bar some last-minute stocktaking to see how many of what I really have and this weekend we venture back into html.

I haven't done much coding for a long while and even past experience was pretty basic, so the next few days should be...interesting. If on Monday morning I am greyfaced, white haired and gibbering then you'll know the coding won!

Generally, I like using OSCommerce for Boutonnerie. It is easy to use from the back-end and it is a familiar format for those who I hope are my target market. True, I can't add frills, flash, bells and whistles but then, even if I could, I probably wouldn't. The one thing about this format that does irritate me is that each listing has only one photo.
So, as I'm moving on now to the handmade pieces, not only do I need to write a Maker Page for each person but each handmade listing is going to need another page of pics. I have elegant silver buttons, I have fabulous polymer clay buttons, I have sewing rolls and I have more buttons coming. Simply not possible to show them in all their glory with a single 100x80 photo.

And just as a sneak peak for what is coming next week:

On the plus side

We are now indexed by google, we have the sitemaps sorted, the handmade sewing rolls are here and are perfect! The plan is to fill them up - needles, pins, thimble, tapemeasure etc as they would be a real treat for a new seamstress or as a gift. They are wonderfully well made and really beautiful.

Also by the same post came the first of the handmade buttons. The photos I saw of them before they arrived were amazing, but now they are here, I don't want to let them go! They will be the most expensive buttons on the site, but at handcrafted, pure silver...they are worth every penny!

And today I have contacted 2 new makers both of whom I'm delighted to say are happy to help stock www.Boutonnerie.com We are still working out the details but I'm happy to know that there are more good things on the way to the shop and that Boutonnerie is making a start in helping artisans increase their business!