I'm a Welsh girl who moved to Devon 4 years ago and fell in love with the place. I can't imagine living anywhere else now.........okay that's a lie. I can imagine living elsewhere, I just don't want to. Don't get me wrong, I love Wales too. I was born and brought up there & I'm very patriotic (especially during the rugby!). But something about being here in Devon feels right.

Not only do I love it here, but good things are happening to me here too. This is where I've become inspired to explore my artistic side again after stagnating for so many years. Not only that but people actually want to buy the objects I'm creating.
Amazing !

I've just had my work accepted into a gallery too. Fantastic ! It's a new gallery opening in Lee Bay, North Devon called The Fuschia Gallery. If you're ever nearby you should definitely pop in as there are some amazing artists exhibiting there.

Hello all. Thought it was about time I changed my journal.

Things have been going well, I have done a few jewellery parties & craft fairs and my website is working out well. The feedback I've recieved has been very positive so I've decided to up the ante so to speak. That means more craft fairs throughout the year & advertising for my jewellery parties and website. Hopefully things will develop successfully.

About 2 years ago I began playing around with wire & beads. Everything I've achieved has been through trial, error & sore fingers !

All the feedback I've received along the way has been positive & I thoroughly enjoy what i do so I decided I would like to try to make a living out of it. So recently I had my first jewellery party, I have another booked next month, I'm booked as a vendor at my first craft fair on 1st December & now I am launching my own website:

EDIT - I've added this edit as a few people have misunderstood the point of my journal.

The point I am making is that, in my opinion, in crafts there is no such thing as a completely original idea. The idea, inspiration & influence had to come from somewhere. Does that make it plagiarism?

Many people can create something very similar around the same time without ever having seen each others work. Seeing a piece by someone else that is similar to your own can be very disappointing. That was the case when I first saw the similarities between the bracelets by Aniolek-maly & myself. It would have been easy to jump to the conclusion that she had copied mine but I know I have made things that have turned out to be similar to work by others, so I'm very philosophical about the whole thing. The fact that I found another bracelet in Aniolek-malys gallery that was similar to mine but pre dated it by a few days only goes to prove my point further.

I hope this clears up any misunderstandings.
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There has been some debate (& I have to say some bad feeling) lately on dA on the subject of plagiarism. The definition of plagiarism is:

'the practice of claiming, or implying, original authorship or incorporating material from someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement.'

But how can you know or prove that someone has copied your work, especially in crafts such as jewellery making. There is the possibility that more than one person can come up with very similar design ideas completely independently. I've had ideas for a piece, but before making it seen very similar creations elsewhere.

Sweetnuka has been accused of copying the work of Aniolek-maly as their works (below) have similarities to each other.



However Aniolek-maly has just submitted a deviation that has similarities in its design to one of my earlier deviations.



Does that mean my work has been plagiarised? If so then there is a degree of flattery in that, although some acknowledgement for providing the inspiration would be appreciated.

Is the similarity coincidence? Highly possible, as with most things it is possible for more than one person to come up with very similar ideas completely independently of each other.

Without trawling through every single jewellery deviation its impossible to guarantee that your design isnt going to resemble something already made by someone else. If there is no acknowledgement for the design idea we have to assume that any similarities are coincidence if there is no evidence to the contrary.

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I've reached the mighty pinnacle of 1000 page views.

It feels like a bit of a milestone. I seem to be reaching a few of those lately. I have my first jewellery party booked for the beginning of September so I'm frantically making lots of jewellery. I have offers of other parties after that so we'll see how it goes.

I should also have some sort of website up & running by then too another milestone!

I've spent so long not knowing what I wanted to do career-wise, it's like I've been stuck in limbo trying to figure it out. Then I discovered wire! I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere

Thanks for all the positive comments, they've helped to give me the confidence to go public with my stuff!!!

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Don't forget to visit & view these artists & clubs

DevArtists




DevClubs