Salisbury Art Trail

The bi-annual event is well underway with only 3 days left to discover local talent and their creations. See artists’ work in galleries, studios and in their homes with some offering workshops for you to participate in. Enjoy installation art, textiles, jewellery, photography, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, painting, glass and sculpture.

This is the first year armcandii is exhibiting in the trail and we can be found in Fisherton Mill - the south of England's largest independent art gallery – alongside other invited and resident artists. We are debuting collections ‘sewn’ and ‘doodle’ with existing collection ‘couture’.


Sewn: textural hand sewn wire jewellery with suspended vintage elements

Doodle: sculptural hand 'doodled' wire jewellery with vintage elements

 

Couture: statement hand knitted wire jewellery with vintage elements

The Mill is this perfect place to start the trail and fuel up on coffee and cake whilst you plan your route. Or drop in for a well earned lunch halfway through and stay for afternoon tea. The food alone is worth the visit.

And if you don’t manage to get to the Mill during the trail, you can still find us there after the 16th October or purchase via our website.

Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Etsy and Flickr.

Too distracted to blog

Such a lot has been happening over the last couple of weeks that the blog has taken a back seat!  Not good.

First we’ve had the fig tree dug up – a sad, sad day.  It had grown very big, was too close to the house and in the way of the new door proposed for the kitchen so it had to go.  Such a shame as it was loaded with fruit.

The same day we had the Eucalyptus tree lopped and the Olive tree trimmed.  All are growing so well in our little suntrap patch!

Next we started to turn out of the kitchen ready for the refit in September.  We still have quite some way to go; compressing all we want to keep into our already overcrowded dining room cum office cum studio will be no mean feat.

Now today the guys are here mending the sash window in my bedroom.  Thank goodness it’s warm as not only has there been NO window actually in place but the front door has been wide open too.  And they have to come back tomorrow to finish the job.  It has been quite a big one, with repairs to the frame, a new panel of glass and now rehanging and weighting – oh and of course these jobs aren’t cheap.

In between this we’ve been busy making jewellery and adding it to our ETSY shop first, a little tweeting, a newsletter and keeping our Facebook page alive.

 

 

Silver doodle necklace

Silver red S E W N necklace

And also building ETSY treasuries and being featured in one (Summer Fever).  These really are fun and I find building them very therapeutic.  I made a conscious decision with the two I’ve built this week to take a different stand than usual.  So in the first one ‘More than a doodle’ I purposely included no jewellery, but concentrated on drawings, prints and photographs.

In the second one built this morning, I thought about things I like and that make me smile and produced ‘Birds of a Feather’.  Birds and things to do with birds feature in this one.  I just had some fun with it.

Hope you like them both.  If you want to keep up with our mad and serious creative moments, please follow us here, on Facebook and on Twitter @armcandii.

re:designed for...Clare

Don't you just love friends?!  We do.  Ours are busy social butterflies who need accessories to complete their latest fashion looks for the next must-go-to event.  

Clare recently commissioned a necklace to wear at her son's christening, after seeing Karen's commissioned neckcandii on our blog.  Her brief: something special for the occasion, a unique necklace that you won't find on the high street, that you could wear again and that complimented her pink and orange Per Una dress.

We gave her 11 designs/colour-ways to chose from and this is the end result...

commissioned couture neckcandii

A unique hand knitted wire work necklace embellished with a vintage diamante bracelet, earring, vintage mother of pearl buttons, seed beads, white and dusky pink freshwater pearls on chain.

Commissions
We are more than happy to discuss commissions.  We can either re:design a vintage piece from our collection or a special piece of your own.  Get in touch via mail@armcandii.com and we'll take it from there.

re:designed for...Karen

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but apparently other people are getting married besides Will & Kate! Incredibly ordinary folk are doing it too. And with that comes guests with wedding outfit dilemmas.  

Our lovely friend Karen contacted us a couple of weeks ago and asked if we could design a necklace to compliment her outfit for a friend's wedding at the end of April. No not that wedding. Her brief: "I need something to stop it looking too safe and sloaney."

After further consultation we set about designing a necklace to do just that...

commissioned couture neckcandii

The end result: a unique hand knitted wire work necklace embellished with vintage earrings, brooch, violet and dusky pink freshwater pearls and seed beads on chain.

Commissions
We are more than happy to discuss commissions. We can either re:design a vintage piece from our own collection or a special piece of your own. Get in touch via mail@armcandii.com and we'll take it from there.

armcandii now showing at Fisherton Mill

Hooray, we're installed! You can now 'try before you buy' if you head over to Fisherton Mill in Salisbury...

couture necklace

What weekends were made for

We're so excited...our jewellery will soon be available at Fisherton Mill. 

hand knitted wire cuff embellished with vintage pieces & freshwater pearls

For those of you who are not familiar with the Mill, it is the south of England's largest independent art gallery and features the work of over 300 artists and designer/makers. Formerly a grain mill built in 1880, it now houses gallery space, studios and a fabulous cafe.

It is situated in Salisbury, Wiltshire and definitely worth a visit. Think lazy Saturday afternoon...punctuated with fabulous food in a building that wouldn't look out of place on Grand Designs, filled with beautiful objects to browse if you can drag yourself away from the paper...you're already there aren't you?!

Opening times:
10-5pm - Tuesday - Friday
9.30-5.30pm - Saturday

Our latest commissions

We've just completed two new commissions! The knitted cuff above is embellished with a vintage filigree silver brooch and random size turquoise freshwater pearls. It's waiting to go to its new owner who loves the pictures. We hope she loves the real thing more.

The second commission was for a friend via her husband for a special birthday. She wanted a charm bracelet but one that didn't look 'empty' before all the charms were there! We hope she likes our version of semi-precious African Turquoise rondelles alternated with sterling silver rings and fastened with a sterling silver toggle. It was sent with 4 ready to go charms on the prettiest head pins - a pretty American handmade lampwork bead in orange and turquoise, a foil lined murano glass heart and a tiny glass flower bead. Two African Turquoise beads make the 'fastening' toggle dangle.