I'm still here... only now I'm over here!

Hello to readers old and new. It has been an AGE since I last posted, but with good reason. For the last, ooh, well over a year, I have been in the process of setting up an online bead shop Big Bead Little Bead. Ever since our son was born I have been looking for work that I can do from home and around him, and within a creative area that I can really enjoy getting stuck into. Beads and beading essentials fit the bill for many reasons: 1. They are twinkly and pretty and hard it is hard to get bored of looking at them; 2. I have always enjoyed jewellery making and working at a small and intricate scale; 3. They take up not too much space (although in bulk they do seem to have established themselves pretty extensively) and far less than if I decided to work from home selling handbags/cheese/second-hand cars; 4. Unlike cakes, you can leave a bead at a moment's notice to tend to a cry of 'Mummy. Build me a dinosaur' and the house is not in danger of burning down. If you have a whim or a passion for beads, please do check us out. My husband took all the photographs used on the site, and we used a local web design team for the site construction - who did a great job - The Right Design.

The aspects of the site we are most proud of are the online Project Tray - you can add items into a 'tray' and move them around to try out layouts or simply to view beads side by side. All our images have been painstakingly scaled, so you can place beads next to each other in the Project Tray and see exactly how proportions will look. We are pleased to have a growing repertoire of artists make one-off beads just for us, so we have unique porcelain, polymer clay and shortly have lampwork and decoupage makers too. If you are looking for vintage items for a little je ne sais quoi, then we have those too. All this is wrapped up with an image-led, visually clear presentation. Well, we like to think so!

The planning, designing, researching, purchasing, stock data entry, labelling, bagging etc. etc. has taken up so much of my limited spare time, that Baking for Britain has sadly been placed on the back burner, but I hope that it hasn't been taken off the hob for good. My son loves cooking and baking and I would like to think that together we may be able to soon return to Bake for Britain! In the meantime, thank-you for all the comments that I continue to receive. I am flattered by how many people still take the time to read through my writings and enjoy them enough to leave their thoughts.