New Year New Shop!

Not content with just one shop, I have opened a second! This time however, the shop will sell supplies to make jewellery - and a very particular kind of jewellery in fact - personalised photo/image jewellery.

The shop is called Jasmin Studio Crafts and lives online here.  It also has its own blog you can follow and its own Facebook page for news and special offers - do stop by!

The items for sale in the shop are designed to allow you to make all sorts of lovely keepsake jewellery, be it a pair of cufflinks with a picture of your kiddlies, or a pendant that you have decorated yourself.  Here you will find all the glass, glazes, glues, and jewellery findings needed to make your own unique pieces.

Come by, have a look, say hello!

The Funkiest Wedding in All London

Two of my very best friends, got married this weekend, and I was honoured to be asked to make models of them to stand next to their wedding cake. 

They gave me free rein pretty much to do as I wished, so I had him as a mountaineering Indiana Jones complete with climbing spikes and compass, and she as a marathon-running bride with a bridal bouquet and diamond ring of course!  He does climb, she does run marathons, and they both do travel a lot - so the  suitcase was full of references to their life and travels, some of which are a bit too risque to reveal here, (bwa-ha-haa!).  The Oahu sticker on the suitcase is a reference to their honeymoon destination.   It was a beautiful day, the couple looked just jawdroppingly gorgeous and everyone had a brilliant time.   Happy days!  x

A Very Very Special Order

One of my best friends has a very generous auntie who came to me with a special request - to make a family keepsake bracelet for her gorgeous niece, in sterling silver, which was to include fine silver charms of fingerprints and handprints of every member of her family.

This turned out to be quite a duplicitous task that had hubby and auntie plotting visits to other members to take prints, tricky that it was not to have her smaller children blurt out the secret plans.    Some days later, the subterfuge paid out and the bracelet turned out great, and I am honoured that she calls it "the one item she would save in a fire".   This is coming from the girl who only wears real Prada.   Aww.  I'm all puffed up.

A Christmas Present

I was commissioned to make some fine silver cufflinks with the recipient's initials - I made a photopolymer stamp with the agreed design of the letters, and used it to stamp the silver clay to create the recessed look, which was then coated in platinol for a dark patina.  I think they turned out rather spiffing.

Seasonal Update

The tree is up at home - thanks to a very eager 3 year old.  Nothing to do with her mum, hoho no.  The shop is still getting stocked up, and I'm so pleased that the orders are pouring in!   A very happy first shop Christmas.  I'm delighted to have been asked to make several custom items...

A guitar pick in fine silver with initials:

Some sapphire raindrop pendants again in fine silver: 

and several others that I must keep under wraps, I'm told.  But I did promise an update on the handprint cufflinks that I made recently, and I hear that they got the oohs and the ahhs that they deserved.

Work in progress

A special order for a very lucky grandad:

I'll show you the finished product when they have been approved by the two willing helpers!

In case you could not tell, they will be a pair of cufflinks with the grandchildren's actual handprint embedded into fine silver.   Ok, actual handprint is a bit of an exaggeration - I follow a process to make their actual handprints into a miniature stamp which can then be pressed into the soft clay.   Clay?!   Indeedy.  If it does not look like silver (let alone 'fine') in the photo, it is only because this is Art Clay Silver, a soft, mouldable material that needs to be fired so that the binder and the water holding on to the silver particles can burn away and those lovely silver particles can sinter to produce a solid silver piece.    It's [almost] magic!