Custom made Poppy flower paperweight

I was recently asked by a lady if I had anything suitable that could be used to preserve a Poppy flower. She wanted something making as a gift for her friend and we discussed different items of jewellery because initially she wanted something that could be engraved. I then suggested making a custom made paperweight containing the Poppy; she loved the idea and knew her friend would love it too.



Rather than using a real Poppy, I suggested using a traditional Memorial Day Poppy and that she could then write a message to her friend on the back of the leaf. But she had an even better idea! She would create a poppy herself by painting an image of the Poppy onto a piece of card making it an even more personal gift for her friend. I received her Poppy picture and it was a wonderful painting! She had also written a personal note to her friend onto the back of the picture and this can be seen through the base of the paperweight.



I encased her Poppy picture into a domed resin paperweight, mounted the paperweight within a leatherette box and sent it directly to her friend and she loves it!

I must say I have made several custom made paperweights recently and haven’t even got around to advertising paperweights on my website yet!

Mick

Real pressed Fuchsia flower jewellery

I had a lovely custom jewellery order to complete recently. The order was actually first place last July however it has taken until now to complete. The lady first contacted me after seeing my Fuchsia flower necklace within my online shop which was unfortunately out of stock at the time.

The lady grows Fuchsias to show and also collects Fuchsia lore so she was quite keen to have a pendant making! I suggested that she may want to send me a few of her own flowers and after giving her advice on how to press them this is what happened. A couple of months passed and then I received a lovely selection of Fuchsias in the post from her.

Using her fuchsia flowers I photographed a few pendant designs and an example can be seen below:



These are the pendants that I made for the lady; the first is a resin teardrop shaped pendant containing three small Fuchsia flowers.



The second pendant is again a teardrop shaped pendant (which really does lend itself to the shape of the Fuchsia flower) and this contains a single large flower.



And finally a sterling silver pendant with a small Fuchsia flower set against a silver backing that I also engraved. This pendant was to be given as a Christening gift to the lady’s niece.



I love making jewellery like this where the customer has contributed towards the design and has even supplied her own flowers; which reminds me, I must remember to press a few Fuchsia flowers of my own this year!

Personalised Memorial Jewellery

I have been making quite a lot of memorial jewellery for cremation ashes recently so thought I would show off some of the designs. I am often asked how I cope with handling the cremated ashes from loved ones or pets. To be honest I do not think about it when I am working other than treating it with the utmost dignity and respect. As with my lock of hair keepsake jewellery I find that I can distance myself from it as I did not personally know the people involved. I do get immense satisfaction though when creating any kind of memorial jewellery as I know that I am providing an important service to the families.

Unlike traditional memorial jewellery for ashes, the resin jewellery that I use permanently encases the ashes with the pendant. Because of this there is no risk of the ashes from being lost and the jewellery is unlikely to break or smash if accidently knocked or dropped. The other benefit of using the resin to encapsulate the ashes is the jewellery can be further personalised with other small objects. For the following pendant I was asked to further personalise it with items that are important to the family. The lady was extremely fond of VW campervans and her son had sent me a VW sign from a toy car to encase with her ashes. She also liked anything red and glittery so the second request was to include lots of red glitter in there too.



I am often asked to include small Forget-me-not flowers within the memorial jewellery; the following small charms contain both the ashes and Forget-me-not flowers. Not only are these flowers symbolic but they are very pretty too!



And finally these bracelet charms contain ashes, Forget-me-not flowers and small gold stars.



If you would like to find out more about my keepsake jewellery for ashes, please visit my Memorial Jewellery website page.

Mick

Jewellery Made From a Broken China Cup or Plate

I have always been a huge fan of the work by Marjorie and her Cracked Plate Jewellery. I have great admiration for her ability to take a broken shard of a decorated plate, china, porcelain or ceramic and turn the item into a piece of art. A china plate or teacup is often an extremely sentimental item and one that may have shared many happy times (especially when involved with slices of cake and cups of tea!). So to accidentally chip or break a piece of china can be devastating to the owner.

No longer does a cracked piece of broken china need to be thrown away. Marjorie expertly wire wraps the piece of china and the results are stunning. Please take a look at her handmade jewellery website here: Marjorie’s Cracked Plate Jewellery.



Marjorie also shares my enthusiasm in creating custom jewellery for people who want to preserve memories of loved ones. This leads me to a recent custom jewellery commission that I had and one that led me to contact Marjorie and in turn write this plog post.

I was contacted just before Christmas by a lady who wanted a special Christmas present making for her Mother. Her Mother had recently broken her favourite china cup and the lady had managed to retain a few fragments of the cup. Initially I thought that the ideal solution would be to have them formed into one of Marjorie’s creations and even suggested this to her. However the china fragments were extremely small and far too small to be wire wrapped.



I set the three china pieces that the lady sent to me within a teardrop shaped resin pendant and coloured the background green. I was very pleased how it turned out and I am sure it was a lovely surprise when it was opened on Christmas day.

I hope that everybody has a happy and healthy New Year and I look forward to sharing more of my jewellery making journey with you in 2012.

Mick

Wedding Cufflinks for the Groom

The last of my Christmas orders has now been posted and the last present wrapped (which is extremely organised for me). This is my last blog post before Christmas and so I thought I would share with you a recent custom jewellery order that I made. This is for a lovely Christmas wedding that is due to take place a couple of days after Christmas day. The bride to be wanted a pair of cufflinks making for the groom and the cufflinks were to incorporate a small sample of her wedding dress.



And these are the cufflinks that I made for her. They are sterling silver and the wedding dress material has been set within resin within the silver flat cups. As always the resin has brought out the texture of the material and I think they are a lovely gift for her husband to be. I really do need very little wedding dress material for making these; approximately one inch square of fabric is ample. The tricky part is cutting the fabric into perfect oval shapes to fit inside the cufflinks but I have had plenty of practice! I hope the couple have a lovely winter wedding and that the groom treasures his cufflinks for years to come.

I wish all my blog followers, fellow crafters and customers a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Best Wishes

Mick

Horse hair Bangle

You may remember a recent blog post where I announced the lucky winner of my horse hair jewellery giveaway. Well this is what she won; as part of the giveaway I asked the horse owner if they could send me some long lengths of horse tail hair for me to make a new range of horse hair jewellery. Well Louise kindly sent me some long strands of hair from her new pony and I made them into this horse hair bangle for her.



I love the effects of the hair twisting around within this handmade resin bangle and can’t wait to make some more of these.

I have had quite a few commissions of horse hair jewellery over the last few weeks leading up to Christmas. I particularly liked this order for a matching set of jewellery.

This bracelet is sterling silver and the horse hair has been set within each charm in a criss-cross pattern. I have also engraved the back of each charm with the name of the horse and have included fine amber glitter within each charm (although you can’t see that within the photograph).



My wife likes the bracelet so much that she would like one too; even though she isn’t a horse owner! To match the bracelet I made these horse hair earrings. Again sterling silver and the name of the horse engraved onto the back of each earring.



And to finish the set of jewellery is this sterling silver pendant engraved on the back and hung from a leather thong style necklace chain.



I love the effects that can be achieved by using horse hair within jewellery and if you would like to see more examples please visit my horse hair jewellery website gallery.

Mick

Custom Jewellery - Microchip Cufflinks

I am often asked to preserve some very interesting items for people within my custom made jewellery and last week was one of those occasions. I was contacted by a UK company who specialise in the design and manufacture of wireless microcontrollers. These microcontrollers are used in many applications such as controlling smart lighting for homes, offices and even street lighting.

The lady who contacted me was organising a retirement gift for an employee and asked if she could send me some of their microchips (the electronic component type, not the McCaine type) for me to place within silver cufflinks. The microchips are part of the microcontrollers that the company manufacture, are 4mm square and paper thin. I encased them in resin onto a pair of sterling silver cufflinks and this was the result.



It was the man’s retirement day today and I hope he liked his gift; I think the microchip cufflinks are certainly a very thoughtful gift by the company and I am sure they will bring back very fond memories for him.