Thursday 22 June 2017

Resin Love

If you know us at all, you will know that we love resin – it’s such a satisfying medium to work with.  Not only does it give your work dimension and perspective, but it can carry off any colour to match the style of your makes. 

Our resin of choice is manufactured by RF Bright – a family owned business based in Kent who make, in our opinion, the nicest resin we have ever tried (and trust us when we say in our line of work we have tried more than a few brands!).  If you thought that making jewellery with resin might be too tricky or fraught with issues, think again.  There are several varieties of resin in this range and all are equally lovely in their ease of use and they all have a great finish.  

In the past few weeks we have been making some samples to show at our upcoming workshops, what do you think?




And here are some awesome samples we have been sent by the manufacturers.  We love these!




Gorgeous, wouldn't you agree?  If you are feeling inspired and want to have a go, just send us a quick email with all your resin questions or to find out when we will start our resin workshops.  You can find our full range of resin here, and look out for some resin tutorials coming soon to the blog.


Tuesday 20 June 2017

When All Thoughts Turn To Holidays...

Last week we were lucky to have with us two brilliant Year 10 students undertaking work experience with us. Tabby already works with us on Saturdays and she opted to also spend her work experience week at the shop. Amber had not been with us before but after the first ten minutes it felt like a team that had been together since the start!

The girls were tasked with making a piece of jewellery symbolic of their holidays, and here is it - a beautiful memory bracelet:


Below they explain the process:

Holiday Charm Bracelet

This bracelet is about capturing precious memories from your holiday whether they’re from a week ago or three years ago in the summer sun –and you would like to remember the colours of the shimmering waves, or the crabs scuttling along the shore- or a trip abroad to Italy or France where you ate foreign delicacies while feasting your eyes upon iconic land marks -now is your chance to combine these memories and make a beautiful charm bracelet.

We decided to do a seaside holiday charm bracelet. My bracelet has pearls, swirling sea shells, a bottle of sea, a tiny picture of a boat on the sea and a few hand-moulded polymer clay treasures.

To start this easy, quick and fun project you will need to get 4 beads that are sea/beach inspired, shells, pearls, turquoise turtles/fishes are perfect for this sweet accessory. Make bead charms with them by using headpins.

Then get polymer clay in pink or orange to make a sweet little starfish charm. You can make your starfish by making a ball first from polymer clay, then pinching 5 sides to make the star shape. To add detail to your starfish get a toothpick and make small holes on the top and a star on the bottom, then put in oven at 125 degrees for 20 minutes- you must preheat the oven for at least 20 minutes before so the oven is hot.

To make the ‘beach bottle’ get sand and very small shells (possibly from your holiday) however if you cannot get these materials you can use glitter and seed beads.



Another polymer clay charm you can make is a shell. Make a ball with yellow polymer clay and push it down a bit so it’s the shape of a burger. Make it into a v-shape and at the top of this V make indents that follow to lines. Make these details with a tool if you have one, if not just use a toothpick. Cover your polymer clay shell charm in mica powder to give it a golden magical shine, to bake it do the same instructions from before with the starfish.

The last two charms for your bracelet are glass tiles with photos behind in small metal trays. First get 2 10mm glass cabochons and cut out a photo from your holiday or draw a memory from your holiday the same size as the glass cabochon, then seal with ModPodge. After it dries use silicon adhesive to stick the image to the glass, only use a drop but enough so that it spreads around the whole cabochon. 

After that dries stick the cabochon to the tray with ModPodge, and wait 24 hours.

After all the charms are ready, dry and baked, you can assemble them. First cut a large link chain to the length of your wrist, use two jump rings one on one side, and one on the other with a clasp. Put jump rings on all of the charms and attach them to the chain. Put the charm bracelet on and feel like you’re in the sun on holiday again!


Have a lovely summer!
from Tabby & Amber x