Christmas Posting Dates and Opening Times

If you need your parcel before Christmas, please make sure you order before 11am on the following days for your destination:

Wednesday 5th December - Asia, Australasia
Friday 7th December - Africa, Central & South America, Caribbean, Middle East
Monday 10th December - North America, Eastern Europe
Wednesday 12th December - Western Europe
Thursday 20th December - UK

The above includes registered and recorded services as well as International Signed For and Airsure services.

You may order on Friday 21st and if you purchase the Next Day / Saturday Delivery option and we receive payment before 11am that day, we will still be able to send the items for you to receive them before the big day.

We will be closed from the afternoon of Friday 21st for Christmas but will be back on 2nd January.  Orders received during this period will be sent out as soon as possible on our return but may take slightly longer to get to you.

Have a joyful Christmas and a very crafty New Year!

x

Royal Mail's "Delivery to a Neighbour" Service - a Good Thing?

This is one for our UK readers :)

From the beginning of this month, Royal Mail will leave your items with a neighbour if you are not at home when they try to deliver.  My question is, what do you think of this?

Whilst I can see the positives of such a system, I am not entirely convinced.

Yes, chances are you will get your delivery when you get in from work, which beats a trip to the Post Office on a Saturday morning.  Good.

That is of course assuming you have good neighbours. I am fortunate to say we do. Well, at least the ones we know!  They are lovely people who will even bring our post to us, and we do the same for them. Tea often forms part of the exchange.  However, we don't know all our neighbours - we live in a highly populated part of London and people move in and out of our street practically on a daily basis.

Would I want my purchases going to a relative stranger?  I'm not sure I would, I'm a bit too reserved to share my online purchases with all of my street, but ok, let's call it an opportunity to make a new friend when I call round to collect.

Would I want my valuable jewellery purchases going to a relative stranger?  Errr... no, I don't think so.

I have faith that many of our customers will welcome this move by Royal Mail, and I agree that if you have a good relationship with your neighbours and are happy for them to receive your post if you are out, then it does make life a lot easier when you don't have to queue up to collect your delivery from the Post Office.

I do wonder however - has anyone asked the neighbours how they feel about this?  The OAPs, stay-at-home mums, homeworkers and everyone else who spends a large part of their time around the home?  Will their homes become a depot for the street, Amazon boxes stacking up behind their front door?

It is a tricky situation for online businesses - we want our deliveries to get to our customers safely and quickly.  However these two qualities seem to be at odds with one another with this new system, it may well gain speed, but what impact does it have on the safety element?

Our contract of sale is with the customer, not with the customer's neighbour at number 56.  What happens when the customer is unable to get their item back from number 56?  Will Royal Mail still entertain a claim for loss when they have delivered it to the neighbour?  Does delivering your orders *anywhere* mean that Royal Mail have satisfied their agreement to us?  I'm not entirely sure.

A question for all of you who buy or sell online - how many times have you experienced or your customers reported that a "while you were out" card was not actually left when a delivery was attempted?  At least before, if the seller could confirm the item had been shipped, the customer would have the Post Office as the only port of call.  Now, if that should happen, your parcel could be anywhere on your street!  Ah, fun and games!

Anyone working in jewellery, whether you sell components or finished pieces, will know that we often deal with valuable items - expensive precious metals or stones, pieces of jewellery that have taken time and effort to create,  one-off items that are custom made for a specific customer and impossible to replicate - and if you undertake jewellery repairs, you will often handle personal effects and mementos that are unique and irreplaceable.  Are you happy to send those knowing that they may be delivered somewhere other than where you want them to be?

You see, the onus on getting the items to the right person apparently relies on the recipient.  If the customer would like their delivery of sterling silver items to be sent to them only and not to their neighbours, then the customer needs to contact Royal Mail and wait to be sent an Opt-Out sticker that they then put on their front door to indicate that their deliveries should go to them and not the neighbours.  That'll win you friends in the neighbourhood!  Will look nice in my front door too - which we've just decorated a pretty shade of blue, except it was missing a little something - ah yes! a clearly visible royal mail sticker of course!!

Ok, I may sound a little bit negative here... as I mentioned earlier, I can see the positives, really I can... I just fail to be convinced by them!

I suppose this is something that will be really good for some people and a terrible idea for some others, but still, I'd really love to hear your views on this please!

Jasmin x

To find out more visit Royal Mail's website, or obtain an opt-out form here.

Feeling Floral

Sandra in the office made some pretty flower jewellery, and I wanted to show you just how effective it is, made with just a few bits (just add some strong glue!)

Resin flowers, ear wires & small tags 

Resin flowers, bail, chain & earstud blanks

In fact, we had some bezel earstuds left over, and they work well here!

Simple bobby pins & resin flowers

Glass Tile Necklace in Blue

Blue and white imagery has long been a favourite here, not sure if it stems from a love of all things Nordic, or the quiet influence of my mother's crockery, but I do find myself using blue and white in a number of pieces I make.  Here I will share a recent piece I made, using scalloped trays measuring 15mm, glass cabochons to fit, and a lovely paper from a scrapbooking set I have.  The only other findings you will need are the jump rings and a necklace chain.

I made the glass tiles first in the usual way and a day later, glued them into the trays.

One lovely thing about the scalloped trays is that you can push the edges down onto the glass, or pull them out as I have done here so that a jump ring can be attached easily.  For this piece I have not pushed them down onto the glass, but I have pulled out those in the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock positions so that the necklace hangs down correctly - if you are making a bracelet, feel free to pull the 9 and 3 o'clock rings, but for a necklace, attaching the rings through the very middle of the piece can result in the trays flipping over, whereas we want to ensure that they remain with the image facing outwards as much as possible!  11 and 1 work too for necklaces, and that way you get the effect more of a row of pendants than chain links.

 Join with matching jumprings and attach the chain at the ends.

And there you have it!  a really pretty piece that has received lots of compliments.

This would look great with any inserts - you could use the same print for each tray, or complementary colours in similar patterns, or even bright clashing colours for a riotous pop piece.  Add beads in between the trays for yet another look, or consider using ribbon instead of chain.  Too many ideas, too little time!

We would love to see your pieces - do show us your work by posting pictures on our Facebook page @jasminstudiocrafts.  We can't wait to see what you come up with!

Easy Wooden Letter Tile Pendants

Not sure if we ever showed you how easy it is to make a lovely wooden tile pendant.  All you need is:

- A wooden letter tile or Scrabble tile

- ModPodge glue

- E6000 or superglue

- Epoxy Sticker to fit the tile

- A bail

- A toothpick

- A pretty image

First gather your materials:

Then apply the sticker onto your chosen image - laser prints and professional prints on good thick paper work best.  Felt tip and inkjet inks may run, so try to avoid using those if you can.

Once the sticker is on, press all over the surface to ensure no air pockets remain, and carefully cut around the edge of the sticker.

Apply ModPodge to the back of the Scrabble tile and lay your image over the top.

Give it a few moments to 'grab', and then you can work on the bail right away. E6000 is very viscous and can leave trails of glue all over your work - the best way to apply it is to squeeze a drop of glue onto a piece of plastic,

and then using a toothpick, just grab a bit of the glue on the end (and if it trails you can wind it around the toothpick, like spaghetti!)

And apply it carefully over the middle of the bail, you won't need to use too much.

And immediately set it onto the centre of the tile.  Leave a couple of hours to dry completely.

Ta-da!!  

All tiles, stickers, bails and glues used in this project are available to buy from our shop - try it for yourself, and see how easy it is to make gorgeous personalised jewellery!

Back to School!

Things are getting busy here preparing for a new year of school.  For now it's important (in our house at least) to ensure coats and bags will not get lost in the coming year...  So in between getting orders ready we have been doing a bit of quick crafting.  Starting with a little someone's lunch box...

And her coat...

And for her friend's book bag,

And another friend's sports bag.  Difficult to see, but we chose a basketball background here.

All were made super-easily in a matter of minutes using a few images overwritten with text using Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop and are struggling to tweak your images, we have discovered a free system that covers more than all the basics (woohoo, layers!!)  Try it, it's called Paint.net and is available to download from CNET here.

You can use most smooth papers here, and most inks (however felt tip inks seem to run after some time, so watch out for that).  The trays are our 18mm silver plated round trays, and we have used epoxy stickers glued onto the tray using just a smidgen of tacky glue.  We have attached the trays to the garment using either our new little ball chains or split rings.

Cool, customisable to your little poppet, and easy enough that they can help to make it.  We can't guarantee that they will sit still for a photo however!

Sticker Love

We continue to be full of love for all our stickers - have you seen the latest offering?

19mm stickers on our new round lockets.

The cherries are my favourite.

16mm squares on our square cufflink fittings, which now come in all colours!

Super cute pendants made with our stickers - these come in a new size: 20.5mm.

Adorable, huh?  We only have these new locket rings in limited quantities - be quick!  New size of sticker to sit on top: 13mm.

Ah, my favourite - a quirky key ring for the home, made with our big hearts and a resin sticker.  We don't have any pretty keys to our house so the key above is a jewellery charm!

Have fun everyone!!  :D

Fun in the Sun

This week I took my craft kit to the garden - such a treat!  Can you guess what these are?

No?

Yes!  That's right!  Earrings!!  Tiny little earrings made with nail polish over the back of the glass!

They look so pretty in real life, and I could not get over how quick they were to make.  Just grab some nail polish, apply a couple of coats to the back of the glass, let it dry, glue on an earstud fitting, and away you go!   I used:

• our teeny 8mm glass
• any old nail polish (not sure if quality makes any difference here - mine are all high-street brands and have worked well)
• e6000 glue (again, I was not sure if this would peel off the nail varnish from the glass, but nope, it's a good secure bond)
• and our 4mm earstud fittings with pad.

Have a lovely weekend!!

Fab New Buttons Now In!

We have just received a shipment of fabulous new self-cover buttons in lots of sizes: from a diddy 12mm on to 15mm, 19mm, 22mm, 28mm, 38mm all the way to a huge 45mm! See them all here: http://www.jasminstudiocrafts.com/category/jewellery-buttons

These 38mm beauties fit perfectly inside our 38mm trays!

And this is a 12mm button inside a 12mm ring bezel

And for the other sizes, findings with a pad are ideal.... 

...see?

Really easy to make.  And you can choose between flat backs or wire backs, with or without making tool, so you only need to buy the tool once for each size. Try them and be hooked!

Freepost Weekend

Here's a New Idea - Word Necklaces

How about making some fab new necklaces for spring?   I felt the need to make something, and I did not have much time - so I opted to use epoxy stickers, which look great and are really really easy to use.

I gathered my materials:

• epoxy stickers in 12mm and 15mm sizes, 
• silver plated charm blanks also in 12mm and 15mm,
• ModPodge, scissors, printer, laptop! 

First I printed out a sheet with everyone's names written on it, in capital letters with big spacings.  Here I am showing you the necklace I made with my own name (part of a set I was making), and obviously you will need an adequate number of stickers and trays for the length of the names or words you are preparing.

I wanted to make these necklaces with a mix of big and small trays and found the 15mm trays went well with a 24pt font size and the 12mm ones suited the 16pt size nicely. 

Once printed, I just centred the stickers over the top of the individual letters - I went for a big-small-big-small pattern, but you could do this differently.

Then I cut around the letters to make reasonably tidy circles (!), and simply ModPodged them into the trays.    Finally, I used jump rings to join the trays in sequence to every second link in the necklace chain, and it was all done!   Really easy, it took ten minutes in all, and everyone was really pleased with their necklace!

Love it!

Below I made a slightly different necklace - firstly I used printed images instead of letters, or rather, the leftover borders from some images I used on another project.  I used the same stickers and same charm blanks but a different chain.

And the beauty of this one is that as the chain is smooth without links (much like ball chain or snake chain), all the charms dangle together clinking as you move, making this a lovely playful piece.

And just because I had some of the little flower print outs, I made some earrings using our new vintage copper ovals and matching 13x18mm stickers.  Easy!

Have fun making!!

Loving the New Stickers

I have spent a few days having fun with the new sizes of stickers - here are some examples of what I have made:

Here I have simply scanned and printed the pages from a dictionary and used our fab 25mm circle cutter to cut a perfect round to fit seamlessly into the tray.  So many inspirational words, we just couldn't choose! 

This one is destined for a rectangular tray

Here I used a vintage Japanese printed image and as the sticker was very slightly loose inside the 30mm tray, I have painted in a black border so it looks like it's part of the edge of the picture.

I love these vintage French cheese pictures!  They are actually scanned labels from the tops of camemberts and other round cheeses that come in wooden boxes. So pretty!  

Now, this handsome chap is accompanied by another handsome chap: 

...and they are both joined by another handsome chap:

...and they are all perched atop the new 30x40mm oval acrylic bracelets, showing off their handsomeness under the new oval stickers of the same size.  It literally took about five minutes to make this bracelet, from start to finish, and it looks truly stunning in real life!  

Digital downloads from Digitalya, Piddix, HarmonicaGoldfish and PlumBlossomStudio, all via Etsy.