What Would You Put in Yours?

As you will have realised, we love jewellery that displays little worlds and tiny treasures.  We have been playing with a few ideas for our fabulous glass vials - but we wondered, what would you put in yours?  Answers on a postcard, or leave a comment below, far easier.  The best idea will win a set of one of each of our glass vials (that is one sphere, one tube and a glass heart).

Here are some of our suggestions:

Not sure if you can see it very clearly, but there is one single dandelion clock in that tiny tube!

Teeny no-hole beads in pinks and reds

A little lock of hair - this my daughter's!

It doesn't look particularly appealing and perhaps I should have let it dry thoroughly before popping the lid on - a bit of earth from a place that I love.

What are your ideas?   Closing date for suggestions: Sunday 2nd June.

Fabulous Domes

We can't keep our hands off these wonderful domes!  The fishbowls are just amazing.  They are great as a simple display container, mini-terrariums, snowglobes and um, fish bowls!  Not that we'd recommend keeping any *real* lifeforms in there, but it would be fun to try with a bit of resin...  We will bring you that tutorial when it's ready!

For now we have popped these on rings and dangled them from button lids.  The main thing to note is the opening size, as you will need settings of the same size as the opening.  The fishbowls are available in three sizes:

- 20 x 12mm (that means the orb measures 20mm across and the opening is 12mm so this one will be great for our 12mm rings and earrings)
- 25 x 16mm (perfect for our 16mm rings and earrings and button lids)
- 30 x 20mm (rings of this 20mm size are coming soon, but we do have button lids)

The button lids look like this:

All they need is a jump ring and a chain, and you will have a fab dangly bowl.

The most difficult decision will be what to put inside! We have been seeing a lot of dandelion jewellery lately and love its flowy ethereal quality:

But ahh, confetti from a memorable day!  Poppy and bright and in your face and just perfect.

In the coming days we will be experimenting with liquids so keep a look out for new projects and ideas!

New Hollow Bowls

Hello Inspiration! Good to have you back! We know you only went away momentarily as we were fretting and faffing with taxes and pricing and all unexciting things, but then in came these beautiful hollow bowls and there you were! It is good to have you here again!

So you will have already seen these amazaroola new hollow bowls.  They are delicate, they are fragile, they have a lovely handmade feel about them.  They will serve to encase your precious mementos, your artistic little sculptures and a myriad miniature worlds.

We have come up with several ideas for them already, but we must pace ourselves. So we bring you just one little idea, nothing particularly new about it, it simply revolves around the idea of picking a simple concept and converting it into a small (very small) representation of the life-size one.  In this case, I had been sitting in the garden and thought I would try to encapsulate my garden into a pendant tray.  Yes I could have taken a photo and set it under a cabochon, but I really wanted a diorama effect.  So I gathered my materials:

and went about the making of the piece.  I had:

• ModPodge
• a pendant tray
• a hollow glass dome
• a piece of backing paper from a scrapbooking set
• a detailed scrapbooking paper sheet
• scissor, brush, pointy tweezers - and not in the photo, but they were nearby, a set of colourful Sharpie pens

Firstly I glued the blue backing paper into the tray.  I had traced around a bigger piece using the glass dome and cut it to size so it would fit the tray. As it had a slight wave pattern and I wanted it to sit straight, it needed a bit of gentle manouvering into position.

I then applied glue to the bottom border and glued on the nicer and greener bits of moss I found.

With another coat over the bottom of the moss itself I was able to add a second layer for depth.

I had picked the larger scrapbooking paper because it had some teeny tiny butterflies and ladybirds that I could cut out - easier said than done!  It might have been better to use an X Acto knife here as the detail was just too much for my huge ploddy scissors.  Alas, we did what we could.  These tiny paper insects were then folded slightly for a slight 3d effect and glued into position in the tray.  

Hmm, not quite right.  The insects looked washed out and the paper could be seen through the rim of the glass. Resort to Sharpie help.   Coloured pens gave the insects the extra burst of colour I wanted, and a quick go around the edge of the background paper with a black pen meant any paper showing would not be visible around the edge of the glass.  Of course I needed to push the moss into the tray a little bit to allow the glass to sit nicely at the very edge.

Let everything dry for a good day or so.  As all the bits of glue dry, if you pop your glass top onto your piece too soon, you will find droplets of condensation form soon after. 

When dry, I dabbed a little ModPodge on the rim of the glass - this glass is very fragile and so it won't be subjected to many knocks and bumps.  I believe ModPodge will be strong enough for the job, but if in doubt, you can use E6000.  Place it gently onto the piece, ensure there are no stray bits of moss escaping and there you have a cute little diorama piece.  

Sweet!  

VAT and a 20% Bank Holiday Discount

We are now VAT-registered which means we have to charge VAT on all our products – this will entail a price increase in a number of items as standard rate VAT (20%) has to be added onto the product price.  Nobody likes a price rise really, hence we will try to absorb as much of the increase as we can and bear the costs ourselves.  Regrettably we don't have a lot of room to manoeuvre on this, so for some of our items you will see a little increase in prices. 

For the moment, our website and checkout system will not change (though we are working towards a funky new website!). So for now, your shopping experience will remain the same.  If you are a VAT registered business however and require VAT invoices please get in touch and we will be happy to issue these accordingly.

Whilst we set the wheels in motion and update the current website with the new prices we thought you would appreciate a little bit of a discount.  So from now until midnight on Bank Holiday Monday (6th May) you have a chance to get a 20% discount across all items in the shop!   If you are quick, you can get the discount on our pre-VAT prices too!  The code to use at checkout is SPRING20.

And just to explain, only a small number of items will increase by the full VAT rate of 20% as we will try to minimise the impact where possible - but even if the full 20% has been applied, a 20% discount on an item with VAT added will always be cheaper than the pre-VAT price - that is to say, imagine a £1 item needs to have VAT at 20% added, so it then costs £1.20.  But with our 20% offer this Bank Holiday weekend, the price you pay is £0.96.  Or if you snap it up before the VAT increase, you only pay £0.80!  

We do apologise again for the bare appearance of our blog and FB – we are busy with the new website and grappling with new-found taxes, but promise we will be back to full creative flow soon with some fun projects and exciting new products!  Ok, here’s a clue:

Yes, they are here!!

Have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend everyone!

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!!

Just Arrived: High Domes!

Very excited about these new cabs I have just received - these beautiful bubbles are high domed solid glass pieces that measure 25mm across ...and they are a colossal 11mm high!  They are just as clear as our popular 25mm glass pieces, so if you thought our usual cabs did wonders on your images, wait until you try these!

See these new high domes (left) compared to our standard 25mm cabochons (right):

We also have for sale high domes in 12mm and 15mm, and more sizes will be coming to the shop soon.  Three cheers for choice!

Meet the Family

Here we have the Glass family - they're all very smart, an accomplished lot.

Here they are, all posing together for the first ever Glass family photo.

They are:
Rectangles (flat): 24x48mm,
Squares (flat):  25mm, 20mm
Squares (domed): 12mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm
Circles (flat):  25mm
Circles (domed):  8mm, 10mm, 12mm, 14mm, 15mm, 16mm, 18mm, 25mm
Ovals (domed): 13x18mm, 18x25mm
Hearts (domed):  16mm, 23.5mm

My how the family has grown from just two eager tiles back at the start of the year!  Rabbits!

New In The Shop - Glass Coins!

Oh my - aren't these beautiful?

They measure about 24mm and fit into the 25mm trays I sell - they are lovely clear glass and the novelty factor here is that they are flat!  If the domed ones are not your thing, try these.  They will be perfect for jewellery and magnets.

Just arrived in the shop, they sell at £3.00 for 10.  Find them at the Jasmin Studio Crafts Shop.

Just Arrived!

Just arrived at the shop - gorgeous new rectangular glass tiles! These babies measure 24x48mm and trays to match will be arriving in the next few weeks!! They look perfect with bails too - one for a vertical pendant, two for a horizontal pendant. Try them out! You can find them here.