Archive for February, 2010

Handmade Personalised Latin Love Bracelet

Well at last I can show our first piece of many from our personalised latin love range which I am well chuffed about. This has been a long time in the running and very time consuming to design and make but we got there in the end although there is a long way to go as I have other pieces to make but its a start. Firstly I used a sterling silver cable chain that is nice and chunky and has a good weight to it. I then hand pierced a heart shape from 1mm thick silver sheet and etched the phrase ” Te Amo” which translates into ” I Love You”. I then hand pierced 4 discs in which 2 were 16mm and the other two were 18 mm, On the 18 mm discs i have etched love phrases in latin. On one disc it has the phrase ” Amor vincit omnia” which translates in to ” Love conquers all” and on the other disc it says ” Amor aeternus” which translates in to ” Love forever”. The two 16mm discs are for you to put your own personal mark on with two initials in a beautiful font. I then blacked up the etched text and initals and put them in the tumble polisher for a nice shine to them. This bracelet looks great, is very elegant and would make a great treasured keepsake for someone special.  Further details on this bracelet are available here.Handmade Personalised Latin Love Bracelet 3

Personalised Silver Slinky Bracelet

Just a quick update on our slinky bracelet we have also put our etched name charms on this bracelet and it looks fab, this really does make a great treasured keepsake. I had a nightmare yesterday trying to get the photo’s of the bracelet, Firstly I lost all the etched charms down the skirting board as we live in a very old house nothing is very straight so there are slight gaps now and again but I managed to recover all but one.   Then I dropped the light stand and broke the bulb which to my amazement cost £25  as I later found out so it wasn’t a great start to the day but I managed to get some shots and felt better even though I only had one light stand.  I would like to thank all our recent Valentine customers for shopping at IndiviJewels and hope you like what you bought  from us and for the kind words in your feedback we do appreciate this as we like to know how you feel about our Jewellery. I will leave you with a couple of pics of the bracelet as I have got to go back to work now as I have nearly finished another etched bracelet that will be part of a wider range so really looking  forward to getting that on our site and blogging about it.Handmade Personalised Etched Name Slinky Bracelet 1Handmade Personalised Etched Name Slinky Bracelet 3

Personalised Silver Etched Initial Cufflinks

Just finished putting these wonderful Personalised Silver Cufflinks on our website. We have been going as fast as we can to get personalised pieces designed and made but unfortunutaly it just doesn’t work like that you always run into problems when you do compilcated work but half the fun is problem solving, but we have got this pair finished and ready for sale. These cufflinks have an 18mm diameter and are 1.5mm thick that give it a nice weight to it but also keeping that elegant look. I love the font we used for the cufflinks but we also do them in three other fonts to give people a choice. We have about 2-3 other pairs of cufflinks that we would like to do, with different shapes and with some words on as well so we cover a wide range of topics such as weddings, fathers day, to putting children’s names on them there is so much you can do with personalised jewellery. I wasn’t convinced with personalised jewellery but now I have got my hands dirty I love it.

Etched Initial Cufflinks 6

Personalised Etched Initial Slinky Bracelet

We have lots of new personalised pieces near completion and lots of good ideas for others but i will take one piece at a time as I am the kind of person who wants everything to happen all at once. I have wanted to make this piece for a long time now and finally i can show it off with pride. I wanted to do the slinky a bit different to what everyone else was doing as they all look a like so i have gone for 6mm high rondelles which are 3mm wide to give it that sturdy look without taking away the elegance of the bracelet which i think makes it look even better. I wanted to make this piece a treasured keepsake for people so i thought i would attach etched initial charms so you could chose to have loved ones initials to make this a personal joy to wear but also have the elegance of a bracelet you could wear at a wedding for instance. The disks are  12mm in diameter and have a beautiful elegant font which took a bit of time to chose as there were so many. All the beads and charms are attached to strong stretchy elastic to create the illusion bracelet. Suzanne has been busy in the workshop trying out the new tumbler and she has done a fantastic job of the etched charms as they look superb because its not been easy in the workshop with the cold weather even though we have a heater in there.Handmade personalised sterling silver slinky braceletPersonalised sterling silver slinky bracelet 2Personalised sterling slinky Bracelet 1

Etching and Tumbling

Another busy day etching – mostly orders but managed to do a couple of pieces for some new designs that we are working on.  Hopefully will get them finished off and photographed within the next couple of days.  Have been busy playing with the tumble polisher as well trying to figure out how to get the best finish on a few pieces that we want to have a highly polished finish.  Think we are almost there now as the pieces that I tumbled last night are looking good!  Spent quite a lot of time sanding them by hand first with progressively finer papers and then with a slightly abrasive polishing pad to take out as many scratches as possible before they went in.  The first lot I just chucked in after a quick rub down and thought the tumbler would work it’s magic and they would come out with a beautiful mirror finish!  No such luck – but if I can repeat the same finish I got on the last lot I will be very happy as it’s still going to save a lot of time (and mess!) in the final polishing stage.

Website

Hello folks it’s the boring jobs today like admin work but it’s gotta get done. We had the website re-skinned last December and now it’s my job to put in meta keywords and descriptions and then rewrite all our product descriptions which is taking forever.  Doesn’t really help that I know nothing about computers and how they work. I would rather be up the workshop but then again its blowing a blizzard outside with snow everywhere so maybe I will just sit here in front of my open fire and keep warm while my poor wife has to work in our workshop. Hope to post again later today with a new piece to show you but will see how I go with the admin work.

AAA Gemstones

Woo hoo got my AAA gemstones today from America  cannot wait to start designing some pieces with these beauties.DSC_0007DSC_0015I got these beautiful stones from a lovely website called www.rockcandybeadsllc.com you could just buy the whole shop. Jennifer who owns the shop has certain stones cut just for her which I think is brilliant because it gives her an edge over other gemstone sellers. Well worth a visit to get your brain ticking over with new designs just like I am right now thats why I bid you adieu because my lovely gemstones are calling for me.

Funky Wire Wrapped Earrings

One of my latest designs are these beautiful oxidised sterling silver wire wrapped earrings as shown in the pictures.DSC_0145DSC_0151I love designing wire wrapped pieces as you can do so much with them and make it your own piece. Iwanted to make a piece which was different and unique which is what IndiviJewels is all about and also to design a piece with these lovely AAA flawless Teal Blue Mystic Topaz faceted briolette drops that are absolutely stunning. I handmade the teardrop frame and then wire wrapped it and attached wire wrapped swirls on the inside of the teardrop then finished it off by making a loop for the ball stud to attach to but carried it down the teardrop a little way so as not to make it look too bereft at the top.  I then oxidised them to highlight the wrapping. The earring size is 4cm approx long and 1.5cm at its widest point.

Valentine's Day

Well Love Bird’s Valentine’s day is just round the corner and my etched designs are taking a little bit longer then I had hoped for so I think I will get them out for Mother’s Day.  No point in rushing and making a mess of it. In the meantime I have made a beautiful little wire wrapped heart with AAA gemstones hanging in the middle as you can see in the picture.DSC_0162This necklace is a very simple but effective design – something a little different which is what IndiviJewels is all about. The stones in the middle are a AAA Rose Quarzt onion briolette and a AAA Pink Mystic Topaz rondelle which gives it a subtle touch of colour – so why not treat someone you love.