Well haven’t I fallen into bad habits again!!! It only felt like I was off on my Short break to the seaside and here we are two months later at winter’s door. So the website is coming along nicely, We got the first page designed WOO-HOO, lol, Anyhow as you guessed by the title this blog is about our new and unique collar stiffeners which we are more than happy with. Over the last year or so we have had those deluded people who call themselves Jewellery designers but infact what they do is just copy other peoples hardwork and then take all the rewards (Still thinking about taking legal action) Yes we all know them folk, Anyway that prompted us to think about living upto our name IndiviJewels so we set about designing something new which just happened to be these Beautiful,Elegant,Treasured Collar stiffeners yes I could go on! Nothing like pumping up your own work lol. Obviously you are pretty limited to what you can do with collar stiffeners due to the shape but we happened to come across the idea of tie shaped stiffeners and then found no end of tie puns which give us the idea for the stiffeners. We have been working away like Santa’s little elfs trying to get these made in time for Christmas. Anyway the end result is we are over the moon with these collar stiffeners, Sets us apart from everyone else which is how we like it and gives IndiviJewels another unique and exclusive design which is OURS!!! We have made Cufflinks and a very cool tie slide to make up a wonderful range but that’s for another blog.

Well after all this time we have finally, Finally got back to writing blogs!!! It’s been so long and many stories to catch up on. It’s unreal how things just get left and you quickly get out of the habit of doing a certain job, In this case blogging, It really all goes back to roundabout the last post (many moons ago) and which we were looking to have a new website made for us so decided to drop it until it was done but that didn’t work out so good with that particular “design company” and so we just drifted away onto Facebook and Twitter but you just can’t explain a full story on those social media sites, As good as they are I’ve missed blogging. Anyway back to the now! As it’s our first post back and as my son has just broken up from school after his first year I thought this would be an appropriate place to start for the first one back.  Not being the most knowledgeable parents about how school traditions go we realized that at the end of the school year it’s custom to bring the teachers something to say thank you. Realizing this after a bit of investigating! that most parents would bring flowers or bottles of wine or teddybears, Tins of biscuits, Sweets and as they probably have a room full of these gifts we wanted to give them something  a little different – So we had this big thinking session and then it hit us!! We make jewellery so why not make them a little something lol.We thought our Friendship button bracelet would make a lovely gift, not to overpowering but just nice enough for a little message. Although Archie (son) wanted to make them we had a hard job of convincing him that he couldn’t and that we would for him, Bless him! He does like to do everything and doesn’t like to take no as an answer so there was some tears and tantrums. We have been looking at some new designs for friendship bracelets( out soon I hope) and we just bought some new cord to try out so instead of the just having the single strand cord we went with a multi layered cord which give it that look of a little more thickness. As you can see in the photo’s we had put a bit of thought into the design regarding the text, We used a typewriter  font associated with schools from yesteryear and also the asterix we used for the star which we were quite proud of thinking of at short notice lol. On the back we used a kids handwriting font, We would have liked to have used Archie’s but unfortunately time was against us but it done the job and they were well received by the teachers, Well so they told us lol. Till the next post – Which hopefully will be somtime this year!

I cannot believe how long it has been since my last post. It’s true what they say when you leave things for a period of time that it becomes harder to go to back to it, I kept meaning to do some blogging but it always got put to the back of the daily jobs and I never reached that far down the list lol. Unfortunately all the social networking got put on hold for various reasons but I do enjoy this side of the business to interact with customers or just people who have a common interest in jewellery and I have set myself some new goals for the foreseeable future. I do have a few topics and some new jewellery to share so I will be doing a fair amount of blogging over the next few days but thought I would change how I write the blog and make it  more open about us , our jewellery and life in general. As much as I love to share our  jewellery adventure with you guys I would like you to get to know us because we would like to a more open and engage more with you rather than being  boring with continual work blogs  although that is very important because I love to talk about jewellery but all work and no play makes jack a dull boy so I want to share lots of new topics and some personal stuff about us and somethings that get my blood boiling like talentless “Jewellers” who copy other Jewellers designs to get ahead! Right, Off for tea and cakes now.Just wish this was what I was going to get but mine looks like it has been dragged through a hedge backwards.

I cannot tell you how hot it was in the workshop today! And cannot believe how hot it still is, I’m melting away at the computer writing this blog. Well I’m going to blog about a customer we had last week that was asking for a Hebrew initial on our personalised initial necklace which was quite exciting (I’m very sad) as we haven’t used any other language other then English so I was intrigued to have a look at Hebrew text which looked so Alien to me as I have never seen it before, Need to educate myself more me thinks! I wasn’t sure how it would turn out as the letter was very thick in places so it was a test of my etching skills to get it right. I really enjoyed working on something a little different and hope very much to do other languages in the future just need to get my website out there into the big wide world! I forgot to take a picture when I made it (Doh!) but this is the letter M that we etched, this is my print out version for transferring to silver.

OK feel I need to get on with some serious blogging as I’m getting to far behind so here I’ am “Mr Sadurday nite” yes thats right SADurday nite and welcome to my madhouse, a screaming baby and a very loud toddler wanting to play my computer games and one mad hound stoating round the house looking for dropped food lol. Well I’m blogging for a reason tonight and its to write about another new piece which is our personalised silver rings bracelet. Our other rings bracelet with the gold and silver rings has been a great success but we had quite a few enquiries about an all silver one as not everyone likes gold. I had planed to put both bracelets on at the same time but due to lack of time, yes I know someone get the violins out! lol and lack of certain stock items I couldn’t get it on until now.Somethings you really do like to make and I love making this bracelet, its just so unique and something different to all the other bracelets out there that just look so similar to each other. I have added one new finding which I will add to the other bracelet which is the charm holder which looks fantastic on this bracelet and to me just completes it. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to find a charm holder, I did plan to use this in the original design but just couldn’t get my hands on one. If I wasn’t a bloke I would love to wear this but people might think I’m a big girls blouse as they say which there’s nothing wrong with but I have a reputation to pretend to have lol. Will have to look into designing a manly version! OK back onto the subject matter. The good thing I like about this bracelet is the person detail you can have on it, A name of a loved one or a special date in time that means so much. My favourite  is inspirational words because my niece is at university and for her last birthday I made her a gold and silver rings bracelet with three charms which had the words believe,dream and inspire just to give her a little boost when she finds it tough going. OK that’s enough waffle from me at the moment.

Well what a wonderful Royal wedding we had the  privilege of watching. Thought the occasion was fantastic with the large crowds that gathered up and down the wedding route. I was trying to see what jewellery was on show and I have to say there wasn’t that much and to be honest some of the guests pieces were dreadful, should have shopped with us! lol. Right now to our new product, might as well join the bandwagon and make a piece to coincide with the wedding. This is a personalised necklace for all those girls who would love to be the next princess. We are currently working on a range for this piece but in the meantime would like to see how this takes with our customers before we commit to other pieces which we are very confident in as with past history. We decided to make a simple piece to begin with which started with a sterling silver disc which measures 16mm in diameter and 1mm thick. We then etched the word princess and a picture of a crown which will be standard and then the name of your choice in this case we choose Kate for obvious reasons. The disc hangs from a beautiful bail which makes it more elegant and appealing and finally we  have given the option of having an Amethyst or Rose Quartz gemstone to sit along side a luscious white pearl.

Well here we are again another week that is just flying right by. Not doing as much blogging as I would like lately due to our two young boys that seem to be eating up our time. We have got lots of ideas and designs made or in the pipeline so its looking good for the future, Anyway lets get down to this blog which is about our bestselling Birds nest necklace and earrings. We have had a few designs of bracelets jotted down on paper for such a long time but as normal haven’t got round to seriously putting anything together, that was until we had a customer who wanted the necklace and earrings for her wedding but also a bracelet so we got down to work on designing a bracelet and these are two of final design drafts that we came up although it give us so many more. As you can see the first bracelet is designed for the more elegant look, very dainty not overpowering but just enough to have an effect when you are walking down the aisle. The second bracelet is a a dangle piece that is still very elegant but a a little more noticeable when walking along as the pearls swing around. All the pearls we used are very high quality with great luster and very few marks if any at all. We used a diamond belcher chain which gives it that dainty elegant look although I have tried it on a real thick chunky chain and it looks great so there’s another design for the future. Its amazing how many designs you can come up with when you have the same few materials.  Although I’ am a man and some women would say I haven’t a clue about weddings LOL, but I personally like women when they have all major jewellery pieces on by that I mean earrings,necklace and bracelet. I have seen numerous wedding photo’s were the bride just wears one or two pieces or even none and to me it just doesn’t look right, It can look lop-sided or incomplete but hey that’s just my opinion. OK enough of the wedding lecture  I’ll get off my soap box now.

Well we finally decided on our new boxes and gift wrap so we can tick one job off the list! The boxes we had before were only in stock for a year as the company we buy from has a range that they make each year but only lasts that time period so we had to find new packaging which wasn’t easy. We had the sales rep come round to the house so we could have a look at the boxes in the flesh and that’s where it got time consuming and different opinions came into view lol. I never thought chosen boxes would be so energy sapping my head hurt with all the activity going on. We finally agreed between us on a lovely black imitation range with a beautiful burgundy/purple satin foulard which looks fantastic together. Overall this just adds more quality and elegance to our ever growing business which is heading in the right direction.

Well this is only my second day back I decided to take an extra week off to recharge my batteries. I thought one of the first things I should do is get blogging again as I haven’t been able to due to work and time off. I would just like to say to all our customers thank you very much for buying from us we have had record sales for last year and over the xmas period it was just mad. Its funny how things work out as our two best sellers were our two newest products which were our personalised golf ball markers and our personalised children’s bracelet.We are looking forward to the year ahead as we have some new designs ready to go just waiting for some good weather so we can take some pictures. We also have some great new design ideas in the pipeline just hope we get time to make them!

Thought I would sneak in a quick blog while my kettle is boiling. What a day I haven’t stopped all day due to the volume of children’s bracelets that have been selling like hot potatoes. If I knew they would be this popular I would have made them years ago LOL.