So we are back from our little break to the coast which had plenty of Easter showers as is the case sitting here now back at home writing this blog. Hope your all enjoying your two weeks off apart from the weather and are not as bad as me at nibbling the kids chocolate eggs, I do have a sweet tooth or two! Well as the weather is not to good you can’t really take the kids and a furry dog anywhere so it’s more of there you go, Playstation or Hudl well here’s both keep yourself entertained while Daddy does a little work, Well that’s my plan. With summer coming up we all want to wear something with a bit of color in it and girls just love bright colors so here is our new personalized bar friendship bracelet  This bracelet is made with silky nylon mix just like our other girls range it’s lovely and bright and gives off a wonderful sparkle when the sunny weather is out. You have many colors to choose from as you can see in the image, You can have a wacky combination or stick to your favourite color the choice is yours or maybe Mum and Dad’s. So we have mocked these bracelets up with names but you can have what text you like just as long as it fits! As you can see we have offered you the choice of an image after your personalization but you don’t have to have it but looks rather cute. So we sized and cut the silver ourselves as we do, We feel it’s the right size but just let us know if you want a change. It’s 24mm long by 6mm wide and we have cut elegant incisions if incisions can look elegant but it makes the overall bracelet look fab anyway. To finish off the look we have added sterling silver balls to give it a more quality look and just enhances the look of the bracelet. Girls will love this bracelet even if they are buying it for a BF so with all said and done another piece of IndiviJewel jewellery to add to our ever growing collection of goodies for you. I hope to be back on the journal later this week as I have my summer special to write about so enjoy the last few days of Easter and till the next time don’t be like the rest be an IndiviJewel!

So onto our new necklace, We have been thinking hard to what we could add to our secrets range, something different, something new and exciting, something unique that’s how we like to roll – being different! So out of the ideas we had written down we decided on the Teardrop! I know the teardrop is not new but tears are used everyday in real life for a variation of reasons, Laughter, Joy, Love, Saddness so we thought that a tear is just as meaningful as a heart so we thought for the first addition to the secrets range we thought this went hand in hand with the secret heart range. Now to start with we cut out the length of sterling silver we needed for this one with the text we were going to use but like the secret heart you can have it smaller or bigger depending on the size of your text. So the next step was to etch the text onto the silver which if any of you know takes a little time but well worth it for the results. Now the next bit is the tricky part, Trying to shape it! I have a little scrap heap pile going on in the workshop. Now it may look a simple shape but it does take a little bit of time to achive this especially as its all made by hand, Any little wrong bend takes the whole piece go off course and it’s start again to which I have the evidence on my work bench. Doesn’t help when you have no patience like me and try to rush things! Once the shape is right the next step is to solder the two ends together which again sounds simple but what you don’t want to happen is for the solder to drop off and go in your text as this also adds to the scrap pile, Yes this also happened! but like the old saying goes you learn by your mistakes. As you can see by the picture we soldered it a fair way down the design just before the bend comes into play and there is two reasons for this. The first is that it gives it a lot more solid look from the top of the teardrop to make it more visual and basically gives it more definition and a more tear like shape. The second point is you need the soldered ends to be very solid so when you drill your hole for the chain it will not come apart – very important lol. Now the hole is a simple part to this necklace but it’s where you drill it that makes the difference, We could have drilled it right at the top so it gives it a longer look but we thought it looked best drilled half way down the join, Just gives it a more classy look with the top of the drop above the snake chain. The last two steps are to give it a damm good hand polish and bung it in the tumbler for an hour or so and there you have it a Personalised sterling silver teardrop shaped necklace. Now on to the next piece!

Personalised cufflinks! All the rage at the moment so we thought we would add our new personalised Tie shaped cufflinks to the mix! With Christmas round the corner we have been working on a range of  Tie shaped mens accessories which include our new personalised Tie shaped collar stiffeners and our new personalised Tie shaped Tie slide.  We thought this would be a refreshing new design to offer potential customers who seem to have the choice of the same style of cufflink offered by anyone and everyone due to the fact that everybody jumps on the band wagon and just copies designers work (Like us) I have to admit it really gets under my skin these people who call themselves “jewellery designers” when infact all they do is copy other people’s hard work. Anyway we offer these cufflinks in two fonts at thre moment, A children’s handwriting and a more elegant font but are looking to sell these with the customers handwriting (Signature cufflinks) as having checked out other companies offering this option and they are completely ripping people off in my opinion so we feel we will offer a better quality of product and a better service for a much better price.

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 that was a really quick two weeks since the last post! Unreal where does the time go? Well it’s very late or is that very early? in the morning but I really wanted to get this blog on as we are off in a few hours for a little break to the coast. I have lots of blogs to catch up on so I will be working backwards with some of our designs that are already out  but we have some nice stories to tell so hopefully I can catch up with the old ones and then get on to the here and now of Indivijewels and to the future. One of our latest designs has really taken off with you guys out there and that’s our personalised silver secret heart necklace We designed this necklace for all occasions in mind but have been inundated with wedding orders of late which we are so pleased about. The fact that  brides are choosing to wear our jewellery on their big day fills us with pride and joy and well to honest we feel pretty humble as some of the messages are so lovely to read it’s a privilege to make them. We really love this necklace and are currently working on expanding the range with different variations, We have some difficult designs in mind for new necklaces so cross fingers we can make them work but we are also working on bangles, Rings, Bracelets.  We also made a pair of earrings to go with the necklace which can be left plain or you can personalise them with a small message if you wanted. OK I’m running on fumes now! I will probably re-write this when I get back as it’s more than likely gobbledygook anyway! lol.  Hope to get some new inspiration while I’m away for some new designs, So I can add them to the hundreds of designs still on paper lol but hey it’s always good to keep busy and keep the mind ticking over with new, unique and fresh designs. And YES at last the new website is underway!!! Hallelujah AND  the new workshop is nearly ready, Well it’s got four walls and a roof well maybe not. Iv’e got a really sweet story for my next blog so till the next time, Hopefully just over a weeks time.

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!

Evening all, I see we are back to the normal British summer time with all the rain. I think I am having one of those periods in life when things continue to go wrong if that’s the right word. I have been laid up for the past week with a  very sore back thanks to my little boy in which i have not been able to do any work up until yesterday when i managed to get a full day in the workshop and finish a few projects i had going  which is very rare for me or Sue as we have our 2 year old son to look after and the fact that Sue is 7 months pregnant so time is a little short. Well that’s enough of the sob story and back to the jewellery,  I managed to make the necklace and earrings to go with the new pearl and gemstone bracelet which is made with freshwater pearls,aquamarine rondelles and blue iolite mystic quartz and which is on our front page of the website so please check it out. I have no photo’s to show you I am sorry to say but with all the bad weather and my bad back i haven’t been able to get outside which is how i like to take my pictures if possible as jewellery looks so much better in natural sunlight but even that doesn’t do the gemstone jewellery justice.  I also finished off one of my wedding/bridal necklace and bracelet combo’s again i have no photo’s but hope to show them tomorrow. I have also nearly finished my necklace and earrings to go with my fairy-dust bracelet which is made with rose quartz onion briolettes, pink mystic topaz and white freshwater pearls but i must have been having another off day as i ordered the wrong size rose quartz which is what i have been waiting on and because i buy most of my luxury gemstones abroad it takes time to see if i can get them and then get them shipped. We have been working on a new personalised bracelet which should be ready for photo’s sometime this week and hopefully we will have it for sale on the website as well as i think its a lovely piece and i cannot wait to get it on. Its pretty hard to write about jewellery when you do not have the photo’s to show people as your describing it so i will finish there for tonight and hopefully be back blogging tomorrow with some pics, But i will leave you with a few of our holiday pics so i bid you bonne nuit.

I cannot believe our last post was on March 11th, We have had a few problems with the new website and all the technical things that go with it, as in fixing one problem and another one turns up but that’s all in the past know (I hope). As well as all this going on me,my wife and my nearly 2 year old son have all been ill and basically all the work piled up with the admin side of it as well as making orders and new designs. We did get back on track a month ago but we were then getting ready for our holiday so again no time to blog. We have just got back from three great weeks in Brittany where we have recharged our batteries and are ready to get back on track so lets talk about jewellery and what has been happening since we last blogged. We have decided to change our most popular piece at the moment which is the personalised necklace and have made it look even better as you can see in the photo. To begin with we have changed the heart and added this beautiful one which makes the design come together alot more. We also changed the birthstones from swarovski crystals to AAA gemstones and decided to give the oval name tags a high polish look to them and then finally we have changed the chain to a slightly thicker one so overall its had a complete makeover which we are very pleased with as its not easy to change a good product and to make it better. This new design will be ready for sale in the next day or two just need to get some good photo’s . I have lots of new ideas and lots of old ones that i need to have a look at and i know Sue has a few of her own so hopefully we will be sharing  alot more with you starting later today. I feel like this is my first blog after so long away but i feel i have accomplished a good deed and now feel better for it as everybody knows the longer you leave things the harder it becomes to get going again even if it is so late in the night. That’s me for now so bonne nuit.

Tried another ‘etched in relief’ idea – this time with the words spiralling around a central raised heart.  I took rather a lot of fiddling around to get the text flowing around the circle but I really like the end result.  We are offering this as a personalised necklace so you can use the words of your choice to create a really meaningful gift.  Some suggestions include a special song title, part of your wedding vows or children’s names.  I will be doing some more variations of this necklace as I have a few more ideas I want to try out so watch this space!

I would like to say a big thank you to all our customers who purchased pieces from us.  Each year we are selling more and more of our jewellery so it’s nice to know we are heading in the right direction. The personalised items were our best sellers and we are working hard on a number of new personalised pieces for this year as well as some new and exciting  gemstone jewellery. I have some new AAA gemstones arriving in the next few days so I’m looking forward to that. With Valentine’s Day just round the corner we are working hard to get some new pieces out in time, but time is the problem as you think you are  just  getting on top of things and then it’s all systems go and so far behind again!  Suzanne and I wish everybody a Happy New Year and hope to make our customers happy with some new designs.