Horse Hair Jewellery Giveaway

I have been making horse hair jewellery for quite some time now and thought it was time to bring out a new range of jewellery for the horse owner. Unlike the traditional braided horse hair jewellery, my jewellery actually uses very little hair; approximately one to two inches of hair the thickness of a pencil is more than sufficient for any of my pendant designs.

Personalised Horse Hair Jewellery

For my new range of horse hair jewellery I am looking to use longer strands of hair to incorporate into my designs. And this is the reason for the giveaway. If you are a horse owner, or know of a horse owner who can supply me with a few (maybe six) strands of tail hair (approximately twelve inches long and preferably dark in colour), I will then send you the finished prototype piece of jewellery that I make with it free as a thank you!

I will only be making one prototype for my new range of horse hair jewellery and therefore will be selecting at random the winner of the giveaway (assuming more than one person enters that is!).

The rules of this giveaway are simple. If possible please follow this blog (Using the ‘Join this site’ button located on the right of the page). Then leave a comment on this blog, maybe letting me know why you would like a piece of my horse hair jewellery and how I can contact you if you are the winner.

Horse Hair Jewellery

This giveaway will end at midday on the 11th November 2011 (which incidentally is my wife’s birthday). Good Luck!

Mick

Jewellery Made from Recycled Fabric Remnants

I do not know where the time has gone but it was last spring when I mentioned that I had been making jewellery made from recycled fabric. At the time I asked if anybody had small off-cuts of fabric that could be donated to me for my jewellery making, and the lovely Lynda of ‘Bags of Swank by SimJaTa’ came to my rescue. She sent me a huge pile of fabric remnants with some very gorgeous designs and I have finally got around to making some pendants with them.

Two pieces of fabric caught my eye in particular and the first is this ladybird fabric with foliage and small daisies. The ladybird fabric has been encased within a teardrop shaped resin pendant and has been backed by green coloured resin to compliment the colour of the foliage. The pendant has been given a Shpangle sparkle with a small amount of glitter dust.

Ladybird fabric necklace

The second fabric remnant is this one with pink flowers and a lovely cheeky looking bee. The pendant has been backed by pink resin and given the usual sparkle.

Bumble bee fabric necklace

I must start making more pendants with the fabric off-cuts that Lynda gave to me. The fabric is gorgeous and will look lovely made into some pendants; I also have an idea to make some of it into handmade buttons.

Mick

List of Messages Found on Love Heart Sweets

No, I am not currently going through some strange kind of mid life crisis by having a fascination with love heart sweet messages; there is honestly a serious reason why I would want to make a list of the messages found on love hearts sweets, so please continue reading and you may be able to help me!

I am often asked to incorporate love heart sweets into my jewellery and more often than not I am asked to include specific love heart sweet messages. I then encase the sweets within resin and they are transformed into pendants and charms. When I am asked to incorporate sweets with specific messages (for example this week when I was asked to make a pair of love heart sweet cufflinks); if I don’t have the requested message in my collection I need to purchase several tubes of the sweets!

Love Heart Sweet Necklace

These regular visits to the local shops to buy tubes of love heart sweets has resulted in a rather large collection of the sweets (and strange looks from shop assistants). Ok I admit that I have eaten quite a few...alright lots of them but still have bags and bags of them. So to help with future orders I thought it was necessary to catalogue the sweets and provide a list of the different love heart sweet messages in my collection.

The following list contains the different love heart sweet messages in my collection. I will keep this list updated whenever I receive new additions:

 

All Mine - Guess Who - Lush Lips

Angel Face - Happy Birthday - Make Up

Be Good - Hard Luck - My All

Be Mine - Heart Desire - My Angel

Best Mate - Heart Throb - My Boy

Bless You - Hello - My Girl

Blue Eyes - Hi Baby - My Hero

Bye Bye - Hold Me - My Ideal

Canny Lad - How Nice - Neat

Catch Me - Hug Me - New Love

Chase Me - Hunk - Oh Boy

Cheeky Boy - I Hope - Only You

Cheeky Boy - I Love You - Real Love

Cheer Up - I Spy - Relax

Cool Dude - I Surrender - Say Yes

Cool Kid - In Love - Smile

Crazy - I'm Shy - Spoil Me

Cuddle Me - Its Love - Sweet Heart

Cute Kid - Its True - Sweet Kiss

Dear One - I Want U - Sweet You

Dishy - Just Me - Take It Easy

Dream Boy - Keep Cool - Text Me

Dream Girl - Kiss Me - Too Much

Dream On - Lets Dance - True Love

E Mail - Lets Kiss - Try Me

Ever Yours - Like You - Wicked

Find Me - Little Kiss - Will You

First Love - Looking Good - Wow

For Ever - Love Bug - Yes Dear

For Keeps - Love Heart - You and I

Funny Face - Love You - You Win

Good Pals - Lover - You're Fab

Great Guy - Luck Lips - You're Gorgeous

Grow Up - Lucky Lips - You're Mine

Yours

And this is where you can help. I want to create a ‘wish list’ of messages that you think would be appropriate and would like to see on love heart sweets. I will then add them to a list here.

Mick

Taking Inspiration from Beacon Hill Country Park

Last Sunday we spent a lovely day at Beacon Hill Country Park in the heart of Leicestershire. Beacon Hill is located in Charnwood Forest and has a lovely combination of woodland walks, ponds, grassland and Beacon Hill itself which is the second highest point in Leicestershire. We had a lovely picnic and sat on top of Beacon Hill (which was once a Bronze Age hill fort), taking in the surrounding views whilst our little boy climbed the many rocks.

We began our walk around the Beacon Hill Country Park and our first observation was an amusing sight of this tree that was just refusing to give up...

Beacon Hill Tree

Continuing on our walk we came across this wonderful rock formation and commented how the profile was similar to a face. Later we discovered that it was in fact known as The Old Man of Beacon Hill!

Old man of Beacon Hill

We stopped at the natural play area, a secluded area created in 2010 with timber grown at Beacon Hill. Here we discovered many wooden sculptures, a maze and even a wooden train that we pretended to drive around the park.

Beacon Hill wood sculpture

We then continued our walk through the beacon plantations to the native tree collection. In 1994 8,000 trees were planted in the park with representatives of the 28 species of trees and shrubs native to the British Isles. We managed to get ourselves a little lost in this area and after finally making our way out walked back to the 802ft summit of Beacon Hill.

Beacon Hill plantations

The fantastic landscape and views around Beacon Hill Country Park gave me the inspiration to make a couple of pendants this week. The first is my interpretation of where the sky meets the sea. Not that there is much sea around Beacon Hill, in fact it couldn’t be further from the sea; but there was plenty of blue sky to look at and that was the inspiration behind this piece.

Blue sea and sky necklace

The second pendant was inspired by the random patchwork of colours around Beacon Hill. From the colours of the trees and heath land to the views of far away buildings and fields; this was the inspiration behind this item. The pendant was actually formed by encasing small fragments of sea glass within the resin pendant. The photo does not really do the pendant justice as the fizziness and details of the sea glass within the pendant is quite beautiful.

Random sea glass necklace

A visit to Leicestershire wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Beacon Hill Country Park, the views are breath taking and each time you visit you are guaranteed to discover something new.

Mick

Jewellery Donated to the Acorn Centre Charity Auction

Yes it is your opportunity to bid on an item of my jewellery that I have recently donated to a fabulous charity auction and help a great cause.

I was very happy this week to donate an item of jewellery for a local charity auction to be held later this month. The charity auction is being held by the Acorn Centre (www.acorncentrenuneaton.co.uk) a small Nuneaton registered Charity which has been working for over 16 years offering a specialist pregnancy counselling service for women and men for issues relating to miscarriage and fertility problems. They also offer young people's counselling too to help with issues such as depression and anxiety etc.

The organisers are trying to get some interesting prizes together and thought it would be great if they could include some individual and unique pieces from local artists. So I have donated a custom made name on rice pendant to the auction.

Name on rice jewellery

The Acorn Centre is one of the only charities in the local area that offer the specialist pregnancy counselling support and all of their counsellors and administrators are volunteers. They really need more funds to enable them to keep helping people in the community so anything you could do to help would be much appreciated.

The auction is the charity's first major fundraising event and will be on Friday 21 October at the Rugby Club in Nuneaton (tickets are £3 and there's a live band on the night too.

Please join me in helping this charity by either donating a handmade item or you can come along on the night and make a bid for my necklace or one of the many unique gifts on offer.

Acorn Centre Nuneaton

For anybody who is ever given the opportunity to offer their handmade goods or services to help a charity such as this please do it. My personal experience from doing this has meant that I have already had mentions in various local newspapers, will have great product exposure on the night and I will have the satisfaction of helping a great cause.

Mick