It's time to get all loved up for Valentines Day.

Valentines now has a bit of a reputation of being classed as a Hallmark Holiday since greetings cards became more and more popular but when you go back to it's roots you see that it traditionally started with handmade decleratoins of love in the form of handwritten notes.

Valentines Cards became popular in 1847 when Esther Howland began making handmade cards and developed a rather sucsessful business because of it. Now cards and other gifts are given and recived by billions world wide.

Now all types of Valentines Gifts are purchased including jewellery, flowers, artwork and are not limited to things that would be considered more traditional like those mentioned above.

Handmade Gifts are considered to be more personal than store bought items because of their individuality and unique looks. Care and dedication from an artisan is equal to the love you share with your beloved making handmade the best gift to give.

Image curtosy of inspyretash-stock

Gaining Inspiration

  To design an artisan piece, being jewellery or whatever you are creating, inspiration is a key element. Today we are looking at finding that inspiration to begin the design process, this article looks at methods such as looking at work from others and scrap booking to developing signature styles in order to help translate that inspiration into your own pieces. Since I am a jewellery artisan I will be mentioning jewellery a lot, though you can apply the ideas to any craft.


Take a look around

  As an artisan you will need to be able to draw inspiration from everything around you, everything we see can inspire even the smallest idea though to begin with it is easier to draw your inspiration from existing products.
  There are many places that you can find jewellery, high street stores often all have a selection, if you are drawn more to vintage styles rather than the modern trends, visit a museum with a jewellery exhibition. These two methods are fantastic as a starting point as seeing the piece in person helps you to understand how the piece was made, where possible take a sketch book with you to jot down ideas.
  Secondly you are sat in front of the largest collection of jewellery you will ever see, the internet. You can approach the internet in two ways, google or manual searching. Google images will show you a vast selection of pieces, the only drawback is there are no real details of the piece. If you prefer go and find yourself some sites with areas dedicated to jewellery where you can also search key words to your tastes.

Scrap booking

 Making your own scrap book is a fantastic way to collate those things that inspire you most. Get yourself a sketchbook and every time you see an inspirational picture on the internet, print it, stick it onto it's own page and add annotations regarding things such as the form, colours and key words about what draws you to the piece. Do the same with images from magazines or even postcards.


Developing a Signature Style Phrase

Signature style phrases are the final part of your inspiration, these small paragraphs of information help transform something that you have seen into a piece you can call your own by combining them with the other methods mentioned.
Remember when you were at school, asked to write a list of adjectives that best described you so that you could later transfer them into sentences for your C.V/Resume, this is very much a similar exercise.
Take a look around your home, the décor, the clothes in your wardrobe and write a list of keywords that best describe your tastes.
"eg. Ethnic, Colourful, Neutral, Classic, Contemporary."
Next write any countries, periods in time or artists/styles that inspire you or you have elements of in your home.
"eg. Asian, Victorian, Bauhaus."
Lastly, you need to look inside and write what motivates you, be honest as this provides you with a basic foundation for your designs.
"eg. Adventure, Power, Change, Individual, Aesthetics."
Once you have your list take a look through it and highlight the words you think are the most important to you, or you could have a friend do this part for you.


You can now use these key words to develop your Signature style phrase.
"I am a contemporary woman with an earthy and casual style, who uses Bohemian influences to create my modern, individual jewellery designs."

Image courtsey of SightlessStock

As women we have days where we need to break the routine of the general day to day and give ourselves a little treat. Unfortunatly the current economy means those 'little treats' need to be either free or at as little cost as possible. The other truth is that we just generally don't have the time. We will say to ourselves 'I will do something next week', which turns into next month and by the time we do get a chance to wind down we are too exusted to do anything about it.

Let me share with you a few little things you can do to give yourself that well deserved treat without taking up to much of our valuable time or resources. Pick whatever appeals to you, your mood may tell you what you need just to lift your spirits and add a little extra bounce to your day.

• Invite a friend over and jump rope or play hopscotch.
• Go pet the dogs at your local animal shelter.
• Before you use your towels pop them in the dryer so they are lovely and warm.
• Put on your favourite shoes no matter how old they are and even if they don't match your outfit.
• Go for a train ride, absolutely anywhere.
• Go to the river or a pond and throw stones trying to skim them across the water. 
• Feed the ducks
• Drink your juice out of a champaign flute
• Make some cards and send surprise notes to your best friends
• Make s'mores

Go on have some fun just for yourself today.

Image courtesy of rioalba

After a few false starts and a bout of weather that made it to cold to go into the room that hosts my torch set up tonight I finally got to have a go at attempting to make a lampwork bead.


The excitment was mounting as I tried to light the torch, so much that I nearly couldn't get it lit properly. Eventually though I had a lovely flame going and I could get my hands on the glass.


I chose to start with a pale green, one of my favourite colours, got it heated and had a lovely blob ready to go onto the mandrel. Carefully wrapping it round and turning there was a big grin on my face as I cut the glass away from the rod.


I got the bead into it's rough shape and thought I didn't want to stop there so I took a stringer of a translucent green and wrapped that around the center of the bead. After I had turned the translucent green into the bead I brought the mandrel up vertically to make the teardrop shape. Once I was happy with that I brought it back up the flame to start cooling.


The hour that the bead spent in the vermiculite was the hardest I really wanted to look at the bead and touch it. (Just keep telling yourself you can look soon.)


Success I finally got to look at my bead and I am so happy with it. The shape isn't perfect but I wasn't expecting anything truly amazing to come yet.


So here's to many more. It's a fantastic craft and now I am looking at ideas to wrap this bead into a pendant.


The bead measures 15x10mm approx. got to start small and work your way up :)

Every had too many questions and not know where to start looking? This is a big FAQ guide to questions I see alot of in the forums with links to where you can find more information.


How do I post Images in the forums?
With the new forums changes were made making the process simplier. If you got used to the old system it isn't that much different but you need to use the link feature to make the image clickable rather than doing it all in one window.
Kevin did a fantastic guide on posting images to the forums
There are a couple of things not mentioned. You can also use HTML to insert an image which also works in the quick reply. I have a HTML guide for those wanting to look further into it.
Also chrome and safari users can not resize images in the editor window One piece of advice is to upload the image resized to photobucket or flickr and add that image but link to the listing. however you can use HTML to make the image the size you want. 
Lets say I wanted to resize a 500x500px image to 250x250px for in the forums. The code for the image would then be
<img src="imageurlhere" height="250" width="250" />
You can chage the numbers to whatever size you want but remember to keep the image proportions.


Where can I promote my studio/items?
In the forums I started compling a list of places where you can promote your items and studio.
You can find the thread here if you have any you use but is not on the list please post a reply so it can be added and everyone can benifit from knowing.

How do I edit my signature in the forums?
To add a signature or edit it you will need to click on My Settings on the left side of the Chatterbox page. You will see a box there for your signature.
Pro members can use links in their signatures, basic members can only use text.
To add your signature just type in whatever you would like it to say and click on the Save button.
To add a link you need this code.
<a href="yourlinkhere">Name for Link</a>

This FAQ will grow as I see more to add. If you have a question you would like answering please don't hesitate to send me a message.