Resin Jewellery – Disposable Latex Protective Gloves

As any resin jewellery maker knows we get through lots of disposable latex gloves used for protecting our hands whilst working with resin. Just like all the stirring sticks and measuring cups used in making resin jewellery, they are all used once and then disposed of. I am always on the lookout for inexpensive but good quality protective gloves and when I recently discovered some for sale at a very reasonable price at my local Hinckley market I obviously bought them; little did I know of the problems and potential safety issues that purchase was going to cause.

Hinckley market is a bustling and award winning market with plenty of quality produce on offer and I quite rightly assumed that my new protective gloves were going to be fit for purpose. How wrong was I, the first few pairs that I plucked from the container just didn’t fit; I have a pretty much average hand size for a man and these protective gloves were marked ‘large’, but I couldn’t get the gloves over my fingers let alone my hand.

Protective Latext Gloves

Thinking it was me and that my hands must have had a growth spurt over night, I investigated the rest of the container. Out of the 100 pairs of disposable gloves, approximately one quarter of them actually fit and the rest were a mixture of smaller sizes. Looking at the gloves closer I also found small holes present around the fingers; most certainly a safety hazard when working with dangerous substances like resin.

But the scariest thing I found on a pair of protective gloves near to the bottom of the container was this...

Faulty Disposable Gloves

There were faces drawn onto the palms of the gloves, how scary is that!

I contacted the manufacturer of the gloves who confirmed that they ‘had a batch of Nitrile gloves delivered in 2010 which were of a very poor quality. We in fact threw this container of gloves away but unfortunately they were then reclaimed by someone who now sells them at market stalls and car boot sales and we have no control over this at all. This is a nuisance because it de-values our brand.’

So the moral of this blog post is that if you are looking to purchase items that are there to protect your health, please purchase them from a reputable supplier. Also avoid purchasing the Nitrile disposable gloves (pictured below) from market stalls or car boot sales.

Disposable Nitrile Gloves

I wrote an article a while back about resin jewellery making and general guidelines to be followed for staying safe here: Resin Jewellery Making - Safety Precautions and Equipment.

Personalised Horse Hair Jewellery

I thought I would blog a little about my horse hair jewellery, mainly because I haven’t mentioned it for a while and I am currently making quite a lot of it! I really do love working with horse and pony hair, not only because of the great sentimental value for the owner but also because of the fantastic effects that can be achieved from it.

Would you believe that the horse hair pendants that have the criss-cross effect that I make take between five and seven days to complete. The pendant is built up in four layers and I individually place each hair in turn, creating a three-dimensional effect by having several strands of horse hair on each layer.

I have quite often been asked to make my resin horse hair jewellery a little bit more personalised for the horse and owner. This has sometimes been quite a challenge but very rewarding.

Sometimes I colour the horse hair pendant to represent the horses cross county colours or stable colours:

Coloured horse hair jewellery

I have also included other small items to the jewellery such as flowers or tiny confetti stars:

Horse hair jewellery with stars

On other occasions I have even included glitter and seed beads to give the horse hair jewellery a totally different look:

Personalised horsehair jewellery

Sometimes I am asked to include the horse’s name with the jewellery. This has previously been achieved by having a separate silver charm engraved with the name or even engraved onto my silver pendants themselves.

But a recent blog post about my Photo Jewellery gave me the idea of including the horse’s name within the pendant itself, and this has been quite popular. Obviously I am restricted to the number of characters I can have but so far I have been lucky! I use the silver or gold peel-offs to represent the name and it really does look lovely and three-dimensional suspended within the pendant.

Horse Hair Name Jewellery

  So there is my latest array of horse hair jewellery, complete with colour, names and other items to make it a little bit more personalised to the horse and owner, I hope you like it!

If you would like to see more examples of my horse and pony jewellery please visit my horse hair jewellery website page.

Mick

My Favourite Flowers & Real Flower Jewellery

I hope everyone is enjoying all this lovely weather that we have been experiencing. On a personal note, I think it has made me realise that I am a winter kind of guy! It must be all the years of living on a Narrowboat but I much prefer a cold winter’s day. I loved snuggling up in front of the wood-burning stove and having the towpaths to ourselves and then taking the boat out breaking through the ice (and not having to avoid hire-boats filled with drunken boaters having very little respect for nature and other people).

Apart from the overcrowded and litter strewn country parks and the smell of half-cooked meat drifting over from next door’s barbeque, a warm spring day does have some lovely points for me. Nature comes to life after having a rest over the winter months. Baby animals are born and beautiful flowers start to appear in celebration.

A couple of days ago my daughter asked me ‘what is my favourite flower?’ Without question I answered the following; so in no particular order my three favourite flowers are...

1) The Daisy

Such a simple and innocent flower that speaks volumes to me about what summer time is all about. Sitting in a meadow making daisy chains is my idea of a lovely day out.

Daisy flowers

2) Forget-me-nots

Beautiful flowers that I am happy to seed all over the garden if they want too! I also like for folklore and legends behind the flowers (especially the one about the knight who picked a posy of flowers whilst walking with his lady, fell into the river, started to drown and threw the posy to his lady shouting “Forget-me-not”.

Forget-me-not flowers

3) The Dandelion

A flower that looks like a ball of sunshine, the Dandelion has its rightful place in my top three flowers...I really resent mowing the lawn when I see them growing out of the grass.

Dandelion flowers

So they are my top three flowers, I would love to hear what your favourite flowers are?

You may remember that last year I produced a few pendants and necklaces containing real flowers. Well, this year I have quite a few planned and have already started to press flowers in readiness for some new items of jewellery...in fact I am now taking a small flower press with me whenever I go out!

Daisy flower bracelet

If you would like to see some of the real flower jewellery that I made over the last year, please visit my real flower jewellery website page.

Personalised Photo Jewellery – 21st Birthday Gifts

Hi all, I haven’t really planned anything to blog about this week so I thought I would show off a custom jewellery order that I completed last week. I was asked to make some pieces of personalised photo jewellery for a lady to give as a gift to her sister for her 21st birthday.

The request was for a pair of earrings containing photographs of her sister as a baby and a more recent shot. And this is what I came up with; the photographs have been set within sterling silver oval -shaped pendant bezels on sterling silver fishhook earrings.

Personalised Photo Jewellery

...and this is how I made them; I took the digital photograph and scaled it down to suit the size of the pendant.

Photo jewellery design

I then took a template of the pendant and removed the unwanted area surrounding the oval. I then superimposed the oval shaped photograph over a photograph of the silver pendant bezel and sent it to the customer for approval.

Personalised jewellery design

The photograph was then printed and cut, placed within the pendant bezel and sealed with resin, creating a slight domed effect with the resin over the pendant. I also made this personalised pendant for her which was again a sterling silver pendant bezel with 21st encased inside with resin. I actually used letter peel-offs, the kind you use for card making to form the ‘21st’ and it is very effective and an unusual birthday gift for the young lady.

21st birthday gifts

To further personalise the pendant and earrings I engraved the back of each item with a different message, engraving the phrases ‘Happy 21st Birthday’, ‘11th March 2011’ and ‘Love Eva & Hannah’ onto the backs of the jewellery.

Personalised & engraved jewellery

If you would like to find out more about my photo jewellery, how it is made and the types of jewellery that I offer, please visit my personalised photo jewellery website page.

My new rainbow peelable window decoration

Last week I was extremely lucky to win a blog giveaway by Ali’s Craft Studio and I got to choose one of her wonderful handmade peelable window decorations, and it has just arrived!

Peelable Rainbow Window Decoration

Although I was spoilt for choice when looking around her website, the window decoration that really did beckon me was her ‘rainbow and cloud’ decoration. It is lovely and bright and happy; I have always had a big thing about rainbows and have many dotted around house in various places. Recently I spent some time looking through my old primary school pictures to find the majority of them I had drawn a rainbow!

So the question is where do I put my new rainbow?

Do I put it in the rather dull bathroom to brighten up the tiles?

Peelable rainbow decoration for tiles

... or do I put it onto the mirrored wardrobe doors in the bedroom? (hehe just noticed teddy has his head in the clouds).

Peelable rainbow decoration for mirrors

... I think for now I will put it on our front room window so that every time I look out I can see a rainbow in the sky.

Peelable rainbow decoration for windows

The beauty about Ali’s peelable window decorations is that they are moveable, so whenever I want a change I can do just that. Having said that I might just go and purchase a few more so that I can have rainbows all over the house and car!

Please go and have a look at the handmade peelable window decorations made by Ali on her website.

Daily Mail Feature and Jasmine Harman Necklace

It has been a hectic but extremely enjoyable week at Shpangle Jewellery. I woke up yesterday to find my website stats had gone through the roof, and after a little investigation found my lock of hair keepsake jewellery had been featured in the Daily Mail newspaper! Not only had I been featured in the online article titled The art of pregnancy: The weird and wonderful ways modern mothers are celebrating having a baby I was also in the paper copy (page22) if anybody still has it. As a result I spent yesterday and much of today answering phone calls and emails from potential customers of my keepsake jewellery.

Daily Mail Shpangle Feature

And it doesn’t stop at the Daily Mail; it appears that several newspapers around Europe also ran a similar article with references back to my website so I have been a busy boy! The other news is that I was asked last week to make a name on rice necklace for the lovely TV presenter Jasmine Harman who amongst other things presents the Channel 4 program ‘A place in the sun – Home or Away’.

Jasmine Harman

The necklace was to be a gift for Mother’s Day and contained two grains of rice both with names on. While I was at it I made a name on rice pendant for her as well! It is a single grain of rice with her name and the glass vial has a daisy fused on the outside; I included a little glitter as well and here it is:

Jasmine Harman Necklace

So far this year Shpangle Jewellery has been in a Movie, had a Radio Interview and now a newspaper article...what is next, a TV program maybe? Well, guess what...one phone call I had yesterday was from Scottish Television wanting to show my jewellery on TV, so watch this space!

Mick

Blog Giveaway! - How many letters on a grain of rice?

I was asked by Laura of 'Cards and Candles for all Occasions' recently if I would like to make her a name on rice pendant. The pendant was to contain grains of rice containing her Mums name, her Mum’s kennel club affix and her dates of birth and passing. Everything sounded fine and then I counted the number of letters in her Mums name – nine eek! I haven’t previously managed to write more than eight letters onto a single side of a grain of rice before. But then the more I thought about it, the more I concluded that I had probably restricted myself to that number because I just haven’t been asked to write more, and I am always up for a challenge!

Name on Rice Jewellery

I found writing nine letters onto a grain of rice was relatively easy and felt I could even go for more! But writing on both sides of a grain of rice still proves to be quite a challenge, in fact to some extent I find writing on both sides of a grain of rice more challenging than the writing itself. It is a psychological challenge of knowing that I am writing onto the back of a grain of rice that has already had successfully completed writing.

I made two pendants for Laura, the first contained three grains of rice with her mums name on one grain, kennel club affix on the second grain and the third grain with the dates written onto both sides of the grain of rice.

The second pendant (as seen below) contained a single grain with her mother’s name and a tiny red flower.

Name on rice necklace

Blog Giveaway

To Celebrate 150 blog followers I have decided to do a Blog giveaway and here it is: I have decided to set myself a target this year. I want to get all the letters of the alphabet onto a single grain of rice, and here is where you can win my giveaway. Firstly follow my blog and then place your bets (by commenting on this blog post) on how many letters I will achieve (the closest guess will get a little gift from me at the end of the year). Duplicate correct entries will be decided by the ‘drawn out of the hat’ method and sorry you have to wait so long for your prize...but I hope it is worth it and it will make an unexpected present at the end of the year!

If you are interested I have put together a small tutorial with advice and a few tips for writing names on a grain of rice. It can be found here: How to make name on rice jewellery.