Haribo ring wedding gifts

About a year ago I was asked to preserve a Haribo ring for a couple who recently got engaged and blogged about it here. The same lady contacted me a few weeks ago and said they were getting married soon and she wanted me to make some Haribo ring themed gifts for her to give to their wedding guests. Naturally I was very pleased to have been asked to not only preserve an important item for the couple but to be asked to supply their wedding gifts one year later is fantastic!

You may also remember on a recent blog post, that in order to find a particular coloured Haribo ring I had to eat my way through several bags of Haibo sweets to find it. Well fortunately on this occasion, the customer actually sent me the Haribo rings. I encased the Haribo sweet rings within four paperweights and several pendants for her to give to her guests; unique wedding gifts or what!

Unique wedding gifts - Haribo sweet ring gifts

Whilst on the subject of unique wedding gifts; I was also asked by another lady this week to make a pair of cufflinks for her to give to her fiancé on the big day. The cufflinks were made to contain a monogram written in the shape of a heart containing their names, and here they are:

Personalised wedding cufflinks

I just love making these unique wedding gifts for people and always feel very honoured to be asked!

Mick

Painting and Decorating - Paintbrush Pendant

At first glance you may think this is the world’s largest pendant containing a full size paintbrush. It is however probably the smallest paint brush in the world encapsulated within a resin pendant.

I was given a pleasant challenge last week by a customer who wanted a painting and decorating theme for a pendant to give to his wife. I am not entirely sure the reasons why but he ideally wanted a miniature paintbrush setting within a teardrop shaped pendant.

Painting and decorating paintbrush pendant

After much searching on the internet, a lovely Etsy store called ‘Middlemums miniatures’ came to my rescue. Carole of Middlemums miniatures produces fantastic handmade dolls house miniatures including a range of miniature painting and decorating items!

Because the paintbrush came with a separate paint can I also included an additional pendant as a gift to my customer. I added a sterling silver bail to the paint can to produce this pendant.

Paint can necklace

I am just loving encapsulating dolls house miniatures within my pendants and spending many hours searching through all the lovely items Middlemums miniatures and other similar sites have to offer.

Mick

Horse Hair Cufflinks

I had a new addition to my ever expanding range of horse hair jewellery this last week; this time it was a request for cufflinks containing horse hair. These cufflinks are to be given to the groom on his wedding day so that he can carry part of his late horse with him on their special day.

I have set small strands of the hair within resin onto sterling silver cufflinks and hope they make a special present for his wedding day and a lovely keepsake for the future.

Horse hair cufflinks

Whilst on the subject of horse hair jewellery I was also given the opportunity to make a new design of horse hair pendant this week. This design was asked for by a local customer who has had several orders from me in the past. The ‘challenge’ for this pendant was to create a loop with the horse hair and set it against a sterling silver bezel that I also engraved. I couldn’t have made this pendant without the help from my wife Angela; it really did need two pairs of hands to hold the loop in place whilst tying it and we had lots of fun making this too!

Sterling silver horse hair pendant

If you would like to see more examples of my work involving horse hair, please visit my horse hair jewellery gallery.

Mick

Haribo jelly ring in a paperweight

I had quite a lot of fun making this custom made paperweight this last week so I thought I would share it with you. You may remember a previous blog post where I showed you my Haribo jelly sweet engagement rings and mentioned I had been preserving quite a few of these rings for happy couples.

Preserved Haribo sweet engagement ring

Some people wear the Haribo rings hung from cord as necklaces and others mount them in picture frames as a keepsake for their special day. I wasn’t aware that the use of a Haribo ring as a temporary engagement ring was so common until I started making these but it is! I get requests from people all over the world and even got sent a ring this week from Australia!

Last week I was asked to preserve two Haribo rings within a resin paperweight and this was the result. I was also asked to supply the rings (which I was quite keen to do since I welcome any excuse to buy some Haribos). This proved quite a challenge though since the Haribo rings had to be specific colours. Several bags of Haribo Starmix later (and quite a full tummy), I managed to find the correct coloured rings and here they are.

Haribo jelly sweet engagement rings in a paperweight

If you would like to see more paperweights I have been making for people, please visit my custom made paperweights website page.

Mick

Daisy pendant giveaway winner is....

Many thanks for all who entered my Blog giveaway this last week; I really did enjoy reading all about what makes you Shpangle and some of the spellings of ‘Shpangle’ made me chuckle too! There was ‘Sphangle’, ‘Schpangled’ , ‘Schpangles’ and ‘Spangle’; I did pick a strange business name didn’t I!

The random name picker I used to select the winner is one by classtools.net and is in the form of a fruit machine. So I entered all your names, pulled the handle and the winner that it selected was....

Random Name Picker

Congratulations to Michele (from ‘Blog about Crafts’) and a little piece of my English garden will be making its way across the pond to you shortly. For those who don’t know, Michele lives in the USA and will be receiving one of my daisy flower pendants; the daisy flower was from my garden last summer, has been pressed and encased within a resin heart shaped pendant.

Daisy Flower Pendant

Many thanks again for everyone who entered and please keep a look out for some more giveaways coming soon!

Mick

Jewellery Giveaway – Daisy flower necklace

This week I noticed that my blog has now achieved over 200 followers! So to celebrate the occasion and to welcome the beautiful spring days (well hopefully) I am going to giveaway one of my daisy flower necklaces to one lucky follower of my blog.

Real pressed daisy flower necklace

This is a real pressed daisy flower taken from my garden and has been encased within a clear resin pendant. The rules of my jewellery giveaway are simple:

1) Firstly please follow this blog...that is the easy bit!

2) Secondly, as far as I am aware, only members of my close family know the origins of my business name ‘Shpangle’.

I would like to know ‘What makes you Shpangle?’ ...please comment below!

The random draw will take place towards the end of next week and my daisy flower pendant should be making its way to one lucky winner....Good Luck!

Mick

Salad Jewellery!

I was going to say that this latest rage of jewellery was inspired by the warm weather we are having but it seems to have gone all wintery again hasn’t it! This salad jewellery was in fact inspired by one of my Facebook page followers and past customers who wanted a gift for her friend. She asked me to make a keyring containing salad for her friend who owns a fruit and veg. shop. I then got a little carried away and made these!

Salad Keyring

The pendants and keychains are cast using resin and I have incorporate miniature pieces of salad including lettuce leaves, slices of cucumber, onion, egg and tomatoes and even miniature sticks of celery.

Weight watchers jewellery

I am normally really careful when it comes to air bubbles trapped within resin and have several tricks to prevent them from forming on encapsulated objects. But in this case I purposely left them; I think they really add to the pieces and look like small droplets of water remaining on the freshly washed salad.

I told you I got carried away; I even created a cucumber pendant with lots of miniature slices of cucumber encased within this teardrop shaped pendant.

Cucumber necklace

I am not really sure what to call this new range of jewellery; maybe ‘Salad Jewellery’ or ‘weight watchers jewellery’ or even ‘jewellery on a diet’? What do you think and any suggestions would be appreciated!

Mick

p.s. Enjoy your chocolate tomorrow!