Remembrance Day Poppy Ring

This year (2023) I made this poppy ring for my wife for Remembrance Day. The ring is sterling silver and I have incorporated a 10mm glass cabochon containing an image of poppies into the ring setting. For the ring design, I wanted to incorporate an image of poppies that was not too realistic, more of an artistic impression of poppies. I even considered including a miniature poppy inside the ring setting, but finally decided to incorporate something that was more subtle. 

Remembrance Day Poppy Ring

Preserving your wedding memorabilia and keepsakes

Weddings are a time of excitement, planning and organization. The result being a hopefully flawless and memorable wedding. However, most of the energy for a wedding is put into the preparation for the big day and once the wedding is over, the bride and groom look forward to the honeymoon and relaxing. So, it is not surprising that after wedding thoughts often go forgotten.

Resin preservation of wedding keepsakes

Traditionally, capturing memories of the big day take the form of photographs and videos, but there are often other items which helped make the day special that the bride and groom may have kept but are unsure what to do with. These can be anything from confetti used at the ceremony or table confetti used to decorate the tables at the reception, from flowers to ribbon, wedding favours, or anything else that made the day special.

Wedding confetti paperweight

All these items can be preserved forever and even worn and enjoyed for many years to come in the form of resin preservation.

Resin Jewellery Making - Safety Precautions and Equipment

Resin jewellery making is fun and easy if you follow the necessary safety guidelines. Even a resin labelled as 'low odour' will still emit fumes and therefore it is always essential that you wear the necessary safety equipment when handling resin.

As well as the general safety guidelines detailed below, you must always read and understand the manufacturer safety precautions that are provided with the product.

A Respirator

The respirators can be purchased from most hardware stores and must be worn whilst mixing, pouring, and working with resin. The fumes produced by resin are harmful and therefore the respirator filter must be one designed for the prevention of fumes and not dust.

A respirator used when working with resin

Personalised love heart sweet paperweight

Over 10 years ago, back in October 2011, I wrote an article about the messages found on love heart sweets. Around this time, I also started to make resin pendants containing the sweets, and I didn’t realise at the time how popular these would be. Today I continue to make both pendants and paperweights containing individual love heart sweets.

Personalised love heart sweets paperweight

Memorial tea light candle holders for ashes

I mentioned in March that I had introduced a latest item within my range of keepsake jewellery and memorial ornaments for hair or fur, a resin tea light candle holder for pet fur.

Well, last month a lady asked me if I could set the cremated ashes from her pet dogs within a resin memorial tea light candle holder.

This is the completed tea light holder; the candle holder is cast using clear resin and is heart shaped measuring approximately 10cm in diameter. The central jar holding the tea light is glass and is removeable, allowing the tea light candle holder to be used as a trinket dish as an alternative option. The cremated ashes are embedded inside the resin and scattered throughout the heart shaped candle holder.

Heart shaped tea light holder containing ashes

Bone shaped memorial pendant for pet hair or ashes

Those that follow my Facebook Page will know that I had this year’s second jewellery giveaway in April. My giveaway was for a custom-made bone shaped sterling silver memorial pendant that would be suitable for containing a pet dog’s hair or ashes. Alternatively, the bespoke pendant could be left without any contents, with the resin simply coloured and/or glittered.

The jewellery giveaway was won by Lorraine who wanted to combine a small amount of fur from her much-loved pet dog Holly with the ashes from two other fur children, Chloe and Sheba. I suggested including a small amount of her hair within the straight/horizontal section of the pendant, with a small sample of ashes from each of the fur children within the two end sections of the pendant.

Here is the completed pendant, a sterling silver bone shaped pendant containing both pet fur and ashes set within clear resin.

Bone shaped pendant for hair and ashes

Lorraine loved her bone shaped memorial pendant and thanked me for bringing her three girls Holly, Chloe and Sheba together. 

Mick

Bespoke Retirement Paperweights

Over three years ago I wrote a blog post about a custom retirement paperweight gift that I had made for a retiree from a company. Well recently I have been asked to make several similar paperweights for various companies and charities, the bespoke paperweights are to be given as retirement gifts to the departing employees.

The following are just a few examples of the bespoke retirement paperweights that I have recently been asked to make and all contain objects that were sent to me by the business or charity for encasing inside the resin paperweight.

Refuse derived fuel pellet within a paperweight.

For the first bespoke retirement paperweight I was asked to make, my customer sent me an unusual object to be encased inside the paperweight. To be honest, I was not sure what the object was after receiving it and I had to ask my customer to explain.

Refuse derived fuel pellet paperweight