How It All Started

I’ve always liked ‘making stuff’ and whenever I had pocket money to spend, it was always on things to colour in or stick together. One of my favourite kits, probably in the early 70s, was called Pompom Pets – does anyone remember that? Winding the wool round the plastic widget, cutting through they layers and lo and behold, a pompom to be decorated with plastic eyes and bits of felt – pure bliss! Another thing I loved was to buy an Airfix model aircraft and put it together – I was never really interested in the end product, just the putting it together!

My Mum sews and I tried my hand at dressmaking but found that quite frustrating – there was always a bit of material that just wouldn’t fit! I’ve also knitted in the past, but stopped that when it went out of fashion. Hmmm, perhaps I might think about giving knitting another try if I ever find the time.

So, how did I get into making jewellery? Well I was reading the Sky magazine at the end of 2007 and it had a feature called something along the lines of ‘Learn Something New for the New Year’, and in it was a feature about Claire Aristides jewellery school, and something about it immediately appealed to me. I decided I was going to book myself on a course, and was discussing it with a friend one day, only to find out she had also booked a course, so we decided to do it together. Unfortunately it wasn’t until June, and I was far too impatient to wait all that time, so I started digging around on the internet, looking at bead stores and the magpie instinct just kicked in!
I bought myself a book, bought some tools and beads and off I went!

Here’s a picture of my very first creation – it’s very basic, and I like to think that my skills have progressed somewhat since then!