I will be selling these bracelets in a variety of colours, I will keep you updated on the one’s that I have, currently I have black and Army Green, these are for sale in my https://staging.thebritishcrafthouse.co.uk/shop/boomerisanangel/
Thank you so much, for having me on your platform…
I’m Julie, and the shop is named after my first dog Boomer who has gone to live with the Angels.
However we have three other doggies (all black lab’s) who make our family so whole xxx
I’m Fallon, a thirty-something year old, living in Hertfordshire with my husband and daughter. I’m an avid crafter, have been all my life, trying my hand at many different activities for fun and making numerous things for my daughter and as gifts. I also love home baking and drinking copious cups of tea! I have a degree in photography and shoot freelance baby and children photography (when global pandemics don’t get in the way!)
I’ve been using polymer clay since I was a child, initially making teeny tiny food for my dolls house. My husband bought me a food themed polymer clay book many years ago, and after experimenting with cakes and sweets, decided to start selling the increasing number of makes I produced, mainly to clear some space!! The rest is history, HRJ was born in May 2011!
I chose to continue the foodie theme as I love all things quirky and retro – I’m an eighties child, so the retro food you find at old school birthday parties is an absolute favourite at mine – plates of iced ring biscuits, fondant fancies, etc – whenever we have a birthday at home, we always have that kind of tea party to celebrate! I think the theme brings a sense of nostalgia to childhood/good memories from the past (my allsorts sweetie bracelet was one of my very first makes, and is still so popular today, with the young and old!). I’ve now also started to branch out into homeware and decorations…but more on that in my next blog post!
Inspiration strikes me at any time – I generally get distracted by anything cute and quirky, especially colourful eye catching things. I love kawaii styles, and have incorporated it into some of my pieces. Current trends inspire me, as well as actual foods; being a keen baker, I follow lots of baking accounts on social media, and sometimes try to recreate something edible into clay form! I also have had many commissions and special requests over the years, and some I have felt would be really popular, so have then made these into pieces for my shop too.
I joined TBCH in early 2020 and love the unique community of makers here, they are all so helpful and friendly, with each and every one making beautiful high quality handcrafted items.
Oh and if you’re wondering…my favourite biscuit to dunk in my cup of tea is….a chocolate bourbon or Lotus Biscoff!
I’ve had another go at the squashed glass technique and this time I used opalescent glass which reflects light as opposed to transparent glass that transmits light.
I love the effect that has been produced where the various coloured pieces have met and merged. There has been some reaction where some different coloured pieces have overlapped and merged caused by the chemical make up of the glass colours I have used in this piece. Various colours have Lead, Copper or Sulphur in them and when they meet you can get some special effects ranging from subtle to dramatic.
This piece has some subtle reactions where the sulphur bearing red has overlapped the copper bearing greens and blues.
In addition a particular colour called Steel Blue has a tendency to dramatically change to a matt steel colour on the surface exposed to the air in the heat of the kiln. This hasn’t happened to a great degree because it was covered by the kiln shelf except for some subtle areas on the edges of the Steel Blue bits in the piece.
I shall square off the edges and slump this in a gently curved mould to make a lovely platter to be listed in my shop.
Ever since I started selling online I have struggled with photographing my fused glass pieces to show them at their best. As you can imagine the main issue is light reflection on the glass. I have tried reflecting the lights off white card, black card and silver backed card. Pointing the lights at the backdrop, directly at the glass, and at the reflective card. All have produced mixed results and I seem to try a different set up every time I have a new piece to photograph.
My most recent set up is featured in the picture above and involved using two clamps to attach the light that is hanging down to a handy shelf above my ‘photo studio’ corner. I got a nice new camera for my recent birthday which has lots of handy features which have made a big difference and I shall probably be retaking pictures over the next few weeks.
Wish me luck!
I have had a lovely time over the Christmas lock down period making fused glass hearts in a cast iron pan. Thanks to an excellent tutorial from glasshoppa.com me and my daughter whiled away the time, when we couldn’t see the rest of the family, coming up with various combinations of glass to pile up in the mold ready for a hot fuse.
Once out and cooled down they needed a bit of grinding and cleaning before going back in the kiln for a nice fire polish.
Now I’m waiting for some little box frames to be delivered so I can mount them and then put on sale in my shop. Should make a lovely little letter box gift to send to those we love.
So what is squashed glass? This is a fused glass/kiln forming technique that I’ve been having a go at. As described it is glass put in the kiln to fuse but you have to weigh it down with a second shelf to ‘squash’ it as it fuses.
Glass is viscous at high temperature and up to a certain heat it conforms to the glass fusers mantra “the 6 mm rule”. This basically means that however many layers of glass you put on top of each other the finished fused piece will always end up 6 mm thick, unless you dam it, but that’s another technique!
Squashed glass is multiple layers of glass weighed down with another kiln shelf on top (and any other bits of kiln furniture you might have to hand) so that the pressure of all that weight will go down on the piece and the glass will flow and merge together. The finished glass piece is nice and level and will have a smooth texture from the kiln shelf.
After that you can cut up your sheet of squashed glass and cold work the edges to smooth them out and slump in a mould to get the shape you want for your finished pieces.
Team TBCH South East Cornwall Meetup – meet Halyey, Buffy & Chris
Written by Buffy…who is The Twisted Felter
So earlier today I met up for brunch with the lovely Hayley aka The Northern Smuggler and Chris The Chris Artist. Chris paints beautiful artwork from the surrounding areas and Hayley creates fabulous Resin artwork and jewellery inspired by the local Cornish Coast. Luckily Chris had chosen the best café (award winning @olivecocafe thankyou…delish!) and so I turned up to meet 2 complete strangers thinking I should have worn a rose in my lapel?! Sadly I was lapel-less so I took a chance and sidled up to a random man sitting on his own who fortunately turned out to be Chris and Hayley joined us soon after.
My brain is a busy one so I had brought along a list of things I wanted to ask (I feel like a bit of a duffer with the whole online selling and social media stuff as I’m new to the game) and was pleasantly surprised that they too had the same questions and doubts. As Hayley put it ‘Fake it ’til you Make it’. Although Hayley was not giving herself credit as she had lots of great media tips and advice and has her own professional branding which looks fab. Chris is already self employed so gave me good advice around tax returns, a boring but necessary part of it all. It was sound advice…pay an accountant!!
We chatted about The British Craft House website and how we were finding navigating our way around. We wondered when Dottie (our Illustrious Leader, advice giver, encouragement officer and all round good egg) EVER SLEEPS?!? She seems to be sending encouraging posts in the middle of the night!
We talked about how isolating working alone and from home can be sometimes and how fab it was to meet up with the real people behind our sellers names. We shared contacts for work in the local area, craft initiatives,the best Apps, training days, ideas for display and presentation, photography and we laughed at ourselves a fair bit. We talked about the insecurities of seeing the imperfections in our work and whether they are good enough to sell, the vulnerability of putting your work out there in front of people, the difficulty of feeling comfortable promoting (non-stop!) yourself online. And we arranged to meet again of course.
So this is my first blog. I’ve no idea whether it’s good. Or not. But I’m venturing right out of my comfort zone writing it AND putting a photo of myself online. That’s how rock and roll I am today. I’m a blogger. Boom!
So, here goes on my first blog post EVER! And I thought a good place to start would be to share a little bit more about me and Crofts Crafts!
My name is Becky and I currently make greeting cards and gift tags here in the beautiful North Norfolk countryside. If you’ve checked out my shop, you can probably tell my style is quite minimalist – clean and simple and I try to keep it quite natural and rustic looking! Most of my cards are made from recycled Kraft card which I print the greeting on myself, and then use a variety of materials to decorate them including felt, hessian, wooden embellishments and twine. I try to hand make as many embellishments as I can, which can lead to some pretty fiddly work!
I started making handmade cards when I moved to Norfolk from London a few years ago. It started off as a hobby, to send to friends and family, but I found it to be really relaxing and I really enjoyed doing something creative which was very different to the day job! I slowly started doing a few local craft markets which were great fun, and a brilliant way to meet fellow makers and get involved in the local community.
I make cards for most occasions, and also have several ‘just because’ designs. I’m a big believer in encouraging people to connect via good old fashioned snail mail to let someone know you are thinking of them, especially these days when it’s so easy to use technology to connect! There’s nothing nicer than receiving some happy mail and knowing that someone has taken a few minutes out of their day to let you know they care – especially by sending something handmade! I’m also trying to make my cards more sustainable and am moving away from using cello bags – I’m a big fan of the Naked Cards campaign…but I’ll save that for another blog post!
My aim for this year was to set up an online shop to try selling to a wider audience, so I was so happy to find, and be accepted to, TBCH. I love the fact that TBCH is celebrating British designers and makers, and that it is also a relatively new venture (like me!) and I’m excited to slowly grow my shop and get to know other fellow sellers and the TBCH community!
‘Tis the Season to be Jolly, I have always loved Carols around a tree, the pretty lights, the anticipation of piles of gifts on Christmas morning, the buzz of excitement in the air but I will confess as I have got older the magic is fading for me. I see adverts on the television of happy families sat playing games and enjoying themselves but in reality as I read the papers I see a different world one where many families are separated and the older generations are possibly spending the day alone as they don’t want to be burden on relatives, or those families who don’t have money to put food on a table let alone buy gifts, who then have to deal with the question why Santa leaves lots of gifts for some Children but not them.
I read a lovely article in the Telegraph yesterday, saddened slightly by its content, but felt it was also full of Christmas Spirit as it made reference to a school in Blackpool where the Head is opening the school up on Monday to have a Christmas Eve eve party for the children, with Santa and hot food, to ensure that all children had that magical experience and a hot meal over the holidays. I am sure this isn’t first school to do this, and I doubt will be the last.
For many of the gifts I will be giving this year they are sourced from small businesses not large corporations, I will try and avoid the pressure of the sales post Christmas, and only purchase something if I really need it.
It is a most wonderful time of the year, but we do shop all year round, not just a Christmas so if you could continue to buy from the small business owner I can hand on heart tell you that really does help put food on the table, and keep a roof over someone’s head. Perhaps you can spare the odd gift for a child who is without, or pop an extra roll of toilet paper, or can of soup in the trolley for the food bank at your local supermarket – you never know the joy that small act of kindness could bring someone. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against the corporates (I am an Amazon Prime Customer ?) , but I am hugely aware that by using them we are feeding anonymous shareholders but by buying from an independent you are helping keep that small business afloat, and that alone does deserve a happy dance ? Merry Christmas and wishing you a Happy New Year