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A Custom Jewellery Story
With such a vast array of jewellery available these days, I often ask myself and my customers why they come to me and what makes my work different. One of the reasons that they talk about, alongside the uniqueness of my pieces, is that they like to buy jewellery with meaning. Today I thought I’d focus on this aspect of my work and on custom jewellery in particular. This is the story of a recent custom order I completed. If you’ve ever wondered how custom jewellery is made (or maybe you’re just curious) grab a cup of coffee and read on.
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Three Easy Methods for Cleaning Silver Jewellery
Let’s be honest cleaning silver is a pain! Silver jewellery is as we all know gorgeous to wear, but you have to admit it can be a pain to keep clean. As a jewellery designer I seem to have spent a good few hours of my life cleaning silver. If I’m exhibiting at an event I clean all my jewellery beforehand to make sure it is looking its best. Equally, if someone has placed an order I will always make sure the piece of jewellery is clean and sparkling before I post it to my customer. So as you can imagine I have spent more than my fair share of time cleaning…
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Tropical Banana PawPaw Smoothie Recipe
One of the many great things about living in Queensland is that we are lucky enough to be able to grow our own bananas and pawpaw. Well, to be fair, in my case we bought a house that already has established banana plants and pawpaw trees growing in the garden. Our challenge since we’ve been here continues to be what to do with all the fruit we harvest. On average we harvest 130 or so bananas each crop (that’s a lot of bananas to eat!). Tropical Banana and PawPaw Smoothie is my first (although probably not very original) invention to help make the most of our fruit harvest. It’s reasonably…
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RAW Brisbane – Emerging Artists Showcase
Just a few weeks ago I was approached by RAW Brisbane and asked if I would be interested in taking part in the RAW Reveal showcase event in Brisbane in August. RAW is an international organisation which aims to promote the work of emerging artists.
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Jewellery Making Tutorial
A few weeks back I was contacted by the editor of Soda Lime Times & asked if I would like to write a tutorial for the magazine!
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Brisbane Craft Workshops
Well I know I keep on about the Art Glass Bead Making Workshops that I have been running, but I thought today I’d tell you a little bit more about what we’ve been up to.
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Things to do with teenagers!
With school holidays in full flow and three teenage children at home, this always begs the question in our household “What things are there to do with teenagers to keep them entertained and off screens?” During these holidays I decided to share my passion for melting glass with my teenage daughter.
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An Unusual Day Out in Brisbane – What’s On in the Studio …
The Easter holidays seem such a long time ago now … The children are back to working hard at school and the weekends are filled with sporting fixtures (not to mention the inevitable washing!). During the weekdays this has given me plenty of time to dedicate to Jocale Design … with time on my hands I am delighted to have at long last opened the studio to the public for the first time!
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Family Road Trip through the Australian Outback
For the first year that I can remember our children had no chocolate on Easter Sunday! Instead they spent the school holidays on a whistle stop 8,000 kilometer Road Trip through the Australian Outback. At the beginning of April we packed up our camping gear (along with plenty of DVDs for entertainment on the road) and set off to see a bit more of this vast country. Now that we’re back to civilisation (and how lovely does that feel!) I thought I would share just a few moments from our journey with you…
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What’s going on in the Studio?
This week has been one of those rare cloudy weeks here in Queensland. Everything seems a little grey and uninspiring. Looking on the bright side, its great to know that it won’t be too long before the sun is back with us again. This is the sort of week that reminds me how lucky I am to be living in such a warm and generally sunny part of the world.