Jocale Design Australian Handmade Jewellery Blog

Delicious Homemade Tropical Guava Jam

March 3, 2017

If you’re lucky enough to grow fruit in your back garden, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the pleasure of harvesting your own home grown produce. How good is it when, after months of watering and feeding, the fruit finally ripens and is ready to be picked and enjoyed! In our house this feeling is very quickly replaced by one of panic – what are we going to do with all that fruit? How can we possibly use it all before it goes off (which would be such a waste)? To help solve this problem I have started to make jam – this is my take on an easy recipe for Guava Jam.

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Creating a new Collection – One Day at a Time

February 22, 2017

In January I signed up to take part in The 100 Day Goal challenge, which is run by The Business Bakery. My aim – to design and create a range of jewellery. Now that we’re well into the new year I thought you might like a little update on how the collection is progressing.

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HOT, HOT, HOT! (Summer in Brisbane)

February 17, 2017

One of the many attractions of moving to Australia from the UK, let’s be honest, is the weather. After spending most of my life living in the UK, the thought of blue skies and sunshine was a huge attraction. Having lived down under for over 5 years now I thought it time to reflect on what it’s like living in Brisbane (in the Sunshine State) during those hot summer months.

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100 Days to Reach Your Goal

January 10, 2017

With the start of a New Year and a clear head, like many people, I’ve been setting goals & planning. To help along the way I’ve signed up to take part in The 100 Day Goal. Will you be joining me?

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An Expat’s view of Christmas in Australia

December 21, 2016

Christmas is only days away, conjuring up images of cozy family gatherings, wearing Christmas jumpers, log fires and the faint hope that there might just be snow on Christmas Day. How things have changed – 5 years ago we moved from the UK to Australia. This will be our 6th Christmas in Brisbane and I thought you might like to read my expat’s view of Christmas in the land “Down Under”.

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6 Reasons to Buy Handmade

November 4, 2016

My daughter has been making a quilt at school. It’s just a school project, no more, no less. However, in reality it is SO much more than that. It’s also given me a whole new perspective on handmade and why I believe we should all be buying more handmade goods. Here’s my 6 reasons why.

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Coastal Road Trip from Brisbane to Sydney

October 28, 2016

With the summer holidays fast approaching, I thought you might like a little holiday inspiration. If you are keen on the idea of a road trip along the coast road from Brisbane to Sydney (or vice versa), here are a few of the less obvious places that I believe are worth a visit.

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A Custom Jewellery Story

October 21, 2016

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

October 14, 2016

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 silver jewellery and I share your pain!

Whilst cleaning silver is an inevitable part of my vocation, I’m assuming that you lead a busy life & really don’t have much time to spend (or indeed much enthusiasm for!) cleaning your silver jewellery.

Over the years I’ve tested a number of different ways to clean silver, so today I thought I’d share some of them with you. Hopefully this will help to make things a little bit easier for you…

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Tropical Banana PawPaw Smoothie Recipe

October 2, 2016

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 healthy (it must count for at least 2 if not 3 of your 5 a day) and very yummy, so I thought I’d share my recipe with you.

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