I've come up against a design challenge this week whilst creating a bridal hair accessory. Brides usually have a very definite idea of what they want but I was lucky that this bride was easy going and relaxed and was happy for me to design her something elegant and sparkly that suited her petite frame and the royal blue colour scheme of the wedding. What a great brief, but with only a short lead in time to the happy day it didn't leave enough time to order the components I wanted to work with so I had to use whatever components were in stock at my local supplier. I found some great sapphire Swarovski pear-shaped, claw-set sliders to use as accents but this has led to a few challenges trying to find ways of incorporating them into the design. You see, they are sliders and have 2 holes on either side whereas I need either a top-drilled or a centre-drilled crystal for wiring so that the crystal has a stem. So, how do you get around the problem of the holes being in the wrong place...

Recently, a very dear friend became a grandmother for the first time. How delightful! Bubs and the new parents have been showered with gifts but I thought it would be nice to give the new grandma a small gift too so I whipped up a pair of fridge magnets that she can use to proudly display some of her favourite photos of bubs where she'll see them all the time. But this is a project that would also be great for kids to get involved in too. It can be a way of helping on older sibling adjust to having a new baby in the house. Or they can make a set for their grandparents who will love such a thoughtful, handmade gift. With close supervision, even young, school-aged children can make these! For this project, I've used bottle caps, Magic-Glos UV resin , alphabet beads and 100s and 1000s . I've also tried this project using Alumi-UV as well as the inexpensive Chinese UV resins and they were successful too. The last 2 photos in the post are using those UV resins. How to Make UV...