Hannah Makes Things

Jewels for Gaga!

2011-06-07T04:26:00.001-07:00

Another really exciting opportunity that came up in May was a chance to create some pieces for Lady Gaga. As she was playing Radio Ones big weekend in Carlisle I was double excited, not least because Carlisle is where I am from and its a little town that deserves some amazing stuff to happen there! When I first started creating jewellery I was known for my huge, statement piece necklaces that we offered through our London market stall, so this was a perfect chance to revisit my first love of creating massive, eye catching, crazy pieces for the Lady herself! So we made her a box of goodies, my favourite ones I've featured below, first of all there was a massive brooch made from tons of tape measures and hand studded with brass dome findings, it measured over a foot in length and was super fiddly to make but it looked stunning when it was finished. The second piece was a crazy necklace featuring the best of british sweets, biscuits, chocolates and and things sweet and lovely. I enjoyed making this necklace so much, it looked so realistic and it was a pleasure to make pieces on such a big scale, its certainly inspired me to start making big statement pieces to feature on the website soon. I hope Gaga enjoys them as much as I loved making them :)

Whats been going on?

2011-06-07T03:32:00.000-07:00

It has been far too long between blog updates but from now on we are going to make sure that the blog gets updated much more regularly. When you run a small business you often find you get so swamped by the day to day tasks like the extra bits such as blogs sometimes get neglected. At least we have a very good reason for our neglected blog, it is purely because we have been so busy. We have started wholesaling to lots of new shops and boutiques which is great as it means there are so many more independent retailers stocking our products and spreading the word about what we do. We've also been featured in loads of magazine and papers lately and we've had such a great response to those pieces its been tricky keeping up with demand, but as always all of our customers have been super patient and lovely while we waited for new stock to arrive and made sure that everyones order was filled as swiftly as possible. In the meantime I've been sourcing gorgeous new charms and supplies, finalising new designs and working on a couple of top secret projects with some really exciting new collaborators. Also I'm busy blitzing the studio in preparation for a BIG summer sale where we will create a whole new category to clear out our sale goodies with end of line pieces, samples, one of a kind statement bits and other such treasures! I'm a girl who loves a bargain myself so my ethos is to make sure our prices are always fair and affordable so hopefully our new sale category will appeal to all of you fellow bargain hunters out there!

New stuff coming soon!

2011-01-29T04:29:00.000-08:00

To say 2011 has been hectic for us so far is an understatement! We've just completed moving studio and been holding our massive January sale. In December we ventured to Clothes Show Live in Birmingham at the NEC. Even though its snowed like crazy that week and we were feeling well and truly wintery I couldn't believe how many lovely customers we met, it was so fun to finally put faces to names. For those of you who battled through winter conditions and braved a visit then it was well worth it, there was bargains galore and loads of new goodies to choose from throughout the show. Here's a picture from us setting up our stand, sadly my stupid camera wiped the vast majority of my images from the week, sob! :( so thats all we had left :( bad times! My bezzie mate Emma always comes to Clothes Show with me (you can see her in the picture!) She's the brains behind the operation, while I am flapping and getting in a tizz she always sorts out disasters and gets us back on track, our kitschy brick wallpaper was expertly hung by her and it looked a treat!

There's loads of new designs coming in the next week, new watch necklaces, tons of bracelets and rings and some lovely new necklaces. We got an email last week from Eliza Dolittles management to say how much Eliza loved our jewellery, sure enough we whizzed her over some of our new bracelets and she absolutely loved them. Here she is wearing our new allsorts bracelets which will be online really soon!

Sneaky Peek of Winter Treasures

2010-11-15T03:13:00.000-08:00

Its nearly Christmas, how on earth did that happen? It feels like two minutes since last new years eve when we danced our socks off to 60's vinly classics at my fave Manchester Club, Tiger Lounge and already it time to start panicking about finding unusual crimbo gifts for everyone, not easy to do as our shop is open 7 days until the New Year now! I love making our last collection before Christmas, maybe as this is my favourite time of year, its time for shimmering party frocks and lovely new jewels to finish your outfit, buying little trinkets for friends as perfect presents or maybe treating yourself to a new treasure or two. We've also had a flurry of new celeb fans over the last few months, including Fern Cotton who hearts of Mechanical Ball Watch Necklace, X-Factor Finalists Bel Amie who loved our Russian themed jewels in the shape of our Huge Black Russian Doll Necklace and "I Love You" in Russian Heart Necklace. Marina Diamandis from Marina and the Diamonds has also been out and about in our "He who holds the key" necklace

Our next exciting event will be our trip to Clothes Show Live at the NEC in December, we will be selling our ware from stand number PU356 in the OffBeat Boutique section of the show. We will be making lots of one off designs that will only be available show in very limited quantities. Please come along and say hi! We always love meeting customers old and new! Your can see a little piccy of our stand last year, good news is we've gone larger this year to pack more goodies in and fit more lovely customers in too, if you visited us last year you may remember it was a wee bit busy on our stand!
A quick word about our London concession, Style Showroom, Kingly Court, Carnaby Street. Its now filling up with new goodies for Christmas and they will be having late night shopping events all the way through to Christmas, so pop in and pay them a visit, its stuffed with gorgeous wares from up and coming designers, theres lush handbags, gorgeous winter togs and plenty of accessories and finishing touches.

2010-08-28T03:48:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, how the months are flying by at the moment! I've been up to so much that this is the first time in over a month I've had time to update our neglected little blog. We've been running a promotion with Bliss magazine all this month and thats kept us very busy along with being featured in a couple of mags with our new selection of watch necklaces. We've also been lucky enough to make various bits and bobs for some well known faces this month including some necklaces and earrings for Ellie Goulding and the Saturdays. I was delighted to see Una from the Saturdays wearing one of our "Love will find a way" necklaces the other day and as a thank you the whole band sent us a fab signed picture which made us smile and is now on the wall at HQ!

Some of the most exciting news is that we have now opened a London concession within "Style Showroom" in Kingly Court, Just off Carnaby street. Style Showroom is an amazing new concept store that also acts as a HQ for the Style Legend agency which is dedicated to offering unique fashion and design in an amazing setting, bringing some of the most unique clothing, jewellery and accessories together in one place. Check out the Kingly court website here, Style showroom is located on the first floor.

We are so pleased to finally be able to offer all of our products in one place from our London concession now but we have not forgotten the north either and from next week we will be opening our other new concession in Leeds too! We will be based in the shop "Valley of The Dolls" in the Light in Leeds. Valley of the Dolls is the brainchild of the people who brought us the " Joy" chain of shops and they have now expanded their empire to open Valley of the Dolls as a younger, trend led store. Check out the Light shopping centre here
http://www.thelightleeds.co.uk/retailer/joy

So we have loads going on, new products online now, including my fave new fruit salad bracelets, table tennis necklaces and neon scooter pendants, see all our new things here

A few new things for July!

2010-07-03T08:46:00.001-07:00

June has flown by so quick! It always seems like such a short month. We've had a great response to our new Summer Statement Necklaces, we ran into Leona Lewis herself and have her the "A Sailor Stole My Heart" Necklace and when Lady Gaga played our hometown of Manchester we couriered over a few goodies for her including our Gaga necklaces that was inspired by the lady herself! In the meantime we've added some cute new pieces like harmonica necklaces, various fruity watch necklaces and a re-vamped version of our very popular, previously sold-out russian doll charm bracelet is now back in stock. We are working on another collection as we speak and getting ready for a busy new season. We also have loads of new stockists so keep an eye peeled as we will put a new page exclusively listing them very soon.
In the meantime I'm off to enjoy the sun while I work, we have a freezer stuffed with Jubbly ice lollies and a BBQ just waiting to cook our veggie feast of bean burgers and corn on the cob, yum!

Summer Time and Good Times!

2010-06-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

We've not had chance to update what we've been up to for a while, mainly as we've been busy busy! There has been lots going on at Hannah Makes Things HQ including loads of press articles about our jewellery, designing a new collection, organising some BIG events for later in the year, celeb chasing and loads of other fun stuff. Theres always loads to do when you are a one woman operation, but we get by, with a little help from our friends (that would make a great song don't you think?!)
Anyway, as mentioned we have our new collection online now and I absolutely LOVE it, but maybe I'm a little biased?! I wanted this collection to be a bit different from the other collections we have made before, I wanted things to be bigger, chunkier, even nicer quality and feel like extra special jewels, I wanted to design necklaces that really "made" an outfit and act as stand out statement pieces. If you are anything like me I like to dress up my classic wardrobe pieces with bits of "stand out" jewellery, I find it provides a really cost effective way to update my fave outfits without breaking the bank.

We wanted to design necklaces that make people to stop you in the street and say "OMG, where did you get that necklace!", I've been giving some to my best mates as little thank you pressies for all their support and they say everyone loves them wherever they wear them!

This new collections features our all time favourite cute and cheeky Russian dolls (in two brand new designs), pastel toned nautical treats, holiday souvenir inspired trinkets, retro love tokens, crazy romantic toaster, juicy slices of melon and fang-tastic pendants to mention but a few. Think big, beautiful golden treasures, team them with your best summer dresses, wear them for festivals, pic-nic or romantic summer dates with your crush, dress them up, dress them down, either way we are sure you will love them like we do.

Pretty Pocket Watch Necklaces & Tasty Treats!

2010-03-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

We've been making some gorgeous new pocket watch necklaces this last week or so, just in time for the spring. My favourite one features a large vintage cream coloured plastic rose. All the watches open up to reveal the watch face inside, making them practical and beautiful! They come on a nice strong 24 inch long gold plated chain.

Or maybe you prefer something a bit tastier? Then check out these tea time treats, realistic biscuit necklaces! How amazing are these, quirky and eye catching, they are sure to get you noticed!

Our Love of Winehouse!

2010-03-02T03:01:00.000-08:00

On Saturday 27th the Sun featured our Amy Winehouse style Cameo Necklace on their "Live It" fashion pages...this made us super happy!

We love Amy here at Hannah Makes Things and designed the necklace as part of our new collection that came out last month. I get loads of people asking for cameos in the shop in Manchester and they are such a classic item in the world of jewellery I wanted to put a fresh twist on the traditional cameo, while paying homage to our favourite bad girl songstress. I do believe she sings some of the best tunes ever (IMHO!) and we keep her albums pretty much glued in the CD player here at jewellery HQ. We also made another Amy inspired necklace, inscribed with the slogan "What would Winehouse do?" (a question I often ask myself in times of indecision or disaster!)

Amy's songs have got us through good times and bad times, helped us pack many an order and seen us through epic work-a-thons (preparing for last years clothes show live to name but one!)...So here's to you Amy, we think you are ace, and if you are ever in Manchester please drop in and say hello!

The reason I like Tuesdays...

2010-02-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

For some reason Tuesday is always the quietest day of the week in Afflecks (if you ever fancy a visit and you don't like crowds I'd suggest Tuesday to be the best day for you!). I like the peace and quiet to think of new ideas, make samples, get organised (or at least try to, organisation will never be my strong point however!) and update the website. I've been wanting to make some hair accessories for a while now (we've made headbands and hair clips in the past and they've always been popular), so when I stumbled on some gorgeous chunky red ribbon and cute red satin roses I decided to create some hair bows, I'm going to try and get these on the website in the next day or so. They look great with up or down styles, and perfect for if you fancy adding a bit of an Alice in Wonderland vibe to your outfit.

I've also been making some new necklaces, please say hello to our fierce lion door knocker pendants, made from vintage plastic components that we carefully hand drill and add our own little "door knocker" too! They will be going on a nice long chunky gold chain. They other necklaces I've been working on feature gorgeous little white chairs and mesh work brass bows on an ornate background, they are quite big so I'm thinking a nice long chain will be in order for these ones too, they'll look fab over plain t-shirts or to add that finishing touch to cute spring dresses, lets hope the weather warms up soon then! We will try and get all these new goodies on the website by the end of the week :)

Welcome To Our Blog

2010-02-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our shiny new blog, in the coming days/weeks/months (eek!) we will be telling you all about what we've been up to and what we are about to get up to! For those of you who have never heard of us before we are a little jewellery company www.hannahmakesthings.com based in Manchester UK. We specialise in quirky and unique costume jewellery that we design and assemble in our little shop/studio in Afflecks Palace (see Afflecks.Com for information about the unique shopping centre we are based in)

For those of you who do know us either from the shop or online then thanks so much for your continuing support over the last year or so, we've got so much planned for this year, I'm excited about all the fun stuff to come and a little nervous about how much work there is to do, but things usually come together in the end! We've had a great start to the new decade with our jewellery being featured in Look, OK, Heat, Reveal and Amelias Magazine, its been so hectic getting our new website finished, attending our first ever trade show and still finding time to design new goodies, but its good to be busy they say!