Second time around!

Sometimes you feel really old, like really really old. 

This has happened to me for the first time (properly)this month, maybe its because for what feels like the first time everything from my childhood is back in fashion big time! The sad part is that at the ripe old age of thirty I'm possibly a little bit past reliving some of these trends but I sure as hell still enjoy designing and making stuff that reminds me of being a kid! Lots of new products have hit our freshly designed site, check out the whole thing HERE or just enjoy our little selection of our favourite bits mixed up with other things we've got a major crush on this month. Anyway, what did we conclude? Age is just a number (as the good old saying goes!) so wear your style with pride, mix up the latest trends and your all time favourites and make your own style, because we are not going to sit about and be sad about being older (and possibly wiser?! nah...)

Here is a list of our current favourites:

1: Tattoo Choker £3 I'm pretty sure that Channel 4's epic "My Mad Fat Diary" is responsible for the return of these, either way, we still love them.

2:Mini Troll Earrings £4 Trolls.To wear on your ears. Thats all you need to know.

3:JuJu Jelly Shoes £28. So deep is my love for rubbery shoes of joy that I bought these. They are of such beauty I kissed them

when they arrived.

Not even embarrassed. Made in the UK since the 80's.

They have holographic glitter in them and they are the most perfect shade of blue. Check out my next blog post where I customise mine. 

4: Round Glasses £4 Just yes. Always yes.

5:Flip Up Shade Glasses £8 Another big pile of yes. Except you must be extra fancy to appreciate these.

6: Burts Bees Lipbalm tinted of course. For when its too hot for lippy yet colour is a must. Is it wrong to buy it in every shade?

7: Half Moon Statement Earrings £6 Nothing says 90's like an abundance of moons and stars. These guys and slightly spooky but I can't help but love them.

8: Beauty UK Nail Polish £3.49 It's only taken my thirty years to stop biting my nails (yeah, breakthrough, I know) so how did I reward myself? By slathering them in this amazing polish until my nails shone like a crazy galaxy. Then I started on my toes.

9: Selection Of 50 Incense Sticks £6 I don't think I can ever get tired of the summer smell of incense burning on a warm evening. This is like a scented selection box of joy, except its probably best not to eat these. Ever.

10:Set Of Three Friendship Bracelets £4 A great little present for you and 2 friends. But thats it, no more that 2 friends, ever, unless you want arguments over who gets a bracelet? Maybe they are best kept to yourself?!

11: Manic Panic Hair Dye Lust after rainbow hair. Dip dyed your bleach or stripe it out with highlights. If you are going to do it, now is the time and manic panic is what you want.

12: Kewpie Doll Earrings £10 You are never to old to play with dolls. OK, maybe you are. But I can assure you that you are never too old to wear dolls. Like ever.

Mallorca Photoshoot

At the end of April we packed our bags and headed out to Mallorca for our first ever Spanish photo shoot. We took our mini collection of summer necklaces which are launching this week. Blessed with perfect sunshine and blue skies it made for possibly the most fun Hannah Makes Things excursion so far, yup thats right, Mallorca is most certainly warmer than Blackpool at this time of year!

All the photos are by my excellent photographer friend John Clarke who has just started to specialise in underwater photography so we treated the photo shoot as a chance to test drive some shiny new waterproof equipment. All the make-up was kindly provided by super talented Sophie Battersby and her company, Make-Up by Sophie. Sophie specialises in all types of make-up from bridal to spectacular theatrical looks and also has amazing skills when it comes to vintage style hair and make-up. 

Here is Sophie in action with ones of our models, Lauren.

Lauren and Natashia, our stunning models show off two of our new necklaces.

Check out the necklaces online now here.

New things I love....

Let me introduce some of our star products that we've recently added to the site, I love, love, love these tattoo machine necklaces that have just arrived. Available in gold, silver or gun metal metallic black they have all the incredible details of a larger sized real life tattoo machine minus the needles of course!

Tattoo Machine Necklace £18 - Click Photo for further details. I've massively enjoyed the series of Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedias, collecting all three volumes over the last year. Its not for the faint hearted but the insight it provides into the intricate and complex work of Russian prisons and their hierarchy system make compelling reading. The graphic styles and subject matters range vastly and make the books utterly consuming to read, highly recommend for both tattoo enthusiasts and those interested in social history. I also love the clean, pastel coloured dust jackets, they look fab on my bookshelf. Check them out here

We have just introduced our first selection of wrist watches to the site. We started with these colourful lovelies, bright plastic and shiny they are perfect for summer and being totally plastic they are also suitable for those who suffer from nickel and metal allergies, hurrah! Gorgeous watches without itchy rashes. We have a whole range of lovely new watches coming in the next few weeks so keep checking the site.

Plastic Wrist Watches £12 each available in various colours.Click Photo for further details. Rainbow coloured goodies have been catching my eye all over the place at the moment, when I saw this recipe I just had to give it a go for a joint cake for my dads and nieces birthday, I tweaked a few things and ended up with a hugely tall cake that easily fed 20+ people, but it was so much fun to make and was a great surprise for everyone when we cut into it. If you fancy a go at making one then my top tip is to use gel food colours, not liquid ones as they are much more vibrant, all big supermarkets stock them in the baking section, they go a long way, last for ages and are suitable for vegetarians, hurrah!

Finally check out a few more of our new products just added to the site including my gothic inspired favourite brooch, featuring a 3D skull cameo with incredible detail....

Shuttlecock necklaces available in loads of colours....

Bronze Egyptian theme pendant necklace....

Jewels for Gaga!

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?

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!

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

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.