Happy Valentines Day

Hello world! Happy Valentine's Day to you all. I was awoken this morning by man lovely man with a cup of tea, a pain au chocolat, and a glass of orange juice :-) How sweet. I am cooking duck with plum sauce tonight and a hot melt in the middle chocolate dessert. Yummy.

Here's a sneaky peek at the fab card I got for Tom, my other half. It was bought from Iconic Designs and is completely handmade, I'm so pleased with it:

I'm lucky enough to have the day off work today as it's half term, so I will hopefully be able to take some photos of my work if the sun comes out. I have just officially put myself on the waiting list for my page to be rebranded by the fantasticArtwork By Angie. I will have to wait a little while but I'm completely convinced it will be worth it as her previous work is just gorgeous! Check out her page if you get a minute, and also her giveaway!

Well, I've got a busy day ahead of me so I had best make a start!

Gosh, what a drama!

Sorry it has been a while since I last posted. Things have been... interesting! Other than being ill, my partner's little brother being hospitalised, two birthdays, and other general happenings, I have had a major setback in my business re-branding! I am completely gutted that the logo (and banner and business cards) that I had designed and that I was SO pleased with, are in fact illegal to use! It turns out that the designer had stolen images from a stock image site and used these to sell on to others as logos. I am not allowed to use my logo, even if i purchase the image from the original site.  So it's back to the drawing board for me!! I'm sad that I have to start again, and annoyed that I have paid money and trusted someone who has been lying to people. But I am worried for those who had got further than me and paid a lot of money to have their logos printed onto merchandise etc. Luckily I had only printed some business cards on my home computer and had not yet invested in the 500 proffesionally printed cards I was planning on.  It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth!  I hope all those affected by this manage to get compensation! On that note, I am going to end this post as I will probably just have a long rant otherwise :)

My next post will be much more cheerful and positive I'm sure! And I won;t leave it so long either...

Posting to America!

I have had my first international order today, and am excited to be sending some earrings out to a customer in America. These lovely vintage-inspired earrings will be packaged up and sent on their way:

Plus, I have just had my new business cards designed so will be getting those printed soon, and my website is well on it's way. Woo!  Here's a sneaky peek of my business card:

I'm going "home" this weekend to Leicestershire as my partner's younger brother is in hospital :( We're going to visit him and hopefully cheer him up a bit!  It means no jewellery making for three days though!! How will I cope?! Well, nothing much else to report at the moment, everything else is ticking along nicely. Have a fab weekend all. Pop over to my Facebook page to see my work... http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rococo-Creations/305903832784431

Valentines

Well, I have been a busy bee! The new website is actually looking less like an unlikely dream and more like a realistic possibility, after a wonderful friend has offered his help :) So hopefully I will no longer be lost and alone in the world of website making, and will now have some sort of guidance. I will be so pleased when that is up-and-running.  In the meantime, I have been making some lovely Valentines items, and of course ordering lots of new beads! It's official, I am addicted to beads! Here's a picture of my latest brass bracelet which I created for Valentines Day:

I love the colours in the little wooden heart buttons and have found some gorgeous roses to complement them. I hope you like it. To me it says "Spring Love".  I think I might start naming all of my creations, but I'm not very good at coming up with names so it might not be very successful!  Right, time to go and make some custom orders... another Valentines bracelet on it;s way.  If you want to pop over and see my collection, please do: Rococo Creations.

Pinterest!

 I have just discovered Pinterest. I am addicted!  If you haven't yet stumbled across this, it is basically a site where you "pin" pictures you like onto boards for others to see, and you can see the collections others have built up too. It's great fun and highly addictive. I'm obviously very busy working on my website... hmmm maybe not. If you haven't gathered yet, I'm a bit of a procrastinator.  What I should in fact be doing is working on my Masters dissertation about public library websites. this is far from that!! Woops.

What's in a name?

"Rococo" is a great word, don't you think? I love the sound of it. I first came across it thanks to one of my all-time favourite bands, Arcade Fire. I spent a long time going through name possibilities, and one of my ideas was to think of every song title by every band I've ever liked. There was a day or two when I considered using the name "Penny Lane" (The Beatles) but realised it would probably sound like some sort of bargain basement type shop, so I said goodbye to that idea! But I'm happy with my Arcade Fire- inspired name. For those of you who aren't familiar, here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az_2oiccZNo.

I'm still getting used to this blogging malarchy (right spelling?!) and need to make some final touches to my page but for now, this will do! Have a great day all. I'm working on a special Valentine's piece today for someone- a bit of a challenge!

Launching Rococo Creations

Hello everyone,
I am very excited to be re-launching my jewellery business under it's new name "Rococo Creations". I had spent so long trying to decide on a name, and found that I was so fussy about choosing one, I ended up staying as "Handmade Jewellery By Laura" for far longer than I had planned!  But I eventually got my act together and chose a name, then found a FANTASTIC designer who created my beautiful logo.  The logo was designed by Sweet-Pea Designs who can be found here: http://www.sweet-peadesigns.com I highly recommend her for her creativity, speed, and friendliness!


So, I have signed up for a blog, joined Twitter, made my new Facebook page, and I'm attempting to create my own website... that could take forever though as I'm attempting to do it with very little knowledge! I'm looking forward to meeting lots of new crafters and of course people who like my work too. If I could, I would spend all my time making jewellery and learning new crafts. I have always loved the idea of making my own clothes but never put the time in to learn properly, so I think that is next on my list.  However, I'm currently working on my dissertation so I should really focus on that!!


I've written two paragraphs of a blog and I feel like I'm a teenager again, scribbling away in my diary about boys I like and how irritating my brothers are! I can't promise I will never mention boys or brothers, but I will try to stay away from those topics in general!  Well, that's it for my first post but I hope to be bringing you some more interesting rambles at some point soon. I'm off to discover some new blogs and pages before uploading some photos of my work to my Facebook page. Feel free to pop over and see my work: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Rococo-Creations/305903832784431