Made With Love by Kat

A cute little book page brooch like this gives a literary edge to any outfit - and is really easy to make. You will need: An old book page, thick card, varnish, craft glue, a brooch pin, superglue. Step one: Draw a circle around something the right size onto a piece of thick card and the book page - I used a corkscrew! Cut out carefully. Step two: Using the craft glue, stick the circles together. Make sure the glue goes right to the edge, but that it is not too wet or it will show through. Wipe away any excess before sticking together. Leave to dry. Step three: Once the glue has dried, apply several layers of varnish to both sides and the edge. You will need to do this over a period of time, allowing each layer to set. Step four: Once the varnish is dry, carefully glue a brooch pin to the back with the superglue. And voila! As easy as that!

Wrapping a wire loop is one of the most basic, and the most useful, jewellery making techniques. Wrapped loops look much more professional than simply using looped eyepins, and are also less likely to come apart. The bad news is they do take a tiny bit of patience to get right. The good news is that the actual technique itself really isn't so hard. All you need is a length of wire, a pair of tweezers and some fine needle nosed pliers. Here goes... Step One: Use the tweezers to bend the wire to a 90 degree angle approximately 1.5cm from the end - like an upside-down “L” shape. Step Two: Wrap the bent wire back around the end of your needle nose pliers, crossing over the “stem” once, and making the loop as small as possible. Step Three: Keeping the pliers inside the loop, take hold of the end of the wire with your fingers or a pair of bent nosed pliers and wrap two or three times around the “stem”. This is what it looks like if you remove the pliers from the middle of the loop... b...

I'm thrilled to say that a friend of mine has asked me to make her wedding jewellery for her. I've done a lot of commissions recently (and if you're interested in me making something for you you can email me at made_with_love (at) rocketmail.com) but this is by far the most nervewracking. So we pinged messages back and forth and I did a couple of quick sketches and happily she absolutely loved one of them. Now I'm off to order all the materials and start on some proper sketches for her necklace and for a hair comb. I've never done any hair accessories before - eek! Fingers crossed it all works out alright, I'll keep you updated.