Day 1: STORY

Happy first day of spring! 🌱

I'm really excited to say I'll be joining in with March Meet the Maker this month and hope you enjoy learning a bit more about all that goes on at Bluebell Lane!

MMTM is a 31 day Instagram Challenge, set by Joanne Hawker that runs throughout March every year. It's more than just a challenge, it's a creative community that comes together to show people what they can do. It's about building each other up, making new connections, telling your small business story, growing your confidence and most importantly, it's about putting yourself out there. Follow the hashtag #marchmeetthemaker2020 on Instagram to see what lots of other wonderful creatives are up to too!

The first prompt for the challenge is STORY, so, let's start at the start..

Before Bluebell Lane was born, I had another little business called Creation Station, which I started when I was in Thailand to bring in a bit more cash to extend our trip. I managed to borrow a sewing machine and started making kimonos out of people's sarongs and mending other travellers clothes.

When we returned to the UK, I wanted to continue making things for cash monies, so kept my Creation Station FB page up and running and had a rummage through my my mum's jewellery making supplies from workshops she used to run. I started playing with wire and seeing what kinds of shapes I could make and soon moved on to using Ecosilver and learning to solder.

Simultaneously I was playing around with wet felting and needle felting and I started doing craft fairs selling both jewellery and felty things.
After a while I dropped the felting. I loved it but it was just so time consuming and I didn't feel I could charge enough to cover my time and make a profit.

Whilst slowly growing my silversmithing skills, I moved to trying to make all natural body products, which proved to be much harder than I had anticipated and didn't really work out! (Bar a natural deodorant which I still use!)

After I'd dropped that and it was just jewellery that I was focusing on, I felt I needed a rebrand and a fresh start. So in July 2018 I entered in to a new chapter - Bluebell Lane Jewellery! ✨