Crochet with style

This season it's all about texture in the wardrobe; you only need to take a look at the wonderful knitwear collections in our high street stores to see what I mean.

Bringing texture into my own work while retaining the use of silver and Swarovski has been a challenge. Until, that is I stumbled upon The Silk Mill. The abundance of gorgeous shades was truly inspirational and it wasn't long before I was resurrecting my almost forgotten crochet skills!

And the result? This lovely Zara Collier, available on my website.

…and the award goes to

The 2010 award for "Best Use of SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS” at the Independent Handbag Designer Awards goes to australian designer Aimee Kestenberg for her creation entitled “Tammi Tales.”

After the submission of design sketches, the five best ideas were chosen by the Handbag Designer 101 Judging Panel. There were a total of 98 registered competitors in the category, a 15 percent increase on the inaugural year.

Her handbag design is inspired by the vivid imagination of her 5-year-old sister Tammi and her own love of the Australian sea and its creatures. Topaz and blue-colored crystals are embedded into fine leathers including café-crème lambskin, blue and plum red suede. “The crystals bring the piece to life and make it that much more special giving it status, an octopus texture and a “wow” factor,” says Aimee Kestenberg.

Fashion arachnid

I couldn't help but notice Tres Glam's amazing spider cocktail ring photographed during Fashion's Night Out on Friday. Perhaps it was designed to calm the nerves of the most arachnophobic… it's working!

The latest must-have: a website that works!

Very excitingly for me I was emailed by Vogue magazine UK a month ago to ask if I would like to take part in an advertorial feature! At first I was a bit surprised and figured that it was probably spam. However, I delved further and telephoned Vogue head office in London and asked to speak to the person who had emailed me. I was put through immediately to the jewellery editor who said that her research team had found my website in a Google search and been impressed by both the jewellery and also the quality and running of my site.

Many hours are spent fine tuning my web pages: the look and feel, the photography and, most importantly of all, the key words and meta data found in the head of all page source. It's a never ending job! Every time you add a page you need to be aware of what's going on in the background in order that Google, Yahoo, Ask and so on not only find you site, but like its structure too and display it when your meta data matches neatly with a particular search query.

In this issue of Vogue (Jan 2010) my best-selling O'polo pendant had pride of place, rubbing shoulders with pieces from elite jewellery designers! So now that my website has done its job, let's see if Vogue does a good job of encouraging the shoppers!

Pictured above is my stunning O'polo pendant in crystal and also golden crystal.