Recently I’ve been amassing quite a collection of laser cut and acrylic jewellery, something about it is really appealing to me at the moment. So when I saw that Charlotte from Black Heart Creatives was running a jewellery making workshop in Bristol of course I snapped up a ticket. With an ‘Under the Sea’ theme, the event promised the chance to make two pieces of totally unique, statement jewellery.

Our base for the night was The Crazy Fox in the centre of Bristol, a really nice coffee bar which hosts a range of events from art exhibitions to live music. Once refreshments had been bought, our first task was to make a charm bracelet. On our work trays we were given a selection of sea themed charms – shells, seahorses and fishes plus plenty of jump rings a lobster clasp and a length of chain. We were able to measure the chains to fit and then Charlotte showed us the proper way to open and close jump rings – actually a bit of an art!

I decided to go for the fully loaded look and used all my charms! They are really nicely detailed with etching or hole details as on the starfish and I liked the range of colours and materials – especially that transparent yellow conch shell. I decided to put the two seahorses kissing in the middle and built a kind of symmetrical design around it.

Next up was a slightly more complex design – a fully customisable mermaid tail necklace. Charlotte brought along two designs to choose from, a three part opaque green with etching on the fins, or an older design which had four parts. Both were lovely but as soon as I saw the turquoise mirror acrylic, I knew the choice for me! This time we had a few mini charms and a selection of rhinestones. My tail was already pretty blingy with the mirror look so I added just a few embellishments. The trickiest part of the workshop was injecting the acrylic glue under charm (I almost glued my necklace to the plastic tray), but we all got there in the end!

I loved the workshop and I’m so pleased with my makes. I gave the bracelet to a friend as part of a mermaid themed birthday present and she seemed pretty impressed with my handiwork too. The workshop had a lovely, laid back atmosphere and it was really fun to see everyone’s different interpretation of the materials and the final results.

Black Heart Creatives also do events in London so make sure you give them a little follow to hear of when their next one is. I’ll definitely be along to another one!