HALO Award being presented by British Hallmarking Council Chair Noel Hunter to Harriet Kelsall and I last Thursday. If you’ve been following my social media posts, you’ll have seen that last Thursday I was presented with a rather special award. “…The HALO (Hallmarking Awareness and Learning Online) Award is supported by the British Hallmarking Council and the National Association of Jewellers. Its objective is to encourage and reward promotion of the importance of the hallmark to all consumers browsing and buying fine jewellery or silverware online…” (taken from the British Hallmarking Counci ..read more

I started writing this blog, intending to write a review of my first experience exhibiting at H-art (Herefordshire Art Week), but it’s gone off on a bit of a tangent. There’s still a H-art bit at the end, but I think some important things jumped from my brain and onto the screen, so I’ve decided to keep them there… When I first moved into my Eco-Studio, I obviously had the usual worries about people still knowing I actually existed. I no longer had a “shop front”, and even though footfall at my previous studio was virtually non-existent, and most of those people weren’t actually my custome ..read more

I’ve been trying to get a better at writing my blog over the last few months, and now that I’m starting to see the light at the end of my crazy busy summer, it’s time to get back down to some writing… I post almost daily on my social media, but lately, I’ve found myself wondering “what if instagram was hacked or closed down tomorrow”? I have almost 6000 of you following my instagram and facebook accounts, but I keep reading horror stories about small businesses with 100’s of thousands of followers getting hacked and loosing their profile and therefore all of those followers in an instant ..read more

You may have already seen me posting about this on my socials, but if not, I’d very much like to let you know that Anna Fine Jewellery is now a fully certified B Corp!! What’s one of those? I hear some of you ask…well…essentially, a B Corp is a company using their business as a force for good. It’s kind of like an environmental and ethical gold star, and getting it is an incredibly rigorous (and long!) process. Every part of your business is scrutinised and then you have to provide actual written down evidence to back up everything you say you’re doing. For a sole trader, one person business l ..read more

Today (Wednesday 10th May 2023) was a bit of a momentous occasion… my first full day working at my bench in my beautiful Eco-Studio!! It feels like it’s taken forever, but after having to spend the last four and a half months working temporarily from my partners office (there’s an earlier blog all about why this was the case if you want to read it), I’m now “home”…in my off grid Eco-Studio, with no extortionate rent to pay and no bullying landlords to put up with! There’s still a lot to do(as you can see from the above photo!), and I’m sure it’s going to be an ongoing project, but the main th ..read more

In my quest to try and write “slightly” more regular blogs, today’s offering is all about keeping your jewellery clean and (if you want it to be) sparkling. Now there’s all sort’s of chemical cleaning products out there, but really, good old hot soapy water and an old soft toothbrush is all you need for most types of jewellery. If you want it give it more professional finish then you could invest in a specific jewellery cleaning cloth (I like the Towntalk ones but there are other brands) to give it a final buff up after its wash. You do need to be careful if your jewellery contains porous ..read more

Hi everyone and I hope you had a good weekend. Mine was spent talking my eldest to a uni applicant day, and then yesterday, I decided to completely change how the ceiling is going to be in my new eco-studio, so I was back adding in more insulation during the day, and then spent the evening choosing flooring! Anyway, the photo is of a recycled silver brooch that I actually made a few years ago, but I wanted to talk about what makes a gemstone “precious” and this highlights it perfectly. It’s my brooch, and the stones in it belonged to my nan. She didn’t have any jewellery of any monetary preci ..read more

A few months ago, I applied to join the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen. I was invited to attend an interview, that happened on Monday, and yesterday I got a rejection email! I was given less than one weeks notice about the interview that they described as “informal”, but was actually anything but this! I was sat at one end of the table while four of them passed around my work at the other. They all had their poker faces on and I don’t think any of them said anything positive about my jewellery at all! All of my best work is always already sold, so I took a selection of what I had, and made ..read more

Now spring has sprung, we can finally really start to get going on my new Eco-Studio - hurrah!! Over the last couple of months, I’ve spent a lot of time just staring at the amount of work that needed to be done, and wondering where to start! When you spend your days making tiny things, the prospect of having to work on something so big is just a tad daunting…but progress is now happening, and writing this is helping me to see just how much! There’s been soooo much clearing and moving stuff to do. We’ve been using the building as storage up until now, so all of that “stuff” needed to either go ..read more

Hi everyone! I’ve been really trying harder lately to get you lovely folks to sign up to my newsletter, and there is a reason for it… We all rely sooooo much on social media to get our daily news, find out what our friends are up to, find out about events etc etc…but what if social media closed tomorrow? I know this is unlikely, but if facebook or instagram suddenly wasn’t available, or someone decided to hack my accounts, all of the 5000 followers that I have across both platforms would just be gone! Don’t worry, I’m not planning on stopping sharing photos and videos on my socials, I’m just n ..read more