Black Heart Creatives’ colourful, fun, kitsch designs are about as far away from the delicate jewellery featured in my last post as you can get, but sometimes a gal just needs a big heart necklace in her life, you know? Especially on Valentine’s Day (although I’ll be wearing mine all year round – hearts are for life, not just for V-Day).

Black Heart Creatives not only make bespoke pieces, but also offer bling fans the chance to create their own unique jewellery at workshops in London and Bristol. I missed the boat on the Halloween-themed workshop, so speedily snapped up a ticket for their Valentine’s one, which was held at The Crazy Fox in Bristol – I had no idea this lovely little independent cafe existed, but will definitely be back. Broadmead was in dire need of a place like this!

After everyone had settled down with their beverage of choice in hand – tea for some, cider for others – our first task was to make cute heart and arrow earrings. After a tutorial on the correct way to open and close jump rings (which I’m still not sure I’ve mastered!) we were off. Although we all had the same tools to work with, everyone’s earrings were slightly different, and Black Heart Creatives’ Charlotte encouraged us to be as creative as we liked with it.

We then had a short break (for more tea and cider) and moved onto our next challenge: making a heart necklace. Charlotte brought a selection of hearts in different colours, including some amazing glittery ones, to the table for us to use, and obviously we all dived straight for the glitter. While many went for an ambitious design, I decided to keep it simple with a row of hearts, adding an extra length of chain for a layered effect.

I encourage everyone to give a Black Heart Creatives jewellery-making workshop a go – it was such a fun event and I’ve now got two lovely pieces of custom jewellery to add to my collection too. Follow them on Twitter for future workshop dates, or head over to the website to purchase something pretty made by Charlotte herself – I’ve got my eye on the custom name necklace and the heart stud earrings (in glitter, natch).

Jewellery fan? Then you might enjoy:

My Mink & Stone blogger challenge post.

A few of my favourite sewing-themed jewellery pieces.