London Jewellery School year in review

It has been a very exciting and busy year at London Jewellery School as we strive to make sure that you have the best jewellery making experiences possible. It has also been a year that brought us many new experiences such as a new vibrant location for the studios, learning about booking publishing as well as building a pop up shop and working with a jewellery tool specialist.

New Studios

Hopefully many of you will have had the opportunity to visit us in our new home just off Brick Lane. This is an exciting area to work in with many designers and creative businesses around us. And the large windows in the studios offer fantastic natural light – perfect for jewellery creation.

And the new studios allow us to offer more opportunities for you to “rent a bench” to use our studios to work on your own creations – find out more here.

New Classes

We introduced a range of new classes this year including soutache and fold forming.

Soutache is a technique for making colourful statement pieces of jewellery using beads and braids which are stitched together. The classes are taught by former Advanced Jewellery Diploma student Sarah Burnett-Moore.

Fold forming is an exciting and interesting silversmithing technique involving repeatedly annealing, folding and hammering sheet metal to produce unique, organic and strong three dimensional shapes.  It is one of a series of classes we are developing to help students develop new skills beyond beginners and intermediate. Fold forming is taught by experienced tutor Melissa Hunt who will encourage students to experiment with the technique.

We’ll be introducing more new classes in 2015 – first off are an advanced silver week and Soldering for Metal Clay – and are always keen to hear from you about what you would like us to include in the timetable. Let us know if their is a technique or jewellery style you want to learn.

Pop-up shop

Our pop-up shop has been going from strength to strength this year. We are working with Walsh Tools, Metal Clay Ltd, Beads Direct and Shrangrila Gems to ensure you can stock up on jewellery making supplies when you come in for a class or just pop in to shop seven days a week.

We are also now stocking the first tools in our collaboration with Jewel Tool.

Jewel Tool

We have been working with jewellery tool specialist Shesto to rebrand Shesto’s Jewel Tool range and make it easier for everyone to choose the right tools.

LJS has worked with Shesto to produce tips and images to show how the tools can be used and these feature on new packaging for Jewel Tool. The packaging also says that the tools are “used and approved by Jessica Rose, founder of the London Jewellery School” and suggests the school as a good source of information on jewellery making.

You can see the tools at the school and find out more here.

Jessica’s first jewellery book

Bead and Wire Fashion Jewelry is the first jewellery book by LJS founder Jessica Rose.  It is all about making big, bold and beautiful statement pieces of jewellery using a range of techniques and easy to source materials that you can easily do from home.

Jessica and the LJS team learnt a lot about publishing a craft book this year and it proved exciting time – plus the book has been very well received and, like the Jewel Tool range, is availbale from Hobbycraft stores as well as the school.

And if that wasn’t enough we have seen many of our students blossom as jewellery makers – check out some of the work of our diploma graduates here. We loved meeting as many of you as possible at the school and events like the Big Bead Show and the Handmade Fair (where we taught over 1,000 people).

Cuff by Gaby Connell

And if we can wish for one thing for 2015 is to see many more of you learn new techniques and create beautiful things with us.

Remember jewellery making is for everyone.

And if you know someone interested in taking a first jewellery class in 2015, we are running a special offer on certain taster classes with LivingSocial.com – click here for details.