Helen

My passion for handmade crafts began in my teens, when I taught myself how to make beaded jewellery. I enjoyed collecting a wide variety of beads from all over the world to make into brightly-coloured earrings. More recently, during my last university holidays, I began to use beads as decoration for wooden boxes. Using tiny beads, I recreated scenes from the Bahamas on a large jewellery box. I also decorated several much smaller boxes with tiny beads and semi-precious stones. Although I still enjoy decorating wooden boxes with beads, it is incredibly time-consuming. I decided to try decoupage so that I could cover large boxes more quickly. I experimented with papers, painting and photos and developed a style which involves a combination of these different techniques. I often like to include photographs in my designs; I take some of these myself with my Olympus E420 and get others from the rights-free site morguefile.com. I also like to accent some of my designs with beads so I don't stray too far from my jewellery-making roots!

In decorating boxes, I very much follow my creative impulses. I don't like to create the same design twice, so if you buy one of my boxes you can be sure that you're buying something completely unique! In general I don't like overly kitsch designs, preferring to go for something more quirky and unusual. I have been covering a huge variety of subjects and designs so I have separated them into five categories in my shop - Nature, World, Patterns, Nostalgia and Music (I play the piano and sing in a choir). At the moment, as well as creating more unique decoupaged boxes, I am working on putting some kits together so that you can have a go yourself! I am also open to receiving commissions for boxes with your own message, photo and/or design; at the moment I'm working on a memorial box to contain a beloved pet's ashes. You can see examples of recent completed commissions in the 'Custom' section of my shop.

As for candle making, that's something that I used to enjoy way back in middle school at an after school club! Back in those days I loved putting all sorts of (probably very flammable) things inside the candles, such as glitter, beads and dried flowers. Recently I got the urge to take up candle-making again because pouring a candle is incredibly satisfying! This time I decided I wanted to work mainly with jar candles since they're very attractive and safe. I also wanted to make candles with a twist so I began including Chinese-style fortunes which are gradually revealed as the candle burns. I also try to use recycled wax wherever possible. My candles also lend themselves to custom work. I can use colours and scents of your choice and even put your own choice of words in the fortune! You could create a secret message such as 'Happy birthday', 'I love you' or even 'Will you marry me?'. I look forward to developing my candle-making techniques further in the future.