UK Jewellers' Collective

I have recently joined this rather amazing forum, which can be found here. It is full of very, very helpful and lovely people and much advice on all things jewellery making related. One of the members of the forum recently organised a charm swap, which I signed up for. It was much fun, and involved receiving the name and address of another forum member, for whom you would make and send a charm. The recipient of your charm would not know who made it, and in return you would receive an anonymous charm from a different member. I decided to do a little birthstone flower and asked the organiser for my person's birth month.

And here it is - Emerald birthstone charm for May:

And with some playing around in Lightroom to make the stones change colour:

The charm I received was rather fab, with an amazing leaf texture on the outside and gorgeous vintage style photograph inside. Very me!

Here it is:

Watching all the photographs of the charms appear as people received them, and trying to guess who had made each one kept me glued to the forum for days, and at the end all the pictures were put in a gallery and it was eventually worked out who made what.

Fab idea, no?