Friday Featured: Roses are Red Jewellery and a Giveaway!

This week's featured shop is Roses are Red Jewellery. The owner Stacy, designs some really unique vintage-style pieces from brooches to rings to lockets.. to lockets filled with perfume! Here are a couple of my favourite pieces from the website..





I love this  vintage 'spoon handle' style ring, I've never seen anything like it before, it's definitely my favourite piece from the whole shop! The Alice in Wonderland style plaque necklace is gorgeous too.





Stacy has recently launched a new spring collection called Spring Bloom and features some gorgeous floral lockets, bird rings and birdcage necklaces which are perfect for this season. There's also an Easter offer on at the moment, if you sign up to the mailing list and spend over £15 you will receive a free pair of vintage bunny earrings!


How long have you been making jewellery?
A friend (a fashion student at the time)  taught me the basics probably coming up to 7 years ago now - the rest is self-taught. I started off with making really detailed 'bag charm keyrings' with fairy charms at the end of them using lots of tiny seed beads threaded onto headpins - they drove me crazy and required a lot of patience! I moved on to beaded bracelets, and eventually, necklaces and so on. I remember those early days - I used to traipse around west end London to all the bead shops and I always found pretty things that I wanted to use in my designs and before I knew it, I had a stupendous amount of pretty beads, charms and findings! I realised then that I hadn't let go of my childhood hobby of 'collecting things'. I collected shells, beads, dried petals, soaps and rubbers, and used to play 'shop' with my friends with them - clearly I never really grew up! I'd say it turned from a fun hobby into a serious passion in about 2008 and I started selling vintage-style jewellery online that year, combining my graphic design background with my need to constantly 'make things' and the vintage trend that was really coming into play at that time. Last year, I started afresh with Roses Are Red and the passion is still going strong! 

 Where do you get your inspiration from?

At the moment, anywhere and everywhere really - you never really know when the next strike of inspiration will come from! I'd say the Victorian movement with all that 'ornateness' (compare the era's perfume bottles and labels with the ones you have now and you'll see what I mean - so elegant and pretty!), and the heavily stylised Art Nouveau movement always inspire something in me, and I think that reflects in my designs. Also I'm an 80s child - I probably had the best childhood fantasy films growing up, like the awesome Never Ending Story and the mischief and mirth of the Labyrinth and the sparkling Legend with 'those' unicorns!  They are still my very favourite of films. I was really into my Fairytales as a kid too - I think it's kind of stuck with me. Nature too - only last summer I wanted a break from my work and walked round a quiet field near my flat and the hazy flowers (probably just weeds!) and butterflies going about their business, oblivious to the grey, noisy and polluted London streets just 2 minutes away just really made me stop for a moment and contemplate how simple and lovely that was.   

Where did the name 'Roses are Red' come from?
Good question! For ages I knew I wanted a new brand (it was previously 'Lucy Lockett Loves')  and it took me forever to come up with 'The Name'! I had a shortlist of about 5 and even went as far as buying the domains as I was worried someone would snap them up before I had decided! Roses Are Red won in the end as it combined everything that I think I wanted to get across in the brand: the most obvious one would be the old romantic Roses are Red poem (for the romance-themed and gift-giving element of it), lots of floral pieces and bright rose cabs I use, the reference to pretty gardens for my nature inspired designs. Also other references like the scent of the perfumes I use in my lockets, and to the Alice in Wonderland themed designs I often feature. My favourite flower was always the rose,  and the word 'rose' is coincidentally now an anagram of my first initial of my name combined with my surname since I got married! So not only does it 'feel right' but it's also the ultimately grown-up girly kind of name, I think! 


What are your favourite pieces in the shop and why?
I love all the pocket watches and lockets, just because I like that you can open them up and that they have a dual purpose other than just to look pretty! I get excited when I find unusual vintage charms too - like the Wishing Well charm  and the cool acorn locket which was perfect to fill with my solid perfume. I also love the way the Celestine hair comb turned out - there is something ethereal about it! There's no set agenda with my designs apart from loosely theming my collections - I make things that I like and mean something to me. Others sharing that with me - whether it sparks some nostalgia, romance, or joy in any way, is very much the icing on the cake. 

Giveaway
Stacy has kindly offered some of her pieces up for a giveaway.
One lucky winner will get:
- Playmates vintage necklace
- The Flower Bunny mini brooch
- A £5 voucher to spend on anything in the shop






To enter, all you need to do is be a follower of this blog, either on GFC, Bloglovin or Hello Cotton, 'like' Roses are Red on Facebook and comment here, leaving your email address. This giveaway will close next Friday 12th April when a winner will be picked from random. Good luck!