Jennifer Kirkpatrick is the designer behind Bella Photo Jewelry, a company that hand makes unique and beautiful photographic jewelry.

Jennifer with her Children

Jennifer was originally a busy website designer working from home. After the birth of her son in April 2006, followed by her daughter in September 2007 she found her new role as a mother an extremely time consuming one, and was intent on finding an interest that took up less of her valuable time and would allow her to spend more time with her children.

It was not until late 2007 that she started dabbling in jewelry creation, enjoying the flexibility of the hands-on creative process involved rather than relying on a series of rigid, digital calculations to achieve results. She produced just basic pieces at first, learning her trade and creating items to compliment her favorite outfits.

As her knowledge base expanded she discovered a website that explained how to transfer photos to clay, and was immediately captivated. Her first few clay pieces were impressive, and were given as presents to friends and family.
What Jennifer had in mind as her eventual goal was to create a clay photo tile in silver, which could be embellished with other decorations such as beads and crystals. After extensive research she had found that there was a gap in the market that she could fill.
Progress was swift, and as you may expect from a professional web designer, an Internet site was soon forthcoming. www.bellaphotojewelry.com was launched in December 2008, and contained a series of Jennifer’s favorite designs, many of which were handmade clay tiles set in silver and adorned with crystals and beads. The use of clay meant that the pieces could also be double-sided, allowing customers to display two photos rather than one.

In addition, Jennifer has now launched a series of single-sided resin pieces, a collection of heavier silver pieces, ‘Belly Jingles’, and maternity jewelry – which is based on an ancient Mexican tradition of soothing a baby in utero with a ‘jingle’.
With the exception of the ‘Belly Jingles’ line everything is created by Jennifer at her home studio, using the finest quality silver, gold, Swarovski crystals, Italian glass beads and pearls. Her creative juices are still flowing and she is constantly designing and producing new pieces, allowing the business and the website to grow at an impressive rate.

One of the key attractions of Jennifer’s range is that everything is made to order. Customers have a huge amount of flexibility to choose their ideal piece; if they like the design and embellishments of a particular square piece, but would prefer a circular charm, this can be done. Photos can be re-colored, extra crystals added, and there are a full range of other customizable features.

This aspect of the range means that a unique piece is always created, and the customer ends up with something they will be proud to wear or give as a gift, and have had a significant amount of input in.
For more information and to learn about the full range of products visit Jennifer’s website at www.bellaphotojewelry.com