Offers & News

10th anniversary celebrations!

Somehow, it’s 10 years since we opened our doors and welcomed our first customers at Love from Skye! We’ve been so busy recently working on our future plans (more on that soon!) that we almost let this big occasion pass us by without celebrating! But we have done some last minute organising to make sure the occasion doesn’t pass without a wee celebration.

This offer is available in our shop and on our website too. It will be available on our website until midnight on Saturday. Don’t miss the chance to enter our raffle! Please see below.

You must click on the coupon at the checkout for your discount to be applied. The prices shown on product listings are before discount. Your discount will be applied at the checkout once you have clicked on the offer.

The discount can be used for pieces which we will be making to order but please be aware that these will be delivered after Christmas. For example, Cuillin rings can be ordered using the discount but they won’t be ready for dispatch until around the end of January. Please see the delivery / collection page on our website for more details by clicking here:

Local customers who are unable to visit our shop on our offer days are able to order online and select ‘collect in store‘ at the checkout.

 

Christmas raffle!

Win £175.00 to spend on our jewellery this Christmas! Tickets are £1 each. Tickets are available in our shop until 3pm Saturday 2nd December and on our website until midnight on Sunday. All proceeds will be given to our local primary school to help them take all the children to the panto at Eden Court, Inverness, this Christmas.

Tickets are in our ‘other products’ section on our website, please click here:

The winner will be able to choose jewellery from our ‘Love from Skye’ collection to the value of £175.00. This means you could choose one of our sought after silver Cuillin Ridge rings, our silver Gu Brath necklace & earrings – one of our new Celtic designs, our silver & pearl oyster shell necklace or our new chunky silver bracelet with our popular Skye Heart charm. The choice will be yours!

The winner will be contacted week beginning 4th December. The jewellery must be chosen before Christmas. Jewellery can be chosen from our shop displays or from our website. Normal making times will apply if the winner would like to choose a design which we make to order / is out of stock.

 

Christmas shopping special offer (now ended)

Please be aware that our anual 20% discount is for a limited time in November only. It’s a great opportunity for Christmas shopping but it is too late to order pieces which we make to order (including our silver Cuillin designs and some of our gold & platinum pieces). You can use the discount to purchase our silver jewellery, silver rings (apart from our Silver Cuilling rings) and anything from our Special Listings page (click to view the page) for Christmas delivery. You can also use the discount to purchase a small selection of our gold / platinum Celtic rings but please do check which ones we have available. (There is no need to check first about silver jewellery, silver rings (apart from our Silver Cuilling rings) and anything from our Special Listings page but you can read more about delivery / collection timeframes on our deliveries page – click to visit this page .)

Local customers who are unable to visit our shop on our offer days are able to order online and select ‘collect in store‘ at the checkout.

The discount can be used for pieces which we will be making to order but please be aware that these will be delivered after Christmas. For example, Cuillin rings can be ordered using the discount but they won’t be ready for dispatch until around the end of January.

You must click on the coupon at the checkout for your discount to be applied. The prices shown on product listings are before discount. Your discount will be applied at the checkout once you have clicked on the offer.

On these special offer days, our shop will be open from 10am until 5pm on Thursday & Friday and from 10am to 4pm on Saturday. We will also be running a raffle – please see below. The discount will be available throughout this time online plus on Sunday until midnight. (Our shop is closed on Sundays).

Friendship, support, collaboration and community……That’s how our Christmas special offer started. It wasn’t actually anything to do with Black Friday.
We notice quite a lot of small businesses taking a stand against it over the last couple of years and reacting by not doing an offer, even closing, and sometimes asking people not to participate. So it’s nice to rember back to how it started for us.
In 2015 our fantastic friend Jen had a pop up shop here in Broadford and I spent far too much time drinking coffee with her that year! Jen has always been a super supportive friend in our lives and she now owns the gorgeous shop Stròm in Kyle. During our endless coffee drinking that year, we talked about how we wanted to do something special in the winter for our local customers to show them that we’re not businesses that only think about the tourist trade. We really try to show our local customers that their custom is so important to us – but by the time we got to the end of a year, we did feel burnt out and couldn’t find the energy to do something special. Jen suggested that we would feel much more inspired if it was a team effort, and there was the idea! We would plan a special Christmas shopping event together so that we could help eachother get the word out and we’d feel more inspired doing it together. We also hoped that more folk would come out shopping in the village if there was more than one place doing something different. We then decided that if we were both doing something then we should ask the other Broadford businesses if they wanted to join in the fun too, so until 2020 we tried to organise it as a village event. A concept very different to Black Friday (which I think came to the UK in 2010)! Yes, we timed it to fall on the last Friday in the month because that works for most people – just like lots of local craft fairs etc also do as well and the words “Black Friday” have only ever been uttered during any of the planning when we talk about it being anti Black Friday!
We absolutely realise that not all small businesses can afford to do discounts and should not feel pressured to, but that’s not to say that any who do can afford to do so often. When we did this for the first time in 2015, trade was very, very different in the winter than the summer months and it’s always been important to us that our business is a year round business – not a seasonal one. So a boost in the winter is and was certainly a good thing. A discounted purchase on a day which would otherwise be an extremely quiet day is better than no sales! On our first Christmas shopping event we had just one full time member of staff and one casual helper but a few years later we had 3 permanent members of staff and events like this really help keep all that going. So this festive shopping event has become a big and important part of our year over the last 8 years. It not only helps support us as a business and a family, it also helps support our independent suppliers – always based in Scotland and often locally.
So when you see an independent business doing a special offer at this time of year, they may not be trying to “jump on the Black Friday bandwagon” and there may be more to it, even a nice concept! We really enjoy the buzz in the shop during these days too and, you know us, we love an excuse for a prosecco!

 

Klarna

You can now pay later or pay in installments with Klarna!

When you reach our checkout, our customers now have the option to select to pay later or to pay in 3 interest free installmaents.

 

New designs

We recently listed some exciting new designs!

Our new designs are……(Click on the links to go straight to these listings)

Cuillin bangle

Gu Brath bangle

Gu Brath bracelet

Triskelle bracelet

Skye Heart earrings

Skye Heart charm

Skye Heart charm bracelet

Skye Heart heavy weight charm bracelet

New Special Listings page

To try to make everything clearer and less complicated for website customers, we have created a new special listings page on our site where we are adding any gold jewellery and gold / platinum stone set rings so that you can see exactly what we have already made, on display in the shop and ready to go! (We do also have a good selection of our gold & platinum Celtic bands available which are not listed on this page). So if you are thinking about ordering a gold necklace, earrings or stone set ring but it’s not on this special listings page then the chances are that we would have to make it to order for you which takes 4-6 weeks during ‘normal’ times, but please do just get in touch to find out what we can get to you in the timeframe you have as we sometimes have ‘work in progress’ pieces in our workshop which are not yet ready to be listed in our special listings.

Our featured design promotion

We like to showcase a ‘featured design’ and offer it at a special one off price. When we were about to launch this idea, lockdown #1 happened. Our initial idea was to showcase one of our higher end designs but, well, so much has changed since then hasn’t it. It now doesn’t feel right to only showcase a luxury piece so we feature an affordable version as well and offer both at a one off special price. We also try to do this offer year round rather than only in the winter months but this winter we have done lots of promotions so our featured design idea has taken a back seat. We will bring it back soon though.

Our last featured designs were our Triskelle bracelet in silver which you can see here and a luxurious combination of rose gold & silver which you can see here.

9 years of Love from Skye!

Somehow Love from Skye is 9 years old and this winter we will be 10!

It’s been a whirlwind 9 years! It feels like they’ve passed in a flash, but when we think back to how the shop looked when we opened, all the changes it’s been through, how full it is now in comparison and how much our own collection has grown over those years then it does actually feel like 9 years!! It’s been hectic! We’ve loved it and we’ve met a lot of great people & made a lot of friends in our shop. Here’s to more years doing what we love!

Big thanks to our customers, friends, family and employees past & present.

 

Would you like to work alongside us?!

We’re not actively advertising for employees but we are always looking for assistance from the right people, especially for help in our busy workshop and we’re open to being flexible.

Would you like to come into our workshop (at times to suit both us and you) to assist us with what we do here at Love from Skye? Or, would you like to work on our jewellery for us, from your own workshop?

We would love for someone local to us to take on this role but we realise that this may not be possible so we’d be happy to consider working with a jeweller from further afield. We are open to suggestions and we’re flexible!

To take on this work for us, it is essential that you have the skills to size rings down and up (not stretching), solder components such as cufflink & brooch fittings, do tube / rub over setting, repair jewellery such as chain repairs and highly polish jewellery to an extremely high standard (not barrel polishing or polishing with a pendant drill attachment). For a jeweller coming into our workshop, we need you to be at ease with using an aqua flame soldering machine and a bench polisher.

Unfortunately we’re not in a position to spend any time offering training so it is essential that anyone contacting us is able to carry out all of the above tasks to a really high standard.

This would suit someone who is already working as a jobber, someone who is just starting out as a self employed jobber (but is already fully trained), or someone who produces their own collection or bespoke work and is looking for some additional work to support that. If you are living locally but not currently set up with a workshop but you have all of the skills we need, we would also be happy to discuss a ‘rent a bench’ agreement to allow the right person to work on their own jewellery in our workshop as well as assisting us with our own work.

If you’re interested in working with us on a flexible basis, please email bryony@lovefromskye.co.uk initially so that we can schedule a chat or a wee visit.

Bryony & Paul

Our photoshoot with Sophia Lockley and Deirdre Graham

One aspect of building our website which is an ongoing project is gathering photographs of our jewellery being worn to try to show scale and proportion.

Sophia worked for us in our shop. (We miss her so much and hope she’ll come back to us one day! She’s super talented and we’re so happy for her – she’s studying and loving life in Glasgow now!) We were just getting ideas together for a gorgeous outdoorsy Skye photoshoot when lockdown happened. By the time it was appropriate to do things like photoshoots again, Sophia had moved away for her studies so we got Deirdre on board as our lovely model and our Love from Skye photoshoot happened in Glasgow! Two Skye girls in Glasgow, beautifully showcasing our jewellery for us. Deirdre is also from Skye and is a very talented Gaelic singer, musician and teacher! It was important to us that our jewellery is shown on a “real”, relatable woman and that the people involved in our wee photoshoot represent Skye.

We’re gradually adding these images to product listings on our website so that, eventually, every time you click on a thumbnail of one of our designs, you will then be able to browse through a wee selection of images showing the jewellery being worn.

Price change, 2023, designs and repair work.

With the cost of everything in the UK having risen, we’re sure that it won’t come as any surprise to our customers that our production costs have risen and that we are having to increase our prices. We have avoided doing a price increase for as long as we possibly could and we gave our social media followers notice at the beginning of March that we would be increasing our prices soon and we finalised the changes during the summer. We have always priced certain work at lower than we should have as we are always trying to think of our customers but we have sadly come to a time where we have to price all of our work realistically. If you notice that a certain design has increased more than something else, this may be because we had previously never included as much time as we should have in our pricing for certain pieces. All businesses are in the same boat with increased running costs. However, we would really appreciate your understanding that precious metals were already greatly affected by the pandemic. For example, when we were able to re-open after the first lockdown, gold had increased by 20% between closing our doors and re-opening them. Precious metal prices have continued to be affected substantially since then. Just think, if the loaf of bread you buy has increased by 20%, imagine what effect the ‘cost of living crisis’ has had on precious metal prices. As well as being affected by metal costs,  we are also affected by other costs involved in our making processes such as hallmarking charges, delivery to receive our materials and packaging costs – all on top of normal running cost increases – so we hope you understand.

Price comparisons

We have not increased any prices more than we absolutely have to. After really carefully re-calculating every cost involved in each design we have compared our new prices to other similar companies and we have found that, every time, our prices are still cheaper. Sometimes a little cheaper, sometimes considerably cheaper. When we have compared our prices to other companies, we are looking at other small manufacturing jewellers in Scotland who are also hallmarking their work. We’re not comparing with companies based in Scotland who are not making their own jewellery, to those who are based in Scotland but are importing their designs or to those who are stamping their designs (rather than fully hallmarking).

Silver jewellery is often stamped 925 by the maker rather than having it hallmarked, however, we do have all of our jewellery fully hallmarked (other than our wee textured rings and studs due to the availability of space for the marks on these small pieces).

On a side note, did you know that Scottish businesses who import jewellery from outside the UK can legally have it hallmarked in Edinburgh? A wee fact to bear in mind when considering provenance.

Repair charges

Similarly to comparing the prices of our designs, we have done some research to ensure that our repair pricing is still really fair.

We’ve found that some jewellers charge as much as £30.00 for the very same cleaning & polishing service as we usually charge £10.00 for (£25.00 for platinum). Please note that the cleaning & polishing service we offer is not the same as ‘dipping’ jewellery in an ultrasonic bath which is sometimes the method used for a cheaper service. It is a time consuming & skilled process. Jewellers sell the service at £30.00 by explaining that they check the security of the stones as part of the service. If we charge you £10.00 for the same service, we will also be checking your settings as no jeweller would ever put a stone-set item of jewellery through the cleaning & polishing process without checking the security of the stones. This is always part of the process.

We found that the best price we could find at a professional jewellers or watch specialist for replacement watch batteries was £10.00 (with the charge often being £25.00 – £40.00 and sometimes being as much as £80.00 depending on the watch brand). We are charging £7.50. Please note that we charge the same price for replacing a watch battery regardless of the brand of watch, ie, we don’t increase the charge for high end watches as some businesses do. If your watch has a screw back, which means it takes us longer to work on it, then we will charge £10.00.

Customers who require to have their rings increased in size are often surprised by the cost of this and regularly think that we are making their rings larger by stretching them. We would very, very rarely stretch a ring. We may stretch a band if it’s a substantial one and only needs to be increased by half a size. We would never increase the size of a ring by stretching it more and we would never stretch a ring if it had a stone in it. Stretching rings puts pressure on joins and settings. We almost always increase the size of your rings by adding metal to them. This is a skilled process and can use a lot of metal, depending on how much larger your ring needs to be. The charge for this starts at £31.50 to £80.00 and varies depending on whether your ring is silver, 9ct gold, 18ct gold etc and your ring is always returned to you like new because the ring requires to be cleaned and polished after the sizing process.

We hope our customers will still feel they are receiving a good service at a good, and most importantly, fair price.

 

Just a few recent giveaways and promotions (which have now ended)…

Our poppies

Every year, mum Fyona donates her time and materials to make fabric poppies which we sell for £5 and we pass the full £5 onto Poppy Scotland. Each year we encourage our customers who have previously purchased one to, of course, re-use it but to please, if you can, pop a donation in a poppy tin so that the charity does not lose a donation due to the sale of a reusable poppy.

 

Defibrillator fundraising 

Last autumn we organised a luxury raffle to help Broadford & Strath Community Company with their fundraising to buy defibrillators for our community.
We secretly hoped that our raffle would cover the cost of one defibrillator at around £1200.00 but we were so happy to pass £1,930.00 onto the Community Company.
Emma in Inverness, originally a Skye girl, was our winner and she won 6 of our exclusive Love from Skye products! Emma won our silver Cuillin ring, Harris Tweed bear, silver Skye Heart necklace, silver textured stud earrings, our Storm candle and our silver & pearl oyster shell necklace!
Thank you so much to every one of you who supported our fundraiser for the incredible Community Company – you can read more about them below.

Skye Hearts

One of our latest designs, our ‘lockdown 2020 design’ was our Skye heart necklace, a detailed silhouette of the map of our island within a heart.

Our design is inspired by people’s love of our island and by the community heart groups working to help others during the Coronavirus crisis.

This design is now a normal part of our collection, but first, we decided to donate the full proceeds of the first 20 necklaces we sold to Broadford & Strath Community Company. We hoped we would be lucky enough to sell all 20, to raise £1,170 for the company, but due to the unbelievable interest from our amazing customers, we decided to add another 10 necklaces to the fundraising sales so we raised a final total of £1,755.00! In March 2021, BSCC planted a community orchard with this donation. Our new design is now available as a normal part of our collection here

We wanted to raise some money for the community company to help a small way towards the wonderful work they are doing. The work they do is extensive at the best of times but during the Covid-19 pandemic they organised almost daily food shares, co-ordinated & delivered cooked meals to the vulnerable people in our community and grew their own veg at their Growers Hub. We felt it was important that those of us who were able to start returning to ‘normality’ kept this in mind and dis something small to help others.

Skye Heart Community Orchard

The community orchard, funded by the sale of 30 Skye Heart necklaces, has come on leaps & bounds and now features leaks to maximise the space in the raised beds! Photo taken August 2021.