All items by The Fabulous Cat

Gems. People. Love.

Gems...

I work with all types of gemstones, and as well as making designs for my one-off pieces, I love to find out about the science and history of each gemstone as well as its meanings and properties. You'll always find a bit of info on this in my descriptions and inspiration sections, as well as the origin locations for my stones and carat weights where I can provide them.

Quite a few of my designs feature spirals, zigzags and asymmetric lines because to me, they represent the non-uniform way that my mind works (why go straight from A to B when you can go from A to K to Z then back to B, right?!)

...People...

So I'm Nikki, I’m from the UK and I won't disclose how old I am! All I will say is one of my greatest achievements is that my turtle tamagotchi lived to 43 days back in the late 90’s. My brain is a heady mix of autism and ADHD and on the occasions it lets me function, I like to make the shiny things you see in this shop.

So who has inspired me? Looking back at my family tree, I think I’ve definitely inherited my creative side from my dad’s half of the family. My mum’s side are all keen gardeners whereas I’ve owned one spider plant that mysteriously went brown and produced no spiders, so no green fingered genes here.

On the other hand, my dad was a keen photographer, my great uncle was a wood turner and as for my nan…well she had a great interest in all kinds of crafts throughout her life. As well as knitting and crocheting from an early age, she also turned her hand to other things like glass blowing and pottery. I’d been making necklaces for a few years by the time she passed away in 2012, she owned and wore a couple of them proudly!

I couldn’t complete this section without mentioning my best friend Paula, who I sadly lost last year. Her whole life revolved around craft and she could’ve opened up her own art shop with the amount of supplies she collected! She did try a bit of jewellery making a few years ago as we both went to classes for a while, but her talents were more suited to anything involving card, paper, paints and prints. Some of my happiest memories are of our twice yearly visits to the huge Create and Craft fairs at the Birmingham NEC (once in deep snow!) and always coming home with bulging bags.

...Love...

My love for jewellery making all started when I was off sick from work and someone bought me a box of sparkly plastic beads and some thread. That was nearly 20 years ago (gulp!) and those beads are long gone after I developed a fascination for gemstones, so I thought it was about time I did this thing properly and opened a shop. ‘It's now or never’, as somebody famous once sang. I have a big milestone birthday in 2025, plus I've just been through a year of big personal change, so I thought I should be brave and build something new from the ashes.

My photos are simple and might be a bit different to most pictures that you'll see on here - there's no artisan wooden ornaments, beautifully manicured hands or expensive granite worktops to hang my jewellery from. What I do have, is a small light box, a pad of pastel coloured paper and a trusty phone camera that's pushed to its absolute limit. But despite this, I've shown every one of my creations in its best light, whether it has stones with facets that sparkle or creamy pearls that glow.

Finally, why The Fabulous Cat? To tell the truth it's the name I started my selling journey with (and it's still going strong) in the first place I ever sold my jewellery, and I just didn’t have the heart to part with it! Fabulous Cat actually comes from an old meme from about ten years ago that my friend used to send me of a ginger cat, head back, striking a 'fabulous' pose for the camera. Well, I mean all cats *are* fabulous by default!

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