JUL Designs

Website Review
JUL Designs
http://juldesigns.com

Have you ever wondered where to get those brilliant finishing touches for your knitted pieces?  Like elegant shawl pins, unique buttons or the hardware for a nice knitted clutch?  I did.  My local knitting store is a wonderful place, but it just doesn't have the traffic to support a large collection of the after-knitting add-ons.  Well, wonder no more and wander no further, JUL Designs is a one-stop shop for a lot of those needs.  Granted, their artistic style might not match the project at hand; they have a beautiful inventory that is handmade, but the breadth of styles is not huge.  I actually stumbled upon this site after reading a post in Knitting Daily about different ways to wear a shawl.  In the article, they mentioned receiving a box of various pins, sticks and leather from JUL and put them to good use.  Using the provided hyperlink, I stumbled upon a lovely website for shawl knitters.

I ordered a nice shawl pin to accompany a lace shawl I knitted for my mother.  (It was the Passion Flower Shawl Pin, featured here.)  There is free shipping on orders over $25 and the pin arrived within a week.  I was very pleased with the weight and craftsmanship of the pin.  This particular piece was handmade with fair trade in mind in Indonesia.  I was a little disappointed with the packaging.  Not the shipping package, but the package the actual pin resided in was a little lackluster.  It was a clear plastic bag.  For the price, I wasn't hoping for a wooden box, but I was hoping for...well...something a with a little more umph so perhaps I could leave the pin in its packaging when gifting it.  (Something about leaving it in a clear plastic bag doesn't scream high quality gift to me.)  

The website is well organized, easy to use, and updated regularly.  You can also subscribe to a newsletter so you are notified of sales and special deals.  Their inventory includes completed items such as bags, hardware for things such as purses, pedestal buttons, patterns for an array of shawls, hats, etc., jewelry, shawl pins and sticks as well as other interesting items I'm too lazy to list here.  

Bottom Line:  The prices are very reasonable, the items are meaningfully artistic, the shipping was fast and free and the item was high quality and in excellent shape when it arrived.  The lackluster packaging aside, I would recommend checking out this site, especially with the holidays just around the corner.  

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