Astridelle has designs for your Wedding

Young Oxford jewellery entrepreneur Astrid Woollard specialises in unique and individual designs to create something truly special and memorable to celebrate your wedding day.

She will collaborate with brides to create exquisite and unique jewellery like a beautiful tiara or stunning head-dress as a ‘one-off' piece that will never be replicated for anyone else. Or Astrid can design the entire set of jewellery for the bride - delicate earrings, bracelet, tiara and necklace to perfectly complement the bride's complexion, taste and style of wedding dress.

Working in techniques which include beaded jewellery,Swarovksicrystals, silver wirework, and metalwork, Astrid can design and make pieces for the whole bridal party. For the bridesmaids, a matching set of gorgeous jewellery that can pick up on an individual element of the theme or the bride's dress; for the mothers of the bride and groom some lovely earrings or a bracelet to treasure for ever.

Astrid's creativity can also solve the problem of ‘what to give the bridesmaids as a gift?' What could be more beautiful than a delicate bracelet, necklace or earrings?

Astrid says: "Everything has to be perfect for the wedding day, and I love the challenge of working with the bride on designing something beautiful but also with true meaning for her and the groom. Translating ideas into unique art to be worn by on the most important day of their lives."

Her range incorporates techniques including. She says, "I love playing around with different materials and styles. To me, jewellery is art." Astrid loves the variety and artistic challenge that these unique pieces offer, to create something truly beautiful.

Astrid also has a fantastic idea for the hen party. She can host a week-end workshop for the hen party, and you can create your own jewellery. Great fun, and something really unusual for you all to do - you supply the cocktails!

Minus the cocktails, she will also bring a children's workshop to the wedding. Astrid will work with them on a jewellery project, leaving you all free to enjoy the speeches.

You can find out more on her website www.astridelle.com

ENDS

For further information and photographs: Please contact Sarah Airey at The Buzzworks emailsarah.airey@thebuzzworks.co.uktelephone 07855 086447

About Astrid

Dr Astrid Woollard is a recent DPhil graduate from the University of Oxford in Plant Sciences, but has also designed and made hand-made for nearly 20 years.

Astrid became interested in jewellery at age 14 when her godmother took her to a jewellery artist's private viewing in Vienna, where she grew up. She says: "I was fascinated and inspired by the beauty of the jeweller's designs. She had used many different beads from all over the world.

"I realised there was an unlimited potential for design, through different combinations of those beads. I desperately wanted learn how to design and create jewellery myself." Since then Astrid has been creating beaded jewellery.

However, she also concentrated on her academic career, and completed her undergraduate degree in Microbiology and Genetics (Immunology) at the University of Vienna (Austria) before completing her DPhil in Plant Sciences (Cell Biology) at the University of Oxford in 2012.

Throughout, and including during her studies at Oxford, Astrid continued to make her hand-made jewellery. She attended craft fairs, led workshops and went online. Her hobby gradually became a business, with only a brief break while she prioritised the final stages of her doctorate.

Astrid's day job took her to work in pharmaceuticals, including large companies like Boehringer-Ingelheim as well as early stage start-ups such as Biovertis. She acquired detailed knowledge about the drug development process and associated technologies, from drug target identification and validation through to quality control and regulatory affairs. She also worked as Clinical Analyst in the diagnostics laboratories at the Medical University of Vienna.

In 2013 she joined the Science and Technology Facilities Council as Security Policy Adviser for the EU FP7 big data project BioMedBridges before moving on to work at St George's, University of London as Technology Transfer Officer, where she managed intellectual property from both the University and the Trust.

In April 2014, Astrid moved back to Oxford where she is now Technology Transfer Manager for in the life sciences team of Isis Innovation, the University's technology transfer company. At Isis, she manages intellectual property originating from academic research and facilitates the commercialisation process. But she has never lost her love for designing and once she leaves her office, she dedicates her time to her own business,www.astridelle.com, where she designs, creates, and sells jewellery.

ENDS

For further information, interviews with Astrid and photographs please contactsarah.airey@thebuzzworks.co.uktelephone 07855 086447

Notes:

Dr Astrid Woollard, Microbiologist and Jewellery Entrepreneur

For further information on Astridelle please seewww.astridelle.com

For further information on Isis Innovation seehttp://isis-innovation.com