Hollie Eccles has been making jewellery for over 20 years. She trained formally, worked inside two established jewellery businesses, one in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, one in London and now runs Curious Magpie Jewellery from a garden studio in rural Leicestershire, casting rings and pendants from real pinecones and acorns using a 5,000-year-old technique. But like every maker I've ever spoken to, her first attempt at soldering silver ended in a small disaster. Where it started Hollie's...

When you finally understand soldering, it stops being the thing that holds you back and becomes the skill that sets you free to create whatever you want.

Once you know what to look for, it’s often easy to fix.