It's amazing the number of people that stick to dark colours even at this time of year. Earlier this week, I travelled to Central London to meet up with one of our jewellery buyers for lunch and we were surprised to see so many women dressed in pure black (from top to toe!) despite the wonderful blue sky.

Don't get me wrong, black is actually my favourite colour, as you might have gathered from the Caradiaz web look. It is also extremely popular amongst City workers because it conveys a professional image. But the slick 'City girl' look can be achieved with other colours as well - look at the Spring/Summer collections from shops like Zara, Mango, Massimo Dutti or Reiss; they have a great selection of separates for the workplace in sophisticated tones.

Anyway, if you still MUST wear black this spring, try to avoid looking like a member of what my luncheon companion referred to as 'the City's black army'. Any black suit or dress can be easily brought to life with a gorgeous piece of statement jewellery or perhaps a stylish scarf or another item that actually makes you stand out from the crowd and shows your individual style.

Statement necklace: Sybilla

Smart yet vibrant: Mango Spring-Summer 2008

One great thing about running an on-line business is the potential to have anybody from pretty much anywhere in the world visiting your shop and placing an order. It just feels great when people thousands of miles away find your products exciting enough to actually want to have them shipped over from another corner of the globe.

One of Caradiaz's international orders last year came from Italy. It was a straight forward order for a Tawy necklace so we checked the item as usual, packed it and sent it. When the customer received the parcel, she sent us a rather nice email telling us how pleased she was with the necklace, the packaging and how quickly she had received it. She then went on to mention that she was actually an independent writer who had been commissioned a book/guide on internet shops worldwide by a major Italian publisher and she'd like to include us in it.

We were completely taken by surprised but absolutely delighted, of course, to receive such praise and be one of the chosen companies for the book. Most of these shopping guides are just sheer advertising paid for by the on-line companies appearing in them. But this time it was a genuine, first-hand recommendation from someone who had actually used our website and made a purchase.

So we would like to say 'grazie mille' to author Paola Cicuttini for the vote of confidence.

You may have noticed from our collections that at Caradiaz we work mostly with Spanish jewellery designers and manufacturers. At the end of the day, I come from Spain so there is no language barrier and I'm familiar enough with the 'mañana, mañana' syndrome to know how to handle it. But it was also important to be close enough to our sources to develop a good business relationship and have as much control as possible on the production of our products.

More and more companies are outsourcing their manufacturing to countries like India and China to benefit from cheap labour but quality tends to get heavily compromised. In fact, last year we worked with a designer who had all her pieces made in India and when we received the goods, we had to send back more than seventy per cent because of the quality (or rather, the lack of it!). We inspected all the pieces one by one (we always do) and found all sorts of problems, from broken beads to missing beads, wrong assembly, dodgy wiring and more. Needless to say that we stopped working with that designer straight away in view of the experience...

Fortunately, some Spanish companies can still produce quality goods at competitive prices in their own local sites and employing skilled adults. So for us, India and the Far East shall remain places to draw inspiration from and enjoy wonderful holidays!

When buying jewellery for Caradiaz, I tend to go for unusual pieces that have some kind of 'stylistic' connection with an ancient culture.

I find all ancient cultures simply fascinating, although I'm particularly drawn towards Ancient Egypt and Ancient China. So it's probably no surprise that we have pieces like the Aida, Amarna, Tiye and Qin necklaces on our website.

You may have also guessed that I didn't miss the exhibitions on the Terracotta Warriors (British Museum) and Tutankhamun (The O2).

Tutankhamun was a bit disappointing, although they had some gorgeous ancient jewellery on display. But, with or without jewellery, I enjoyed the Warriors more. It was really impressive to be able to get so close to the statues and see the differences in the costumes, faces, etc. Mind you, my friend and fellow internet entrepreneur, Sophie Garrett, (who runs www.yours2share.com) came with me and my husband to see it and wasn't so impressed. But she has actually seen the real thing in China, so I guess she had a very good point....

A little anecdote before I go. I bumped (quite literally) into the now retired Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani at the Warriors exhibition. He was unconspicuously walking about amongst tourist and other visitors at first but, after a while, his dark orange tan and artificial-looking hair gave him away, particularly amongst a group of Italian student girls who tried to capture Mr. Garavani and one of his (rather) young male companions with their mobile phones.

Hello again,

Although our main business is jewellery, I have a weakness for handbags - apparently a very common thing amongst us, ladies...

You might have noticed that at we have introduced a few summery-looking bags on the Caradiaz website but it will be a while before we go into it more seriously, so to all bag lovers out there, please bear with us.

Anecdotally, I was on a train to London this morning heading to a meeting with a potential new French jewellery designer when I spotted the most beautiful Moroccan leather tote carried by a petite Asian girl. The bag was simply to die for but it was far too big for the girl and, unless she carried it over her shoulder, she dragged it on the floor rather badly - something she appeared to have done quite often, judging from the heavy scratching on the bottom of the bag.

I thought it was a real shame. The bag didn't look cheap and to have such a lovely piece of craftsmanship treated so carelessly was hard to watch...

Thank you for visiting the Caradiaz Blog and welcome to its first posting!

Yes, we have finally given in to this cybernetic craze and plan to tell our visitors all about Caradiaz, from the jewellery, the designers, the trends, etc., to the ins and outs of running the business.

So… how did it all start in the first place? Well, I used to buy jewellery, scarves and bags for myself from the various holiday places I visited and on my return to the UK people used to love the stuff. It got to the point where people actually started asking me to bring back interesting, exotic stuff for them so, after a while, I decided to set set up professionally and give the business a go. That was just over two years ago and we're still very much in the race, with customers not only in the UK but also in Western Europe, North America and the Middle East.

Competition is fierce out there, there are loads of jewellery websites, but our clients are constantly complementing us on the uniqueness and originality of our pieces and telling us how pleased they are with our service. So I guess we've earned our place in the market!

Anyway, I think that's probably enough for our first posting. If you'd like to learn more about us, come back soon.

The Caradiaz Team