Two girls with a passion for cheeky Scots slang are wearing their hearts on their sleeves, their fingers and round their necks

OME businesses use their vehicles as mobile advertising hoardings, emblazoning their name and logo on doors, boot and bonnet. Others have uniforms, embroidered fleeces or a hi-viz tabard. Not Mairi Mackenzie. Her corporate branding is an unmissable pair of knuckleduster rings with the name of her jewellery company, Bonnie Bling, in sparkling blue across both hands.

Anyone who has been to the new Riverside museum, the gift shop at Glasgow’s GOMA or any hipster craft fairs will be familiar with Bonnie Bling’s work. Its ‘Och’ and ‘Aye’ earrings, ‘Ginger’ brooches and defiantly vernacular necklaces – ‘Peely Wally’, ‘Blether’, ‘Soap Dodger’ – have become the cool alternative to tartan pincushions and Rabbie Burns thimbles.

Their origins are in the ghetto styles worn in the early days of Sex in the City. Carrie’s gold necklace had her name on it, but other versions read ‘Sexy’, ‘Diva’ or ‘Bitch’. Mackenzie’s take is altogether more playful. It started on a winter night two years ago, when she and best friend Sarah Richardson were sharing a bottle of wine. “We were joking around, using Scottish words, slagging each other off. Then we started saying, ‘I’m going to get you a necklace with that on it.’ We were just having a giggle. Then we both woke up the next morning and thought, ‘That’s not such a bad idea.’”

Both women already had proper jobs, Richardson in the alumni department of Glasgow University, Mackenzie running her own graphic design and social media company, Mucky Puddle. Mackenzie’s training gave her the ability to make words look good, and one of Mucky Puddle’s neighbours in the Hidden Lane in Finnieston knew about laser cutting. With some perspex offcuts from the Stockline plastics factory in Maryhill and a helpful technician at Strathclyde University willing to make some samples, they were good to go.

The first necklaces were ‘Blether’, ‘Chancer’, ‘Stoater’ and ‘Och’. They also had earrings, one saying ‘Och’, the other ‘Aye’. “They looked totally different to the way they look now,” Mackenzie recalls. “The fonts were different, we were still learning the strongest ways to cut.” With all their stock in a carrier bag, the pair headed to their first craft fair with no great expectations.

Turned out there were many blethers, chancers and stoaters out there, desperate to advertise their status between their collarbones. “We had such a great response,” says Mackenzie. “We could tell from people’s faces. Everyone was saying, ‘I’ve got a friend who’s such a blether’, ‘Your boyfriend’s a chancer’. We knew we had an idea here.”

The pair expanded their range, spending evenings together gossiping and glueing the backs on to badges. A customised brooch for a carrot-haired barman – ‘Ginger’, of course – caused an instant sensation when he wore it to work. When Mackenzie had the idea of fitting the words on to a bright orange Irn-Bru can, it became a best-seller.

After a year of on-line trading – Mackenzie’s tech background meant they had an e-shop from day one – and working the craft fair circuit, it was time to ask some difficult questions. They had made some cash from Bonnie Bling and could walk away with their pockets jingling. Or they could invest the cash in a stand at Scotland’s Trade Fair, the biggest retail showcase in the country, and see if the business was ready to move to the next level. They booked in and hoped for the best.

It turned out to be a triumph. “We won the best new product award and picked up nine new stockists. It was a real turning point.”

Richardson, who is set to get married, has not been blinging much recently but Mackenzie has big plans. She has produced a more fashion-oriented collection of spooky knuckledusters, ornate keys and punky cameos in collaboration with Glaswegian designers Obscure Couture, showing that Bonnie Bling can be gothic and creepy as well as quirky and cute. Production turnaround is so quick that, as soon as something in the zeitgeist, Mackenzie has made it into an accessory: ‘Fitba Daft’ brooches for the World Cup, ‘Pure Fancy Brad Pitt’ for the filming of World War Z.

By scaling up some of her best-sellers, Mackenzie has found a whole new market. Her giant ‘Peely Wally’, ‘Blether’ and ‘Soap Dodger’ necklaces are somehow much edgier than their smaller counterparts, and are in great demand for photo shoots and fashion shows. The knuckledusters – ‘Taps Aff’ for summer; ‘Och Aye’, ‘Aw Naw’ and ‘Don’t Mess’ for all year round – were never for the faint of heart.

The Bonnie Bling experience has turned Mackenzie into an amateur lexicographer, preserving the Scottish vernacular in lurid shades of perspex. No request is too regionally specific. A gift shop in Thurso wanted badges with the legends ‘Dirty Weekers’ (the derogatory name for residents of Wick) and ‘Tea In A Bowlie’ (what aggrieved Wick folk call those from Thurso). Her next area of expansion will be the north east, with ‘Quine’, ‘Loon’ and ‘Manny’ already in the pipeline. She is already auditioning in Yorkshire and Cockney.

The UK's geographic vagaries are, she reckons, key to Bonnie Bling’s success. “‘Soap Dodger’, which is probably our cheekiest necklace, wasn’t selling at all in Glasgow. But we sold lots in Edinburgh. Then we discovered that it was people in Edinburgh buying it for their Glaswegian friends. That’s fine. I’ve lived all over the west coast and Sarah’s very Edinburgh, so we’ve got that covered.”

The vile weather has reminded her to get ‘Baltic’ (complete with snowflake) back into production, possibly to be joined by ‘Drookit’ and ‘Dreich’. ‘Glaikit’ is another possibility, as well as, for the older bling-wearer, ‘Keelie’ (Glasgow keelie: tough young man, potentially but not necessarily violent). “There are lots of people making laser-cut perspex jewellery,” says Mackenzie, “but no one else is doing this. It keeps these words alive. It’s amazing to see people so excited about language.” n