JESSICA Allen is hoping her sparkling bling poppies will raise a more than £3,500 for war veterans and their families.

For six years the 30-year-old has been customising the Royal British Legion’s paper poppies with red resin crystals and selling them for £5 each to raise funds for the Poppy Appeal.

Now Miss Allen, who lives in Wantage and works for a software company in Abingdon, is hoping the centenary of the Armistice on November 11 will encourage people to raise her biggest ever total.

Ms Allen said: “My total last year ended at £2246.80 and I was gutted to have missed out on my target of £3,000 so this year I am going to do anything and everything to raise more.

“I am hoping to reach £3,500, so I only have 700 poppies to sell.

“I am also selling poppies for pets - poppies that can be attached to a dog or cat’s collar.”

Ms Allen said she received lots of orders last year after the Oxford Mail ran her story.

She added: “According to the Royal British Legion poppies can’t be sold until October 25 but I am trying to find out if I can sell mine earlier.

“If not I can post them out and then people will have them ready to wear.”

To date Ms Allen has raised £6,500, raising £197 in her first year before sales really took off.

The tech company employee first made her customised poppies for her sister Bethany Reeve and her mother Senga Hashimi and once people saw them they started asking for them.

And orders came in from around the world after the sparkling items were featured on Facebook and Instagram.

Ms Allen was initially inspired to make the brooches when a friend joined the Army and she wanted to show her support.

She is given poppies by the RBL to customise and once she has glued on the red crystals she puts pins on the back so that people can wear them as brooches.

People in Ms Allen’s office buy the poppies and she has posted the brooches to countries including France and Australia.

Most of her customers are women but some men also buy the bling poppies.

She added: “We had a really good year last year but I’m hoping this year will be the best yet as it is the centenary of the Armistice on November 11.

“I like the idea of poppies for pets and I’m making one for my dog to wear.”

RBL county chairwoman Lynda Atkins has praised Ms Allen for “going to such an effort to create these special poppies”.

Poppies were first suggested as a symbol of Remembrance in the United States in November 1918. They were adopted by the American Legion in 1920. In August 1921 poppies made by a French-American charity’s widow were introduced to the British Legion and the first Poppy Appeal was born. To buy one of Miss Allen’s poppies email jessicasjewelsja@hotmail.co.uk