Spring seems to be well and truly springing outside, and so this week is the perfect time to don a yellow dress and get along to the Joy of Living, opening on Tuesday at Somerset House. The project, initiated by curator Max Fraser in order to raise money for Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres, sees an impressive selection of new and established UK designers to create artwork that expresses the Joy of Living - all starting from a simple sheet of A4 graph paper.

All the artwork costs £250, and although you won't know who the artist or designer is until you've parted with your cash, it's a fair chance you might find a well known signature given that Sir Terence Conran, Tom Dixon, Rob Ryan, John Pawson, Max Lamb, Tord Boontji and Ella Doran have all - among many others - produced works.

Fraser supported his mother through a six-year battle with cancer, making this project a personal one. Charity founder Maggie Keswick Jencks once said, "Above all what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying," and this statement has inspired the design challenge and Joy of Living project, he says.

A great showcase of a nice bit of handiwork, this little exhibition at the Aram Gallery in London's Covent Garden is truly inspiring. Celebrating three young English designers' dedication to using their hands in their work, 6 Hands is dedicated to new, utterly experimental products made using brilliant, but admittedly slightly barmy methods.

The three independent designers involved include India Carpenter, Peter Marigold and Ella Robinson. Rather than being a crafty anarchist rage against the machine, however, the exhibition just seeks to show how some effects can only be produced in certain ways. For example, Marigold's Dug Vessels: made by forcing clay into a hole in a split log, leaving amazing timber textured vases when the log is removed.

Less rustic but just as beautiful are India Carpenter's wall-hung textiles and panels made from screen-printed silk, and Ella Robinson's found wood pieces embellished with thread.

Henrietta loves this… because it involves a chocolate chandelier. Enough said. But beyond the realms of the melty and impracticable, the Lights On exhibition (currently on display at Siobhan Davies Studios until 12 March) also demonstrates a whole host of other evocative and thoughtful new lighting design that makes it well worth the visit.

Curated by Nuno Coelho, Lights On sees a series of lighting interventions across the dance studios' public spaces. The six designers involved - Eelko Moorer, Freddie Yauner, Henny van Nistelrooy, Jesse Visser, Jordi Canudas and Mathias Hahn - all have very different approaches, and the works  range from a 'hairy' rubber light (Jungle Light, Eelko Moorer) to the Fastest Light in the World, a concorde made from neon tubing (Freddie Yauner). Techniques such as traditional weaving meet with digital technology and intelligent design, lighting up the gloomy winter months with some serious panache.

However it's the Chocochandelier, by Spanish designer Jordi Canudas, that attracts the most warm feeling over here at Because HQ. Made up of suspended chocolate bars around a large circle of strong light bulbs, the chocolate melts into a bowl underneath making a slow-food fondue and a whole new meaning to the phrase "light snack".