BlossomLuxe Jewels

The Bridal post: part 2

As I mentioned earlier, my recent bridal commission began with a request for hairpins for the bride. Her dress was an empire style gown with a tulle overlay embroidered and beaded in beautiful gold and vintage pastel tones.

The swatch

We went back and forth on a few ideas; I ended up designing five Swarovski crystal and freshwater pearl pins in coordinating tones for her updo; with rhinestone accents and gold toned brass stampings:

I painted the comb bases to match her dark hair colour and incorporated extra loops near where the beading meets the base (you can see one clearly on the left of the bottom right pin) to anchor extra bobby pins as the bride was concerned about their grip in her notoriously thick hair.

Detail: Each pin was approx. 2 inches in width and 3 in length.

MUCH MUCH More below the jump!

The Bridal post: part 1

A while back a friend approached me to design some pieces for her upcoming wedding. This quickly turned from hairpins and traditional jewellery to a commission for ninety pairs of earrings as favours for the females guests.

It was a lovely idea, and a great way to offset the stubby holders (beer coolers for the non-Aussie linguists) that the boys were being gifted. The bride and I brainstormed, and agreed that she'd pay for the supplies and I'd gift the couple my labour.

We decided on a feminine palette of vintage pastels to match the beading and embroidery in her exquisite gold toned dress;

(l-r) Blush pink, copper, sage, peach and violet. Each pair was replicated in gold (14k gold filled) and silver (sterling), with freshwater pearls and Swarovski crystals.

I also made custom gift bags for the earrings; Pashmina with a silk lining. This is where I went completely over the top! Not only is Pashmina a pain to cut and sew, inserting a lining into a bag this small is a complete folly. But they turned out so well:

Silver ribbon for the silver earrings, gold ribbon for the gold.

Bagged and tagged

Ready to go!

They were a great success at the wedding; guests loved them and they were a great icebreaker on the night with people swapping colours between themselves. I even was told that a lot of the guests were wearing them at the brunch the next morning (I missed the brunch as I was a little *ahem* "under the weather" after the previous night).

Would I do this again? For a friend at mates rates- in a heartbeat. But not as a money making exercise; the retail cost would make it prohibitive for almost any wedding. BUT it would be a lovely favour idea for the craft-inclined bride who wanted to tackle it themselves.

The should give you a bit of an appreciation of why I've been AWOL lately! My fingers needed some recovery time...

Blossomluxe Tutorial featured in Australian Beader magazine

I got a shock when a friend told me that this issue was on sale already! I've had the Caviar Earrings project on the backburner for a while and I'm so happy to see it make print! The team at Australian Beader have done a great job.

(Rose Quartz, Tourmaline and Sterling Silver hoop earrings. For a similar style visit the Modamuse shop)

New pieces for 2007

Snippets of what I've been creating lately:

All will be revealed soon.

Spooked

No, this isn't a reference to Halloween. Today at lunchtime I nearly jumped out of my skin in the middle of town.  A large jumbo was flying very,very low over the CBD straight over the top of Little Collins Street; so low I could almost see the rivets. I was bracing for bad things to happen.

Luckily the postie bought me a lovely package this afternoon from my friend Amy which chased my jitters away; it was filled with gorgeous pieces of fabric, a cd full of patterns, pictures and all sorts of things she knew I'd love. What a gem.

In other news, I've been working on a commission lately for a friend's sister: her birthstone is Pink Tourmaline so I designed (with my friend's input) a delicate 14 k gold filled and pink tourmaline necklace and earring set for her.

I later replaced the pale green clasp dangle with an Emerald swarovski crystal which is my friend's birthstone. I love it, my friend loves it and most importantly, via text message from Brisbane, her sister loves it too!

Designer Quest

Ever quarter beadingforum.com.au has a Designer Quest; each entrant purchases a discounted pack of beads and components and has six weeks to turn their pack into a work of wearable art. This quest was sponsored by Crystal Flair

Pack contents:

My entry (three pieces):

I'm pretty happy with them, although I'd have liked to find a way to bring the black and green/brown components together in the one piece. That just wasn't working for me! I used every item from the pack with the exception of one ceramic bead that I crushed accidentally with my chair leg. I also couldn't resist adding chain, velvet ribbon, sterling wire and some extra onyx and aventurine beads to fully realise my design.

As usual the calibre of entries is high and the judges will have their work cut out for them.

MMmmmm, moonstone

My latest;

Juniper Designs

The Juniper Designs blog has featured me as their find of the week!

The lovely Jen (so many Jens, all divine.. must be something to do with the name) is surpremely talented so her tick of approval makes me blush and run in small circles, all at the same time.

 

(L-R: Juniper Designs's Felicity and Longing necklaces)

Thanks Jen.

Show and tell

This lidful of teeeny tourmaline beads found their way into one of the pictures in my pearl tute. The reason they're lying around is that I'm also working on a tutorial for my Caviar earrings;

It hurts, but I'm getting there! The tute is destined for one of the Australian Beading Magazines.

Oh- for those of you who have been keeping tabs, (my own interest is starting to wane) the Swarovksi/Creative Beading Awards of Excellence are drawing closer to completion. The final 25 have been announced and will be published in Issue 6 of the magazine which is due to arrive in stores this week. The announcement of the winner surely can't be far away. Sigh (Taps foot....)

Dye your own Freshwater Pearls

I remember reading on a beading forum that someone had managed to dye freshwater pearls themselves and had one of those "aha!" moments... I started to do a bit of detective work on the topic.

Most freshwater cultured pearls are colour treated; either by irradiation or dye. Irradiated pearls are normally greyish, the process darkening the pearl's nucleus which creates the deeper colour. Dyed pearls however are exactly that: coloured into may hues by commercial dyes. The process is almost identical to dyeing fabric. Dyed pearls can be identified by a higher concentration of colour in and around drill holes, and by the more saturated areas of colour where there are imperfections in the pearl's surface.

Here are the links that I started with:
Pearls to Dye for
Coloured Stone profile on Golden pearls
How to Dye pearls
(the last one is by far the best resource out there).