Things are getting more than usually busy for me now that the end of the school year is approaching, so I'll be closing custom orders again for a while. I'll continue to accept custom work through April 30; please contact me if you have something you'd like to request. After April 30, I won't be able to take new custom requests for several months (for either Leaves of Glass or urban legend). Thank you for your patience, and I apologize in advance for any inconvenience.
And here's how it all came together:After spending about a week communing with Lola's teeth and my bead boxes, I decided to make a sort of harness out of sterling wire that would cradle the teeth securely, but wouldn't change their structural integrity at all. I played around with shapes and wound up with this:
This is basically the same as the vintage lampwork glass leaves and flowers that I love so much - tooth flowers. When I had the final versions all wired up and ready to use, I put them in a tiny vase for pictures. This is my favorite photograph that I took during the entire project:
For the final earring design, I wanted to do something that definitely looked like my work. Since my work lately focuses heavily on asymmetry, I opted to make a mismatched pair of earrings but kept them a bit shorter than the crazy long asymmetrical pairs I've designed in recent months. The beads I chose are classic and elegant - some of the rarest and oldest things in my collection - but have a decidedly Gothic flavor when assembled with dark metals (and teeth).Here is the end result, the Love Bites earrings:
And a little chart of the pieces I used to make them:
I'm really pleased with the way they turned out. It was a pleasure to make something special for someone whose joy, generous spirit and hard work (really, crazy hard work - I secretly suspect her of having bargained for extra hours in the day) I admire so much. Thanks for the teeth, Lorraine! I loved having them in my company, and they'll be on their way back to you soon. I hope you love them!
Here's what happened:
The phone rang, and I answered it. It was Shana. You can find out what she said here: http://shanasays.typepad.com/shanasays/2010/07/this-odd-thing-i-did.htmlTune in tomorrow for another toothsome installment!
I'm a long time getting around to this post, but better late than never. I had a wonderful project a few months ago that turned out to be one of the most rewarding and amazing things I've ever done, so I've been meaning to write about it here.
One of my favorite regular customers loved my Loft Earrings, made with vintage cotton pearls. She's a longtime fan of the wonderful artist Michele Oka Doner, and admired a pearl necklace that Doner often wears (you can see it in the picture on her website, although not very clearly), and asked if I'd be willing to undertake a custom order for a necklace made with the cotton pearls from Loft. I adore those pearls; I was definitely up for the idea.
My lovely customer is a fan of my Noir and Urban Seaweed collections, and asked if I could incorporate one of those design concepts into the necklace. Michele Oka Doner is from Miami Beach, and has done a number of marine-themed installation pieces in Miami; in tribute to the original inspiration for this piece, I decided to try to work an Urban Seaweed theme into the necklace. The concept for that particular collection is to incorporate reminders of urban decay and commercial waste into the piece of jewelry. In a classic 2-strand pearl necklace, this posed a definite design challenge. I toyed with the ideas of stringing or looping chains into the design, incorporating some fused plastic, using oxidized torn copper pieces, adding a drop, and a couple of other outlandish concepts. For one reason and another, none of these struck the right note (some of them were just flat out unworkable). So I went back to look at my original Urban Seaweed bracelet to refresh the idea, and had the inspiration that simply using recycled glass beads would work beautifully. The shape kept the integrity of the classic pearl choker idea, the material related to the Urban Seaweed collection, and the rough, organic finish and luminous milky green look of the beads were a nice echo of the idea I was trying to evoke. So in the end, what I made was a classic double-strand pearl choker with the very slightest of twists - vintage cotton pearls and recycled African bottle glass beads. The recycled glass beads are interspersed at irregular intervals, and serve both to accentuate the classic pearly gloss of the cotton beads, and to interrupt the eye with a luminous little reminder that this is not quite your mother's pearl necklace.
My customer requested to have the silver findings oxidized before I shipped the necklace, but otherwise these pictures show exactly how it looked when it was completed. I'm incredibly proud of the way this necklace turned out, and was so pleased and grateful to be able to work on such an interesting project. (Thanks, A! xo)
And here's how it all came together:
This is basically the same as the vintage lampwork glass leaves and flowers that I love so much - tooth flowers. When I had the final versions all wired up and ready to use, I put them in a tiny vase for pictures. This is my favorite photograph that I took during the entire project:
For the final earring design, I wanted to do something that definitely looked like my work. Since my work lately focuses heavily on asymmetry, I opted to make a mismatched pair of earrings but kept them a bit shorter than the crazy long asymmetrical pairs I've designed in recent months. The beads I chose are classic and elegant - some of the rarest and oldest things in my collection - but have a decidedly Gothic flavor when assembled with dark metals (and teeth).
And a little chart of the pieces I used to make them:
I've been working on earrings for a wedding party for the last several weeks: five bridesmaids and a maid of honor. The bride wanted everyone's earrings to be different, but thematically similar and to fit with their colors for the wedding: silver and crimson. Her (brilliant and thoughtful) logic is this: all these women know each other and when they go out somewhere and want to wear this jewelry again, the chances are that at least some of the others will be there, and no one wants to be wearing the same earrings as someone else. So, six different designs.
