Available here.
I generally avoid plastics. I once posted a spirited defense of them on someone else's blog, noting that they were often very elegant-looking, stood up to hard wear much better than cheap glass, and their lightness for their size made them extremely useful for applications were weight was a concern. Besides, a lot of people love vintage plastic. That said, I do tend to worry that they'll make my work seem cheap -- and I charge relatively low prices and am, you know, a beader, so I get that a lot from the apparently endless supply of incredibly rude browsers.
I hate to use my own work to prove my point, but ... I think I have here proven my point.
All the beads in this brooch are either plastic or vintage brass. The almond-shaped beads are vintage too. They have an AB finish (which is why this thing was so bloody hard to get a photo of that wasn't green). This is a use where the lightness matters -- beads of that size and this brooch's dimensionality in stone, ceramic, even glass might have made this impossible to wear on any but the sturdiest weave -- and the design is gorgeous. They also, because of the secure wrapping and their flattened shape, can't have their mold lines turn the front, which is something I hate. I'd use more plastic if there weren't those visible seams.
I'm not going to become a vintage plastics hound -- there are many people in that niche, and more power to 'em -- but I need to work on not treating my cool plastic stuff like a red-headed stepchild.
No comments:
Post a Comment