I wound up with "Here you'll find handmade jewelry in an eclectic style that includes organic freehand wirework, found objects and (mostly) symmetrical glass-bead designs. Steampunk assemblage and bright vintage-inspired pieces are my particular forte."
*inspects it*
That looks pretty accurate to me, right? "Vintage-inspired" is such a vague term that it does pretty easily net everything that's not covered by "steampunk assemblage," "organic freehand wirework" or "found objects," right? Of course, I just wrote an article explaining why people shouldn't use blanket terms, but I was talking about individual descriptions.
Other style elements I contemplated noting but tossed out:
Medium-length earrings. I don't make a lot of short ones but these are the longest I've ever made, bar the ones intended for belly dancers, like the tassels and those sweet shell and pewter leverbacks I made for M's tribal-gothic-fusion outfit for the Azkatraz ball last year, which were eight inches long and laid on her lovely collarbones.
Available here.
These are more standard for me, though still a little longer than average:
Available here.
My fondness for brass and copper. It's still unfashionable to genuinely like these. This is partly because everyone is now convinced that they are allergic to everything. That's not actually the case. Unfortunately, antique and gunmetal brass treatments do contain enough nickel to irritate some people -- but usually that's not the case in a necklace or bracelet. I had to (stop reading if you are, M) have a crown replaced a couple of years ago and the dentist called in his entire staff to show them what a really severe nickel allergy inflammation in the mouth looks like. I wear nickel-containing brass treatments all the time. I just can't handle them as earwires for lengthy periods.
I'm not saying people aren't really allergic to jewelry metals. It happens. It's just that everyone thinks they are and it's really not the case for many of them.
More to the point, I like brass and copper. They weather beautifully. All metals tarnish, people, with the sole exception of gold. All of the metals. All of them. The copper-brass-gunmetal spectrum does so with a beautiful old-world grace that, in my opinion, is better than looking like it was just made forever.
I do, however, use a germanium sterling on my coral and such, because I don't want my white coral branches to stain.
Sparkle! This is weird, because most of the other designers I really like oxidize the shit out of everything.
Really bizarre interpretations of other styles. Even if I try to do Southwestern or Cutesy Chic or Meaningful Assemblage or something, it all comes out looking like me playing with elements of those styles. And there's no way to put that in a description without sounding like a narcissist ("Tee hee, I'm SO unique!!!") but, on balance, I think that's something to be proud of.
And a final note. I didn't set out to do any of this. It just happened to be the way in which I do things. Maybe that's my early materials influencing everything else I've ever done, maybe it's that the beads and components I pick contribute to it, maybe I'm influenced by my grandmother's crazy 60's jewelry she let me wear, but -- all those "develop your style" posts had nothing to do with this. So anyone who's landed here by Googling "how to develop a personal jewelry style" or some such -- just do it. It happens this way.
But if you're like me you'll have to make a blog post three years later before you get a firm idea of what your style is.
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