I dream in black and burgundy

My customer's wedding was at the end of February, so time to show off the jewelry I made for her party!

Her earrings, wire-wrapped 14k gold fill with a hand-brushed finish.  I'd never actually done a brushed finish, so I allowed myself an hour or two to devote to learning the technique on inexpensive wire, and purchased a nice fine wire brush and file set.  I soon discovered that: (a.) it's really easy, and (b.) five minutes and a sanding block works better and looks better.  We live and learn.



I'm contemplating making up a tutorial for those.  Look for it at the beginning of April!

The bracelets were three-strand Bordeaux Swarovski pearl and black onyx with pewter toggle clasps and silver-plated charms made of crystal pearls with bead caps.
Lessons learned here:
(a.) Get the wrist measurements before ordering the supplies -- I think this customer may have gone handmade partly because she couldn't find anything ready-made to fit her very small bridesmaids.  I have a bunch of extra pearls.  But this is okay because I also learned:
(b.) Allow "wiggle room" in your pricing for stuff to sell out two minutes before you place your order.  That is not the originally planned clasp.  And I had to get the 6mm pearls much more expensively from Beadaholique when Fire Mountain Gems sold out of them since they were having a sale.
The clasp: an adventure.  I highly recommend this shop and this one for supplies; neither of them were selling multiples of the clasp, but they were both very prompt in telling me so!

I couldn't resist doing "vintage" styled shots of the jewelry.  This is the "winter" version, styled with browned leaves of flowering kale -- I desaturated, soft-focused and upped the dynamic color range for a sense of time and nostalgia:



And here's the "warmer" version, half-sepia-filtered, graduated-tinted, and soft-focused after styled with a litter of the deadheads from my apricot violas, for a sense of nostalgia, the warm blush of the beautiful and impermanent:


Pruning makes for great props. Also, I definitely want to do some more sanding of metal for the nice matte finish. 

The total of the jewelry was five bracelets and a pair of earrings: all in all, a good-sized commission, though if I hadn't been custom-sizing each one and thus redesigning a little, I'd have naturally gone stark raving mad on bracelet four.  But as it was, getting the same design with varying wrist sizes was an interesting challenge.  Much fun!