I love custom orders, especially custom orders for weddings. I am always so honored that someone trusts me to create jewelry for their special day. It's also a great excuse to sing sappy love songs in my studio at the top of my lungs and just have a good time making. Besides singing "Chapel of Love" and "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," one of the other things I love about custom orders is the challenges they present. Fitting the jewelry to the person, their style and their personality and often keeping within certain parameters.
My latest custom wedding order came from one of my co-workers, Sarah. She had a jewelry set from her grandmother that she wanted to wear on her wedding day. The necklace and earrings were beautiful, but the earrings were posts and not the dangle-ly, long earrings that Sarah wanted for her wedding.
So, my challenge was how to turn posts into long, dangle-ly earrings. That itself is not much of a challenge, but creating temporary dangles are a different matter.
In a lot of my pieces I try my best to respect the original object, and not create new holes or altering it, and thereby keeping the original piece in tact.
To create dangle-ly earrings out of posts the answer was to build on top of filigree and essentially fasten (as you would to your ear) the earring to the filigree--keeping the earring in its original state and not altering it. Especially since Sarah will want to wear these again.
What's fun about fastening earrings posts to filigree is that you have 2 pairs of earrings, 2 different styles, and 2 different looks that you can easily change up yourself.
Here's the "After":
Sarah's wedding earrings are made with vintage brass filigree that my mom and I found at a Paris flea market (I used some of my private stash because the metals matched perfectly!), antique gold watch chain links, clock cogs, rhinestone rondeles, brass chain links (that matched the necklace's chain links), flat mother of pearl buttons, pear shaped pearls, and Sarah's grandmother's crimson flower earrings.
To match the earrings, I added pearls and a rhinestone rondele to the bottom of her grandmother's necklace.
I couldn't wait to go to work Monday morning and see Sarah's face. She is someone with such a big heart and I am so happy that she is getting married in September. She is going to be a beautiful bride. Congratulations Sarah!
For those of you who are interested in custom orders, email me at bohemianromancejewelry@gmail.com. I'm ready for the next fun challenge!