Handmade Formal Jewellery
It’s been a very hectic month for our family, with our eldest daughter studying for her year 12 exams and graduating from high school. Luckily her school decided to hold the School Formal earlier in the year.In the middle of the year I took “ED” (eldest daughter) to Adelaide to shop for a formal dress. Three shops and two dresses later we had found the “perfect dress”. Now “ED” is 5ft 7in, an Aussie size 8 and absolutely hates short dresses (yes, a parents dream!). The perfect dress ended up being full length, empire line, shoestring straps with a matching pashmina wrap all in her favourite colours of pink, violet and blueberry.
Shoes, handbag, hair and makeup were organised almost on the same day. This of course left designing the jewellery to me. The first step was to create a colour palette from the dress, these lovely cool pastel tones suit ED, so my next choice was colour or bling… I chose bling!
As you can see the dress was a powerful pile of colour and ED is bordering on Twilight – Cullen-kind of pale, she doesn’t spend much time in the sun as she burns too easily.
I based my design around the Zig then Zag suite by Lori Steger found in Step by Step Wire Jewelry Magazine volume 4 no. 1. I initially decided to use sterling silver headpins and Swarovski crystal bicones in crystal AB and violet opal AB but eventually decided not to use the violet bicones.
The size of the necklace is between chocker and princess length and the earrings are almost “shoulder dusters”. All up I’m very pleased with how well this set turned out, ED received plenty of compliments and now she has a set of jewellery that is perfect for evening wear.
How about you? Would you have gone with colour or bling? I hope you’ll share your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks for Reading,
Karen - Over the Moon
