Loving Metal when metal doesn't love you back

I love my job!

I love colourful designs!

I love problem solving!

I love designing for bride's who are bringing their life and loves into their special day!

I love designing for a bride's special day!

And it's not very often that a client's commission brief helps me tick all these boxes but when Andi contacted me in 2010 I knew that my marker would be put to great use!

I may have mentioned this before but there is more to designing than just coming up with a design - there is also the method you use to come up with that design and the techniques you employ to help you to reflect the personality of the person you are designing for.

Now I would have been over the moon with the fact that Andi informed me that her gown was being handmade and was purple (cue squeal!) and that she and her partner were huge Metallica fans, were having that as their theme (cue squeal number 2!) and asked if I could include the Metallica Ninja logo in the designs and that she wanted a tiara, cuff and choker style necklace (as well as other accessories for her attendants) in purple, silver, black and grey. At this point I had the designs and techniques that I would use in my head already but there was to be a bombshell! You see I was faced with a Heavy Metal fan who is allergic to metal (with the exception of titanium - which is - well it's expensive!). There is something ever so slightly ironic about that! So what to do?

In many respects the tiara was the easiest issue to solve as I always bind my tiara bands in ribbon a) to give a nicer finish, b) to make sure them more comfortable and c) less slippy! And after checking with Andi if I could still use silver as long as I covered it, we were in business. Mind you I was also going to add black coated wire as well which would not only add a new depth to the design but also meant that I could use that when beading the band so that it blended nicely and more importantly it would prevent any metal touching Andi's scalp. Of course one of the disadvantages with coated wire is the coating is quite easy to scrape off especially if it scrapes against other wire so extra time and care was needed to make sure this didn't happen anywhere along the length of the band decoration. And thankfully nothing came off first go (otherwise it could have been a long night!)

So how did I come up with the design? I wanted a design which took the traditional elements of a tiara (ie a peaked design) but I wanted a more industrial feel. Initially when Andi asked me to include the Ninja logo I had the idea of enclosing a pendant in a wire wrap within the tiara but because of sourcing and size difficulties Andi decided that she liked the over all design enough that I could leave out the logo and just carry on with the colours and textures she had chosen. These included Swarovski helix crystals in Purple Velvet and Black Diamond, hematine rondelles, black onyx beads and amethyst gemstone chips.

And what did I do with these? Well I knew Andi wanted something less traditional and quite metallic so I employed a random curled wiring technique similar to one I'd used before and I decided that for that extra edge I would secure the accent beading with crimp beads but rather than finishing them in the traditional way, I made them more of a feature by bending them back on themselves and giving a kind of steel girder feel. And then once all that had been done I used the black wire to twist and turn around the already twisted silver wire to add an extra level of interest to the piece before beading the band quite heavily.

The beading itself was quite interesting texturally as the helix Swarovski shaped beads give a more edgy feel with the black onyx giving a very dense presence in the piece. The use of amethyst gemstone chips gave a really interesting edge to the piece as you had the variations in shape and size but also in terms of tone - some were a mid purple which added a lift in colour whilst the darker purple added a beautiful richness. But my favourite beads of all were the amazing hematine rondelles. Hematine is a man made substance which is virtually identical to genuine hematite which is a form of iron oxide but is obviously easier to source and doesn't need to be mined. Hematite jewellery was really popular in Victorian designs but alot of today's designs now use Hematine instead. They are gorgeously metallic looking with a fantastic lustre and give a really interesting feel.

So that's enough wittering on about it - what does it look like?

Et viola! (by the way the purple is actually a proper cadbury's purple - not the weird bluey colour they've come out in the pic!)


But how do you make a 4 strand choker without metal connectors and how do you attach pendants and drops without headpins and split rings? And how do make a wirey looking cuff when you know it can't touch the skin?

Well in some respects the answers are obvious - we use ribbon instead of clasps, make connectors out of beads and use coated wire instead of headpins and split rings for the pendants. OK so how do I secure it all - knots will be too big, crimps are made of metal! Oh and coated wire runs the risk of scraping and the client wants metal!

So with the choker style necklace we took Swarovski Jet beads and created a 4 strand choker with has a subtle twist in the strands which actually shows up better when it being worn than on the display stand. I added 5 drops using gorgeous Swarovski pendants and gave it a velvet ribbon tie. The crystal beads give a fantastic sparkle even though they are black and it is an incredibly striking piece.

The challenge here was to minimise the metal content of this piece. I made a beaded connector and where I needed to use crimp beads to secure the strands I made sure that they were positioned so that shouldn't need to touch the skin. And because of the velvet ribbon this again lifts the area slightly from the skin again providing extra protection. But just in case I gave the crimps a very thin coat of hypo-allergenic varnish. When it came to the pendant drops the size of the actual beads meant that the crimp beads were naturally kept away from the skin. The pendant drops proved to be slightly easier than I first thought. I used black coated wire to attach the pendants and then beaded the drop hangers and then secured with a crimp. Again I gave these a quick going over with the varnish just to be safe. It wasn't that this was a difficult piece to do but we become so used to how we construct pieces that it almost becomes second nature so when your safety net is taken away, you need to think around the issue to achieve (as close as possible) the same result.

Then we had the cuff. I have been knitting wire cuffs for years and I have done them in a variety of metals and coated wires but the problem with coated wires is as I have previously mentioned, they are prone to being scraped. Now normally (as much as you try to avoid this) if a little bit of the coating is thinned (you don't end up with bare wire!), it doesn't matter. But with a metal allergy you can't risk any weakness in the design. So we came up with the idea of using a thick piece of velvet ribbon and adding the silver wire on top of the ribbon. I swirled the wire around on top of the ribbon and caught it in with black thread. Once the silver was in place I could then begin the happy process of beading the piece using Swarovski Purple Velvet, Black Diamond and Jet together with amethyst gemstone chips. We then added a thinner velvet ribbon to tie the cuff and then backed it with another piece of thicker ribbon to give a flush finish. I love this cuff and I'm off to make myself a similar one soon!

I think you will agree that combined with her gorgeous Deep Purple (oops wrong band) bespoke gown, Andi is going to look rather spectacular on her big day next month.

But aside from how lovely Andi wil look, I also designed a few more accessories for her sister Jo, who is her bridesmaid and a couple of star wands for her flowergirls. Their dresses are in silver and so I used more Swarovski silver shade in Jo's accessories but used more Andi's tiara beading for the flowergirl wands.

Jo's hair accessory

Jo's Pendant in Swarovski Silver Shade

One of the flowergirl wands

Whether or not these designs are to everyone's taste is neither here nor there. They are however what Andi wanted and well "Nothing Else Matters" and it was my pleasure to make sure that she got it! I love the depth, textures and colours of the pieces and the pictures don't do them justice at all! They have a gorgeous life about them and I hope that I will be able to share with you some of her wedding pictures very soon.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and will be back soon with a look at our 2011 summer collection.

So until next time......