Dresses I would love to make jewelry for

My favorite type of custom orders are when a customer wants something made for a special gown or dress. Nothing triggers my creative engine like that kind of request. I love to come up with designs that fits how the dress is cut, the textures and the colours. Just like I did for sweet Erin who had the most beautiful vintage 50´s gown for her wedding.

Erins dress is all cream coloured and wrapped up in lace and finished with a chocolate brown ribbon. I´m very happy with the earrings I made for this dress. It´s a swirly designs that captures the expression of the lace and the texture of the fabric. And the smokey quartz, brown and cream coloured freshwater pearls I put on the earrings match the colour of the dress nicely. Do I have to say the photos from Erins wedding was like a dream! She was so beautiful!
Here are some dresses I would love to make jewelry to go with. First is a dress by Anna Sui with (again) a beautiful lace pattern. I think I would choose tiny spinel rondelles for this one contrasted with one single bright coloured stone. Earring would be best for this dress. With a dramatic design.

Anna Sui also designed this psychedelic paisley patterned dress with vibrant colours. For this one I would love to make a cuff with fuchsia and tangerine colours sprinkled with details in 14k gold filled.

Finally I would feel blessed if I could make something for this 1940´s vintage dress. Or actually it feels like I´ve already made it! Don´t you think the FIRST LOVE necklace would look lovely with this dress? If you feel really romantic?

Vintage Textile sells this beautiful dress.

Use a wiki when creating custom orders

Custom orders where you work close with the customer to decide which material you´re going to use are fun. But the e-mail traffic following such a mission can be overwhelming. Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all information; what has been said and not.

Now I have found a way to make this work a lot easier and I want to share it with other jewelry designers. I´ve started to use wikis to keep all information gathered in one place and reachable for both my customer and I.

This is something I started to use at my daytime job when planning for festivals and other projects together with other organisations.

Using a wiki is so easy. You set up a wiki, which is like a simple website where you can add folders and pages, upload pictures and other documents. Then you invite other users and make them only able to read the content or add information themselves. They can always write comments on everything you add. Everytime the wiki is updated you get a notification by email.

Now you don´t have to go through several e-mails for certain information. You just go to the right folder to find it. And I guess it´s a great way to avoid disputes with the customer too, you always have the same information.

Does it sound tricky and confusing? Watch Commoncrafts “Wikis in plain English” at Youtube.

I use http://www.pbwiki.com/ because there you don´t have to pay to avoid others to see the information. http://www.wikispaces.com/ has a layout I prefer, but you have to pay a fee to make it private.

Large projects have become so much more fun since I started to use wikis. Now the whole family use wikis for planning trips, parties and even business plans.

Try it!

Custom order - cuff

When I started with wire wrapping I used to make this kind of cuffs. I had learned from tutorials by Eni Oken: http://www.enijewelry.com/ . It was fun but very time consuming. So for more than a year now I haven´t been making these.

But now I have a custom order for a cuff with rhodocrosite and garnet. And I´m exited! And the order is of the kind when you work close with the customer to decide which material will be used. I love that!