Jewelry progress
Oct. 12th, 2006 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhienellethIf I haven't been posting lately, it's because my poor little fingers are worn out from bending, shaping, and twisting wire.
L's mask has almost a full troy ounce of sterling silver into it, and 60% of that is in 26 gauge wire (re: super thin). To give you some idea, half a toz of that gauge comes in at around 45 feet of wire. And all of that is worked in to her mask, along with almost 200 Swarovksi crystals of varying sizes and colors. It sparkles, all right. I'm finishing up the last bits, and hope to take pictures tonight. L is thrilled, but I get the sense that she has no idea how much work has actually gone into it, or just how difficult it is to design something like this. I'm currently at about 14 hours, not including the two hours I've wasted on bits that didn't work and had to be scrapped.
I now understand why the only similar masks I've found online are being sold for around $700. (They're by a designer in the UK, and I expect about $200 of that amount is just paying for her name. The rest legitimately goes for her materials, time, and work.) She makes masks, crowns, and wedding dresses, and I get the idea that she sells her masks and crowns mostly for weddings, with the occassional foray into other purposes (such as Mardi Gras) by a client.
It's made me think - I would never have thought of masks at weddings, one assumes in place of veils, but the crowns are pretty darn cool instead of the standard tiara. I could totally make similar things. Maybe I'll start a couture bridal section to my jewelry biz.
But if I'm going to get pics done today, I have more wire work to get back to. *puts lotion on poor, abused fingers*
L's mask has almost a full troy ounce of sterling silver into it, and 60% of that is in 26 gauge wire (re: super thin). To give you some idea, half a toz of that gauge comes in at around 45 feet of wire. And all of that is worked in to her mask, along with almost 200 Swarovksi crystals of varying sizes and colors. It sparkles, all right. I'm finishing up the last bits, and hope to take pictures tonight. L is thrilled, but I get the sense that she has no idea how much work has actually gone into it, or just how difficult it is to design something like this. I'm currently at about 14 hours, not including the two hours I've wasted on bits that didn't work and had to be scrapped.
I now understand why the only similar masks I've found online are being sold for around $700. (They're by a designer in the UK, and I expect about $200 of that amount is just paying for her name. The rest legitimately goes for her materials, time, and work.) She makes masks, crowns, and wedding dresses, and I get the idea that she sells her masks and crowns mostly for weddings, with the occassional foray into other purposes (such as Mardi Gras) by a client.
It's made me think - I would never have thought of masks at weddings, one assumes in place of veils, but the crowns are pretty darn cool instead of the standard tiara. I could totally make similar things. Maybe I'll start a couture bridal section to my jewelry biz.
But if I'm going to get pics done today, I have more wire work to get back to. *puts lotion on poor, abused fingers*
