Friday, August 14, 2009

Design This - Mother - Daughter Jewelry

There is a place on Etsy where you can request a custom item from any talented Etsian that responds to your request. It is called alchemy. As I scanned the alchemy requests one day, I came across an interesting one for “Mother – Daughter Jewelry”. The requester wanted something that both she and her mother could wear to remind each other that they were there for one another in spirit, even when they couldn’t be in person. I had recently made a necklace and earring set that I thought might interest this person.

She saw potential and sent me a convo (Etsy e-mail) to see if I could make the vision that my jewelry set had sparked in her mind as the perfect manifestation of her request. Her explanation of what she wanted can be found in a blog post by PreciousMetals4U. (This shop promptly supplied the custom charms that my customer wanted to have included in the bracelet design.)

I set out to locate crystals in the colors of the birthstones of the five women from her family that were to be represented, as well as the sterling silver chain and findings that were a requested upgrade to my original bid. My customer coordinated having the charms shipped straight to me, as we were on a tight schedule due to her upcoming move to attend graduate school.

When I finally had all of my materials, (Some arrived a day later than I had anticipated!) I gathered them all in one place and began assembling the crystal sections. When those were all finished, I clipped the sterling chain into sections of the needed lengths. The challenge here was to make two different lengths of bracelets look as close to identical as possible. I laid out all of the components for one bracelet at a time on my beading board and then assembled each bracelet.

With the bracelets completed, it was time to take some photographs to send to my customer for approval. She was pleased, so each bracelet was placed in its own gift box and then they were prepared to be sent by priority mail. I’m happy to say that they arrived in the knick of time and the gifts were well received.

2 comments:

  1. Cool. I am glad that you found that custom order and was able to fulfill her dream.

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  2. i was so pleased to be a part of this project! thanks for including me in your blog post. i love your store and your blog. i hope we can work together on more projects in the future.

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