8/8/13

Wedding Crown

My full time, everyday job is as a jewelry designer.  I have a boutique here in Tamarindo named De Bajo La Escalera where I sell my handmade jewelry, accessories and customized t-shirts.  I've been trying to connect the dots between the wedding biz and the jewelry biz and develop a line of wedding accessories.  That hasn't exactly come to fruition yet, so when I recently received an order to create a wedding crown I was really excited to take the first step in that direction.

My client's friend (who was Swedish) was getting married and she wanted to gift her at the wedding shower with a wire wrapped Swedish wedding crown.  I didn't know what a Swedish wedding crown looked like, so of course I Googled it (what did we do before Google for God's sake?) to find images and also perused crowns on Etsy to get some ideas about shape and size.  Since I'd never made anything like this, I was definitely was on board for a bit of a mental and artistic challenge!!

She shared her ideas with me and together we came up with a basic goal to work towards.  Next, I attempted to sketch up the design, however, drawing is absolutely not my gift.  Luckily after a few attempts, I was able to doodle up something that somewhat resembled what I had in my head.
Although I have lots of experience forming things with wire, I've never made a crown before, so I had to put a bit of thought into how to construct the frame and then how to structure it so that it was durable as well as beautiful.

After constructing the frame and the first bit of wiring to stabilize it, I sent some photos.  We decided that after each "row" of wrapping I'd check in with some photos until she felt we had what she had envisioned.  We wanted it to be structured around the base, but definitely keep a feeling of airiness as well.

After one row.....
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 After the second....
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......third and final.....
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We stopped after three rows, but if someone wanted a very ornate one, the wiring could have been taken all the way up, or even had a few beads or rhinestones thrown in.  Hmmmmm, I may have found my new pastime, constructing crowns for all the fairy princesses out there.