Elvish Circlet Commission and Beginning Silversmithing.

I've been wanting to share about a commission I just finished up a little over a week ago, but I sort of cleaned up my work space and jumped right into the next thing. However, this needs to be shared. It's a major milestone for me in that it pushed me into silversmithing. I am not proud to say that it took me since September to finally make that leap. But luckily my client was a good friend of mine who knows exactly what it's like when a project just stalls and also when it's demanding you learn scary new things in order to complete it. From the very beginning, this project pushed me out of my comfort zone in all sorts of ways. But it is now complete and I've learned and grown through its completion into crazy directions... hence not slowing down long enough to post about much of anything lately.

But here they are...

Nerdanel, Feanor's wife in the Silmarillion. This one pushed me into working with gold and is based on a design I had done previously. I used gold filled wire and beaded it with labradorite, as well as moss agate, ceylon moonstone, smoky quartz, and a mixture of glass seed beads in greens, gold, and grey to match her gown.

The other is my version of Elrond's crown from Lord of the Rings. This is all sterling silver wire hammered flat and soldered together. It pushed me into finally using my silversmithing tools and getting over my fear of melting things that I don't want to melt and not melting the things that I do want to melt.

I'm so grateful for being given the opportunity to play in a world I love so dearly and create something out of it. And such a huge bonus to be able to work with someone who loves that world as much as I do and who has the patience to let me sort out my hang ups about where I am and where I want to be with my work in order to get through her pieces. Life is pretty damn sweet to me.

Now Pandora's Box is open and the whole way I design has changed. I sketched out an idea yesterday and was like, "wait, I can just solder a frame first and build it up from there!" Wrapping is now a design choice instead of a method of connection. Fun times.