Creating a Jewelry Collection

 


My ‘Silver Bug’ Collection is finished!  It contains 11 silver bug jewelry pieces made with silver metal clay (Art Clay, FYI silver clay and one piece Hadar’s Steel Clay) and it has taken close to a year to complete.  I do admit I worked on it sporadically! 

Throughout the process of creating this collection, I took photos and wrote a post about part of it.  http://www.lindabrittdesign.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-making-of-silver-bug.html  
Today’s post is an overview. 

Yes, the shape and colors of bugs interest me –mainly dead ones. (Not live ones so much - unless we are talking butterflies)  My bug project started as soon as I found some stylized bug stamps at The Art Glitter Co. in Cottonwood AZ.  www.artglitter.com/ 


I ordered some Art Clay silver metal clay and some FYI silver metal clay and started thinking and sketching.  I wanted dimension and some sparkle in each of the pendants.  For the dimension I cut, dried, carved and layered each bug.

Forming and Layering

For the sparkle, I set a variety of colored CZ’s (cubic zirconium) both before and after I fired the silver depending on the effect I wanted. 

First three pendants

As you can imagine, it took several months to get all those bug pendants completed!  And then I made the bracelet and the earrings.  What collection would be complete without earrings? 


photo set up

Photographing the individual pieces came next.  Since I’m going to put the collection in my Etsy shop (www.etsy.com/shop/lindabrittdesign) I need 5 photos of each piece.  Each photo needs to be edited.  I’m still working on the editing so stay tuned!  That’s 11 pieces x 5 photos = 55 photos to edit.

I’m also putting the physical collection in my display case at the Prescott Art Market (which is moving to the Prescott Gateway Mall in May) and I need to show off each piece.  Each pendant will be on a polymer leaf in a white box.  Think about what a nice gift that makes!  And each pair of earrings hangs on a leaf on a stand. 

A Lovely Gift for The Nature Lover!


Next I’m designing the hang tags for each piece.  They need to be small with my logo and other information on them so I better get busy!  No wonder this has taken a year!  And retail stores bring out a new collection every 3 months!  










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Location: Prescott, AZ, USA

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