Polymer Clay Wedding Jewellery for my sister

I have been very busy helping my sister prepare for her wedding. My main job was to make wedding jewellery for her and her partner. They came down to look at the jewellery I had and chose what they wanted. Their wedding colours were brown and duck egg blue and I was able to match my polymer clay colours to their fabric colours. Their outfits had matching embroidery on and they wanted pendants with the same pattern.

When I sat down to make it I realised that it wasn't going to be as easy as I thought! I was trying to make the pattern by doing an inlay with the other colour but was having trouble making my carving neat enough that I was happy with it. I thought about making a big cane (if in doubt go back to what you are comfortable with!) but in the meantime had been playing with the faux wood and really wanted to make one of the pendants using that, too complicated to make a cane with faux woodgrain and a swirly pattern!

Luckily for me I was able to attend the London Polymer Clay Group meeting and was able to discuss my technical issues with lots of very skilled and helpful people including the wonderful Carol Blackburn and Christine Dumont, thank you ladies!  It was a great opportunity for which I am very grateful!

In the rush at the last minute (was also making rather a lot of cupcakes for the wedding) I didn't take photos of the jewellery. I managed to borrow it briefly to take some photos the morning after the wedding in a bright spot in the foyer. I'll get some proper photos taken when they get back from honeymoon.

Here's my sister Kirsty's jewellery

Her bracelet.  It start off as a simple swirly bead bracelet, but became a charm style one with the same beads as you see there but she didn't like the chain. This is what we ended up with and it is much more delicate looking than the charm style bracelet.

 

Her necklace, the same as the bracelet but much, much longer! Struggled to get a good photo. She was going to have a pendant originally but also wanted some crystals, this is a far cry from the starting point but I am pleased with how it turned out.

 Her tiara, a last minute decision after her trial hair appointment, luckily it wasn't too tricky!

 Here's me with my sister on the big day! (If I'd had more time I would of made a tiara for myself too ;)

 Her partner Heather's jewellery

This design didn't change too much from the original request. The main difference is the faux wood instead of just being brown. Once I had learnt how to do with faux wood I thought it would really suit the style of this pendant. I finished it off with a glass like shine from sanding and buffing and a little faux wood bead with some jellyroll slices on a chain at the clasp.

I had a lot of issues with that inlay, I tried a lot of different things, many of them suggested by Christine Dumont - thank you Christine! If I had had more time I could of played about with some of the other techniques and got them to work but I just didn't have enough time with the kids at home for the holidays. In the end this pendant was made carving in the raw clay, baking and then back filling with the duck egg blue clay (which was what I was doing but thanks to the suggestion from my clever friend Sean I lined the circle bit instead of trying to carve it - that was the bit I really couldn't get neat!) I had more issues in the last few stages, including sanding some of the pattern off and loosing it for about 20 minutes whilst it flew out of my hands whilst buffing! I wasn't 100% happy with it until I saw her wearing it - it looked fabulous on!

 Heather's bracelet. She wanted beads of different shapes, like some other bracelets I've made. I included some faux wood ones and some with flowers to match Kirsty's jewellery and lots of swirls as their embroidery was very swirly.

 Here's Heather and I on the big day. Her trousers were brown linen with the same embroidery along the bottom of the legs. The main brown of the faux wood matched that colour.

Congratulations to my lovely sister Kirsty and my lovely sister in law Heather! May you have a wonderful life together full of joy and happiness!








The journey to create this jewellery was a long and twisted one but I learnt so much along the way. I have many more ideas floating round my head, I just need to find sometime to play with my polymer clay!