Decisions, decisions! Which earrings shall I wear? One of the benefits of custom design jewellery is getting exactly what you want to suit your look and your personal style. When it came time for the Creative Bride to choose her earrings, she just couldn't decide..... Siam, with its rich burgundy hue ....... Or elegant Golden Shadow? So I made up one earring in each colour and when she had her dress fitting at the bridal shop she was able to try each one with the dress. Siam? Or....... Golden Shadow? They each had their merits: on the one hand, Siam matched the bridesmaids' jewellery but on the other, Golden Shadow was so flattering against her porcelain skin. Both have a red glass heart captured within the filigree but she just couldn't decide. So I went ahead and made up the second earring of each colour so it didn't matter which way she eventually swayed. I also replaced the red heart on the Golden Shadow pair with a Golden Shadow Cosmic Drop. The shape and design ......

If you follow me on Facebook , you will have had a little sneak peek of the jewellery components I'm using for my daughter's upcoming wedding. I'll be sharing these pieces with you after the wedding but in the meantime, here are some pieces I designed for another very special bride, a friend who lives half way across the world in Chicago. She has chosen emerald for her bridesmaid's dresses. The Maid of Honour's dress is strapless and features a pleated panel that fans out like a sunray at the waist whilst the sunray is featured at the neckline of the Bridesmaid's dresses. Her brief was to incorporate the sunray into the jewellery. Here's how I interpreted her vision. Firstly, for the Maid of Honour, I created a multi layered pendant featuring extra long gold bugle beads arranged in a semi circle, edged with Swarovksi bicones in Aurum and Emerald. The central focal consists of two layers of gold german filigrees which are encrusted with Swarovski crystals and......

Over the last few weeks I've teased you with sneak peeks of the Bridal Hair Accessory that I made for my new daughter in law. You've been asking to see it.... and I've been promising to show it. And now I can finally unveil it... I love the contemporary cut of the stylised Swarovski crystal leaves and the sparkle they add. It's an elegantly understated piece.... perfectly suited to the bride's simple, modern tastes. A lot of bridal jewellery seems to be composed of just clear crystals but with the Bride choosing not to wear a veil, it was a great opportunity to include some colour in the way of sapphire crystals to tie in with the bridesmaids' beautiful royal blue gowns.  They too wore some of the wire swirls and crystals in their hair.  And the asymmetrical design was created with the Bride's hair style in mind - long, and swept off to one side. I'm happy to say, the Bride was delighted with her peacock-inspired hair accessory. 'Til next time........

I hadn't expected it to be so long between the first and second parts to this post. But when it gets super busy in the studio like it has this past month, I still keep my Facebook and Twitter pages humming along so you can always get bitesize bits of what's going on in my studio. I'd love you to join me over there too! So much has been going on at Mill Lane Studio - a pressing book deadline, a rush job that I just couldn't pass up, interstate guests, my youngest daughter's 21st birthday, her graduation from University.... the list goes on! But one of the happiest occasions was my son's wedding. As the jewellery designer in the family, it was my privilege and honour to create a hair accessory for his bride. You got to see a little glimpse of the piece in the last post where I shared one of the challenges I was faced with when making the piece. Today, I share with you how I overcame another design challenge using the components I had to work with. This time it ......

I've come up against a design challenge this week whilst creating a bridal hair accessory. Brides usually have a very definite idea of what they want but I was lucky that this bride was easy going and relaxed and was happy for me to design her something elegant and sparkly that suited her petite frame and the royal blue colour scheme of the wedding. What a great brief, but with only a short lead in time to the happy day it didn't leave enough time to order the components I wanted to work with so I had to use whatever components were in stock at my local supplier. I found some great sapphire Swarovski pear-shaped, claw-set sliders to use as accents but this has led to a few challenges trying to find ways of incorporating them into the design. You see, they are sliders and have 2 holes on either side whereas I need either a top-drilled or a centre-drilled crystal for wiring so that the crystal has a stem. So, how do you get around the problem of the holes being in the wrong place......